Matt, that's fantastic your pup is working out like that. Amazing little guys aren't they. Pup lays on my lap as I type. My dog Axel (Wire Haired Dachshund) comes from Andy's kennels and is a descendant from John Jeanenneys dogs, John wrote, Tracking Dogs for Finding Wounded Deer. A great read for those interested. John and Jola are both on the United Blood Trackers website as well. This is Axel, this buck didn't need tracking but my friends call me when they see their deer go down so Ax can have a practice run.
Virginia is the same if not worse! We can run the hell out of deer with dogs but once its dead...you can't track them. I've never hunted deer with dogs and don't ever see myself doing so. Eventually, I will have a tracking dog no matter if the law is changed or not.
Very cool. Thanks for posting your story. I wanted a tracking dog real bad, but when I checked into them they were very expensive (even untrained) and I'm no dog trainer by any stretch so I gave up on it. Your very lucky to have such a good dog and all you had to do is just go pick him up. You can't beat that!
Very cool to hear you've got your little guy working tracks, RJ! I trained my Deutsch Drahthaar(DD) on blood tracking this year while training for our club's utility test called VGP. Part of the test includes a 400 meter blood track through the forest. My female is a fabulous tracker and took to it very well. DDs truly are versatile dogs! Unfortunately, using dogs to recover deer in MN is illegal...however, taking your dog for a walk in the woods is not!
I had a little collie/sheep dog mix that was a natural. She never was asked to track a lost deer untill she was five or so but one day we lost one and it occurred to me to see if the dog could find it. We knew the deer was most probably dead but after an hour we just could not find it. Took her to the first blood sign, she sniffed a bit and just took off leisurely with her nose in the air in the direction we knew the deer had headed. She acted like she already knew where the deer was several hundred yards before we all got there. She just stood there and looked up at me as if to ask, " Yer looken for this, right?" This dog was not a tracking dog. She was just so gosh darn smart that she instantly understood what we wanted and she, like all dogs, had a nose 1,000,000 times better than ours. She did this three or four more times for us. Every time the same. Happy to oblige.
My dog Quella is from the von zuzelek kennels you have mentioned on the born to track website, in New York. The dog in the video is actually my dog's dad. His name is Joeri. My female has a recessive gene which is the reason her hair is short, but she is still a wire haired dachshund and that doesn't effect her tracking ability at all, she is all nose. You can check her out on the blog I just recently created. Congrats also on Johnny also, he's a very good looking dog. My female likes to track fast also, but I slow her down with a tracking leash, which helps her out alot on not missing anything. If anyone needs help finding deer in Southwest ohio, give me a call. 513-526-3806 I would buy John's book also if your interested in tracking with dogs, it's very helpful. http://trackingwoundeddeer.blogspot.com/
