Grock has left for a new bloodtracking home in Florida/Georgia

Today we had a pleasure of meeting Larry and Kelsey Surtees from Pensacola, Florida. They flew last night to Albany to pick up Grock, who is going to be a blood tracking partner for Chris Surtees, Larry's son and Kelsey's father. Chris is serving in Iraq, but he will be coming home at the end of July, and afterwards, he will be relocating to Georgia.

Grock's new name is Koa, which is of Hawaiian origin and means brave, bold, fearless. Let's hope that Grock will grow up to be Koa. He has shown a lot of talent for blood tracking and you can see a short video of his tracking here

Chris, be safe, and best of luck with Koa!

Saying good-bye to Pushkin

Today we said good-bye to Pushkin who left with Stanley and Clarice Thrasher for his new home in Luverne, Alabama. Initially Stanley wanted a female but in his priorities he put dog's performance over gender. So instead of taking Poppy, he chose Pushkin, who right now is doing better in tracking than Poppy.

We like Pushkin (his new name is going to be Doc) a lot and believe that Stanley's decision is a right one.

Good luck Stanley - stay in touch!

Four Pound Woodchuck with a Death Wish

These are two versions of the same story:

Jolanta’s version

I did not have a chance to get my second cup of coffee today when an unexpected visitor caused some disturbance. While washing dishes in the kitchen I heard the four puppies who were louder than usually. I can see their large yard from the kitchen window so I called them but nobody came to the gate. I knew that something was up.


John was pulling weeds in the garden nearby but he did not seem to pay attention to what was going on in the puppy pen. I had to go to investigate. There is a wooden platform in the puppy yard where they can lie in the sun, but all the pups were underneath the platform barking. Some pups were coming out but they would go under the platform right back. There was a lot of commotion and noise. I started to lift the heavy platform and called John at the same time. I peered under the platform and could see that pups had something there. As it turned out a young woodchuck must have gotten into the pups’ pen, got chased under the platform where he was cornered by the pups.

It was really surprising how ferocious these three month old pups were. I could not see as I was holding the platform but John swears that he saw Paika with her teeth in the woodchuck. Actually all the pups were very aggressive towards the chuck and towards one another once the chuck was removed. They were really fired up. Watch the video clip to see their excitement.



John’s version

The puppies (there are four of them left now) were barking, barking, barking. Clearly it was more than a puppy disagreement. Then Jolanta began to yelp too. “There’s something under the wooden platform! The puppies are going after it. They are going to get hurt!”

We lifted up the platform in the big puppy pen, and there was a young woodchuck with the puppies swarming around him. Attached to the chest of the woodchuck was 14 week Paika, oblivious to the dangers that Jolanta was foreseeing. With so much good puppy help it was an easy matter to tail the chuck and lift him above the fray.

The chuck was somewhat the worse for his uninvited venture into the puppy pup, so we asked Tom vom Linteler Forst to finish things off. He had never seen a chuck before, but he knew what to do. These German dogs have a lot in their ancestral memory.

Not wanting to waste the dead chuck, we used him later as an a dragged alternative to liver drags and blood trails that we had been using to train and evaluate puppies.

Paika is following John after a successful completion of the woodchuck scent trail.

Puppies work a deer liver drag

Today our forecast called for more rain, and indeed we got several thunderstorms and huge downpours throughout the day. As I am writing this post at 9 pm, we have standing water in our garage, mudroom and my office. However, in the morning there was a short window of opportunity to work the pups so we did.

This time I did a liver drag for the pups in our 12 acre enclosure. The pups are very familiar with other places around our house, and the field in the enclosure gave us fresh ground to work them. The line was long, around 170 yards, which is at least double of what they have done on blood so far. There were four turns, and a big chunk of liver was placed at the end. The temperature in shade was in the low 70s and rising. Parts of the line were exposed to the sun.

I ran Poppy first on the drag, when the scent line was an hour old. Poppy knew where the line was and never overshot it or lost it. Her work was quite slow and precise. However, her problem was weak motivation and desire - she needed a lot of encouragement to make progress. The good news was that she went nuts over the liver, and was extremely possessive of it. This is going to be a good motivational tool for Poppy.

The second pup was Grock. His desire was excellent and he was very fast. One time he was distracted when I praised him but was able to go back to the line by himself. The second problem he encountered when he was just 15 yards from the liver. He turned left instead of going straight. It did not look like he was going to correct himself and I had to bring him back. His loved the liver but was not as possessive of it as Poppy was.

The third pup running the line was Paika. On the last two lines she got the lowest scores but this time she aced it. She was a bit sloppy, but her desire was strong, and she never needed to be encouraged or corrected.

The last pup was Pushkin who did the best of all the pups on the last two lines. By now the scent line was two hours old. He started very well; he was precise, slow, methodical. But he lost his focus on the last leg of the line (last 1/3rd) and needed a lot of help there. He liked the liver but it was not too difficult to take it from him. He looked tired at the end of the line.

Since Poppy seemed to be so motivated by the liver at the end, we ran her on the same line second time. This time scenting conditions were more difficult. The line was trampled by other pups, was much older, around 2.5 hours old, and it was getting hot. As I suspected her desire to track was much stronger this time. Her work was not as clean as the first time around, she veered off the line some but she was able to correct herself and did not need any help. Several times she stopped for a moment and looked at us but this time we did not say anything and ignored her. She resumed her tracking right away. Again, once she got to the liver she wanted to devour it. When we tried to take it from her, she growled and snapped. This kind of behavior can be corrected but this possessiveness provides a good foundation for motivating Poppy to track.

All the pictures included show Poppy on her first track.

Observations from the field - puppies are starting to hunt

We are down to four puppies - Grock, Paika, Poppy and Pushkin. It is hard to believe that just three weeks ago there were 15 of them! As you can see the last three weeks have been very, very busy meeting pups' new owners. Within next 12 days two more pups will be leaving.

Yesterday was the first time in a while when I could spend quite a bit of time with the pups. Unfortunately, the weather has not been cooperating. It was way too wet for blood tracking, but I managed to take pups to the pond. They have not been there for a while, and I was surprised at their reaction. It looks like P-pups love the water! Pushkin went in right away in a spot where water is quite deep; he swam away and after a while started to have problems. I had to get into the pond and help him some. Luckily, I did not have camera with me so there was no damage done. Pushkin did not get traumatized, but now he may have second thoughts about swimming so far on his own. Poppy and Paika were swimming too; Grock did not mind to wet his feet but I did not see him going into the deeper water.

In the afternoon we had a huge loud thunderstorm, just when puppies were snoozing in their crates. When the rain stopped and it started to dry, I took them out for a long walk. Once they hit our freshly mowed lawn in front of the house, they put their noses to the ground and started to hunt. There must have been a lot of fresh scent left there by rabbits because the pups clearly were following some scent lines. They are precocious little hunters, that's for sure. When we went to our 11-acre enclosure, it was still very wet and water was dripping. Pups did not mind running into the thick brush, where they got completely wet. Their noses were glued to the ground and if the scent let into dense cover, they were not concerned. This is a good experience for them. All in all a good day in spite of the bad weather.

After the walk we came to the house, where pups dried in the kitchen. I cut two apples for them, which they devoured, and then gave them two more to play with. Grock claimed one of them and almost ate the whole thing.

Update on Patti (now Lucy)

We received e-mail from Dan Davis from Wisconsin, who picked up Patti (Lucy) on Thursday. Actually P-puppies (out of Theo and Keena) are 13 weeks old today.

I wanted to let you know that we ran our first blood line with Patti today. We ran it in the woods behind our house. The line aged 3 hrs. before she started on it and was 60 yards long with one turn. She made it to the end with very little trouble. She left the line twice, but corrected herself after no more than 5 yards off of the line. As you observed, she was quite possessive of the deer leg we left at the end. After we practiced her letting me take it from her several times she carried it off and hid it in some ground cover we have in the backyard. The only time we have heard her bark since we got her was when Mary tried to take the leg from her. With a few repetitions that was easily corrected too.

We have also introduced Patti to a few other dogs and so far have found her to be very submissive. The dogs have been bigger and older though so that may explain her submissiveness. She is still a little confused about when she is inside and when she is outside, but we're working on it.

We have noticed one little quirk with Patti in that when she lays down she always lays next to my tennis shoes. I have made it a point to leave them next to her crate and she has gone into the crate on her own ever since.

The picture attached is Patti with her first "find."

Dan

Saying good-bye to two more Gilda's puppies

Today we said good-bye to Gunther who is going to live in Marshall, Michigan with Don Dickerson and Cori. Don impressed us with his enthusiasm and knowledge, and we expect great things from this blood tracking team.

On Saturday Grannie was picked up by Saralynne Hudgins from Kennesaw, Georgia. Grannie is going to track for Sara and her husband Terry Meier.

Good luck to all of you!

Gwen is on her way to her new home in Indiana

Yesterday we spent the whole day with Chris Barr and Joe Walters from Indiana, who came here to pick up Gwen. Joe Walters has already a tracking dog from us - a two year old "Doc" (Magnum v Moosbach-Zuzelek). Chris is the one who is Gwen's new owner. It was a real treat to get to know him. Chris has read John's book numerous times, and he has read all the blog posts. He was better prepared than anybody else...ever. He could even name dogs in the pictures on the wall in our dining area.

Anyway, we had a blast with Chris and Joe. We know that Gwen is in excellent hands.




One of the topics we discussed yesterday was Gwen's coat, which is short. A dog with this type of coat does not carry a gene for wirehaired coat. The smooth coat like Gwen's is a recessive trait to the wirehair coat. So while a whirehaired dachshund can carry a gene for the smooth coat (and many do), a smooth dachshund with the coat like Gwen's does not carry a gene for the wirehaired coat. If Gwen was bred to another smooth dachshund, the offspring would be all smooth-coated.

Patti (now Lucy) has left for a new home in Wisconsin

On Thursday Patti has left for a new home in Janesville, WI. It was such a pleasure to meet and spend several hours with Patti's new owners - Dan and Mary Davis.

Patti is very talented, and she impressed us a lot on her last blood line. The line had two turns, was aged 30 minutes, and part of it went through our gravel/dirt driveway. A section like this is quite difficult to track through, but Patti had no problems. She was keen, focused and determined. She did very well on the turns, and she was extremely aggressive towards the hide. Actually, the last picture shows Patti hanging in the air and still not letting the hide go.

I said many times that I have not owned, handled or bred a perfect dog. Every dog has some weaknesses and strengths, and a good breeder, owner and handler has to be very objective and knowledgeable enough to be able evaluate pups and his dogs. Patti has come pretty close to perfection. Her conformation is very nice (excellent ground clearance), her coat is very good, and she is a very friendly, outgoing pup. She seems to have some issues though when it comes to other dogs. She was not keen on socializing with our mature dogs, but she was dominant and a bit of a bully when it came to her littermates. She was quite aggressive to some pups in the other litter. So when we were deciding which puppy is going to which family, we took her disposition into consideration and placed her in a home where she is the only dog. We advised Dan and Mary that they need to socialize her a lot with dogs, while she is still young.

Update on Poker (now Bentley)

We received this very nice and informative e-mail from Sarah, who owns Poker, a Theo/Keena pup. Poker's new name is Bentley.



Hi Jolanta & John,

Just thought I would give you a little update on Bentley (Poker) since he has been with me for the past few weeks.

He has fully adjusted to life here in Elba and seems to be very happy. We go on visits to my mom's house where he plays with Shadow and we visit family in Scottsville where he has lots of doggy friends.

Bentley is doing very well with his tracking so far. We haven't been together long, but there is definitely a partnership forming between us when we do practice trails. This past weekend we did a blood trail that moved through short grass, tall grass, gravel and bare ground. Before we were able to work the line it drizzled for about an hour. I was worried that the trail may be too hard for him, but he was able to follow the trail and find the prize at the end (a rabbit). At times he gets overly excited and moves too quickly, but he is learning and I have all the confidence in him that he will become an excellent tracker.

There is a herd of beef cows that live behind our house and he is very amused by their sounds and smells, but he never strays too close. He will watch from the edge of the fence and runs for the house when they start walking his way. My family owns several reindeer which we went to see the other day. I expected him to have a similar reaction to the reindeer as he does with the cows, but to my amazement he wanted to march right in their pen and show them who's boss!

I have found that he tends to be more accident prone when it is wet outside. I don't think he likes the wet grass on his belly! Other than that he is pretty good about doing his business outside.

He is now on K-9 advantix and he had his second vaccination two weeks ago. He has a good appetite and has started putting on more muscle weight. His little belly has slimmed down to a more appropriate size now and he is looking good. He has a nice shiny coat and he seems to be doing very well on the Canidae dry dog food.

Sarah

Blood tracking training session with 12 week old puppies - part 1

Recently the weather has not been cooperating with our puppy training schedule at all. For days it was very wet and impossible to do any blood tracking training. Then when we got short periods of sunshine, we had some other commitments and appointments. So last evening, even though the sky looked a bit threatening, we decided to do the training line for pups. The conditions were not ideal as it was very breezy. But we wanted to know about Pushkin, whether he was starting to show interest in deer blood or not. So far every attempt ended up with his score of 0.


So the first line was for Pushkin. This was not a liver drag, but 60 yards of blood line prepared with deer blood, with one left turn, and there was a deer hide at the end. The line was fresh, aged 30 minutes, but a strong breeze was blowing making for tough scenting conditions.

Pushkin showed good scent recognition, and was slow and accurate. He did not not need corrections or help. He made the turn (which was in the open field) very well, and was very aggressive towards the deer skin. John wrote in his notebook "Pushkin seems to have found himself". First five pictures show Pushkin in action.

Then we ran Paika (picture number 6) on the same line, as we often do with multiple pups and dogs. She was very eager but went too fast. She overshot turn by quite a bit and had to be called. She was very good on the skin.
In summary she was not as good on this line as Pushkin was. These two pups exemplify very well how difficult it is to evaluate puppies' potential for blood tracking.

1. First, not all dachshunds can be developed into the top notch blood tracking dogs, no matter how much training they get. Genetics matter! But genetics is very difficult to work with and control. I envy some breeders who sell all their pups as blood tracking prospects just because parents came from German hunting bloodlines. Not all dachshunds have it even though they come from a working stock. Usually we keep only 50% of imported dogs as suitable for breeding because the other 50% are not good enough. We know that not all pups we breed will have "it", and this is why we keep the pups until they are 10-12 weeks old.

2. Sometimes puppies are late bloomers, and sometimes the late bloomers will make superior tracking dogs. Sometimes early overachievers will get wilder and sloppy with age, so it is very, very hard... well, almost impossible to predict which puppy is going to be great as an adult. Yet, all puppy buyers would like to have a great tracking puppy (even when they are not going to put much training into it).

3. Puppies are inconsistent - one day they are brilliant, the other day they look pathetic. Pushkin and Paika are a good example. Paika was tracking when she was 6 weeks old, and now at 12 she certainly looked not as good as Pushkin.

4. Which pups we rate as "pets-only"? The ones who have no interest in the smell of deer blood even though we expose them to deer blood repeatedly. The ones who show no sustained focus, and get off a blood line frequently, and have no desire to get back to the line. The ones who are afraid of a deer hide even though they are encouraged to play with it. Oh, so many things can go wrong! Anyway, we will continue these observations and reflections in the next post.

By the way, the last picture shows Pushkin (left) and Paika (right).

A different kind of scent line for puppies...

It is about time to write more about what has been going on here for the last week or so. Having 12 dogs plus two litters of pups does not leave time for writing about them. The update is in order.

When we were in Germany ten years ago, we visited Manfred Siekmann who breeds wirehaired dachshunds for hunting under "von Rominten" kennel name. We spent probably a half day with him, and one of the things he showed us was his way of training pups and young dogs. Since pups usually like to lick blood off the grass, ground etc, he works them also on different kinds of scent lines. When we were there, he shot a pigeon and his daughter dragged the dead pigeon in the field. Then he worked his young dogs on the scent line.


Since our barn got invaded by pigeons, John shot two of them. We used them to lay scent lines for pups. This was done five days ago, when we had ten pups - five in each litter. The first five pics show Keena's pups, the other ones show the "G" litter". First we showed the dead pigeon to pups and we let them sniff it. Then we dragged the pigeon and then let the pups work the scent line. It was done in a group, off-leash. One pigeon per litter of pups. When pups followed the scent, found the dead pigeon, we let them go after it ...and we observed.

There were some surprises. It seems that Pushkin had a breakthrough and of the P-pups he was the most possessive of the pigeon. It is impossible to say whether the exercise with dragged pigeons really fired up Pushkin, but today we did some blood tracking with pups and Pushkin did really well. This was the first time he showed interest in following the deer blood (he is 12 weeks old), and he was very aggressive towards the deer hide at the end.



In the second group, there was no doubt that Gunther was the most possessive and he claimed the pigeon. No other pup was able to take it from him though they really tried.

Two puppies have left for blood tracking homes in Quebec

We spent a Saturday afternoon with Lincoln Anderson from Boucherville, Québec, Canada. Lincoln came here to pick up his puppy, which he will be training for blood tracking. Petrus is the pup that we selected for him, and you can see in the pictures the instant rapport the pup and the new owner have had :-)

While he was here Lincoln also picked up Gunner who is going to another tracking home in Québec. Guy Marcoux-Filion from Stoneham-et-Tewkesbury, Québec, is an experienced blood tracker, and we are thrilled that he will be using one of our dogs.



Lincoln and Guy - good luck with your puppies. Stay in touch!

Update on Ollie - "O" pups at 5 months

Today Joeri and Emma's puppies are five months old. We received this e-mail from Ollie's owner - Tom Swofford from Michigan.

Just a note and a couple of pictures. Ollie is growing fast. He loves to ride in the truck, and loves to go tracking. Some days he amazes me in the woods. On one occasion, I laid a blood trail and aged it about 2 hours. Ollie had no problem with it. Almost as soon as we were done, it started to rain. It rained all night and into the next day. When it stopped, I took him out for a walk, and thought I would take him over to the trail to see if he would do anything. I couldn't believe it, he went right down the trail to the spot I had a deer tail the day before. This was almost 20 hours later! And after all that rain. I don't know if he just remembered it, but he did have his nose to the ground.

Today, though, I don't think he could find his own food bowl. I guess that's how it works. Actually, this was the first track in a long time he had trouble with, so I can't really complain.

It took only five minutes for puppies to create this mess

If you like to have a clean house, never get a puppy or try to raise a litter. It took only five minutes for Keena's pups to get into newspapers and create this mess. Fortunately, the cleanup was quick and easy.

Remi on vacation

Matt and Peg wrote:

We continue to enjoy our new addition to the family. Remi in now fully house trained and hasn't had an accident in weeks. She enjoyed her first camping trip last week and loved all the new adventures, sights, and sounds. She even slept soundly in the vestibule of the tent with Freedom through a major thunder storm.

She spent much of her time roaming the sand bars and sleeping on Peg's lap in the canoe. She caught fish with the boys, and loved the water.


Remi and Freedom have become great friends. Yesterday, Freedom was chewing on a deer femur bone, and Remi went up and took it right out of her mouth, Freedom just watched her walk away to go bury it somewhere. Oh yes, that's another thing we're not used to seeing with our dogs. Remi loves to bury her favorite possessions.