The American Beagler Forum

Just got a pup (6 months old) and am curious as to what obiedience commands you all teach your hounds? What methods have you found that work the best?

Happy turkey day !!

Brian

tally ho for come here
down to catch
and my fav. her it is for the dead bunnie

The first I work on is "come"- which means the dog comes to me.
The second is "down"- which means all 4 feet should be planted.
The next one I train is "walk" - which means walk 4-6 feet behind me until I give a different command.


You can get by without teaching the 3rd one but if you don't teach the other 2 hunting is just no fun with a dog that can't do them.

I use "come onnn" to come
"lay down" or "down" to lay or stop and lay
"here he is" in an excited tone, to show where a hare is that I seen or come directly to me.
"where is he" in an excited tone, to get them to look near me
No! this works for everything they need to learn not to do and is the first thing I teach
"get 'em up" to work the general area we are hunting.
When I use "here he is" or "where is he" I also point in the direction I want them to look or go and I find that the hound learns very fast to look for hand signals, it's impressive even at a very long distance when they look at me I can tell them which way I want them to work.
I also hold my hand flat, fingers up to stop them from going by me without saying anything.
I plan on adding more hand signal use in the future, dogs look at each other for tail position etc. to know how to react to each other and it's easy to teach them to look for them.
If you use the "here he is" or "where is he" do it only when you actually see a rabbit and can show then the scent area, if you do this just to get them to come to you and there is really no rabbit they will not trust you much at all and you may lose this call.
I will use it to catch them under severe conditions at time and they all come running to me.
Have fun, use the calls and signals as much as possible and you will have a great handling hound.

Here , come on or let's go followed by thier name when I want them back to me or
when I want them to follow me out of the woods . I rarely ever take a lead into the
woods with me .

Down or get down , when I don't want them to jump on me or jump at the feed bucket .

Pat the tailgate , when I want them to load up .

It's not a voice command but I like them to know to meet me at the truck to load when I
release them from thier kennels ( they pick this up very quickly).


I wish my children minded as well as my dogs most of the time
I never knew beagles could be so friendly and intelligent until I started
raising/training my own .


.

Thanks for the responses!
Anybody else with any suggestions?

Brian

My male Sport was trained on Tally Ho. First dog i ever seen that would come runing at full speed if used. I never ever used it unless it was for a hot rabbit track. I never wanted to break his trust with me when i used the hot word.

Here and Down are the two I teach first. If this is all they learn then I can work with that. I teach these commands at a very early age (8 to 12 weeks) but it is never to late to teach a young hound. These commands will help you to maintain control of you hounds in the field. Check out my site (pawpawskennels) for more details on how I train pups. http://www.geocities.com/pawpawskennels ... arted.html

When hunting I do a lot of "Dog Talking" chipping and yeeping to direct my hounds through the woods. They learn my voice and will normally alow me to decide the direction of the hunt. If I see or kick ou a bunny that they are not on, I alert then with "Here He Is, Here He Is".