By John Jeanneney
We use deer liver drags in our early puppy work, and we call it “early conditioning” rather than serious training. The scent lines produced by the fresh liver drags are easy for the puppies to follow and the puppies develop an enthusiasm to use their noses to find something good to chew on.
In early work on
fresh, easy lines we prefer the liver drag to a fresh blood line. The liver
leaves good scent but there is no fresh blood on the grass for the puppies to
stop and lick instead of moving ahead. The pups also learn to identify the deer
liver scent on the ground with the good chew on that same liver that we have
left at the end of the line.
Deer livers are easy
to collect during the hunting season. Most hunters seem ready to leave the liver
for the coyotes, so I scoop it up, along with the heart, and carry it all home
in a gallon Ziploc bag. I collect the blood at the same time for more advanced
work.
There is some good
scientific research to support this sort of early conditioning. When very young
mammals, from human babies to baby mice, are stimulated in a certain
way, the brain circuitry responding to that stimulation grows denser and more
efficient. It’s possible, in theory at least, to improve future brain function
beyond the level of simple genetic inheritance. This seems to work for
us!
To see what our puppies have been up to go to our puppy journal at http://borntotrackpuppies.blogspot.com/
The sooner a pup learns its intended quarry, the better, in my experience. I wean my pups on rabbit and they become intense whenever they smell rabbit. It all goes together...a full belly and a nose full of scent.
ReplyDeleteI told my puppy buyers to start to drag roe leg short trials to practice.
ReplyDeleteAs we use our as hunting dogs its also good to look up fresh tracks of roes. They are already interested and give barks to it