Hi, I am Marcus de la Houssaye,
I operate a blood trail dog training facility in south Louisiana,
I usually work with several dogs at a time because dogs are social creatures just like us.
And as you can see below, I also work with a pack at times... and
It is so nice to see satisfied customers coming back for more and bringing me an opportunity to see where my breeding program is going...
Below is an 8 month old out of 2 dogs I sold a customer a few years ago.
Below is a son of Curlytail and Cutty Dark and demonstrates how breeding solid color dogs can produce amazing color and perfect balance to prevent too much white.
Below is Cutty Dark a grandson of 2 Diamonds Cutter, and the father to the puppy above
and here here is C Arrow Patch, the pups great grandfather on da moma's side.
Below is the mother to the pup above.
In the photo below, you can see how I engage puppies early on in the smells and activities of deer hunting... and yes that is a lot of blood for a tracking exercise, but I had just skinned and had a lot of bloody wash water to work with. So I would make trails and blood dumps along the way..
I then went and turned out a bunch of puppies who were not in the skinning shed and we walked around the yard and into the woods and visited these blood dumps, and blood trails, and find pieces of deer feet, bones and skin hidden in the bushes...
Accompanying us on training excersizes would be some of my veteran trackers as seen below
The point I want to make here is that training a dog to track blood is good in the off season because it allows the dog to go do things and be busy and run and play in the woods, just being a dog.
But the real training of a blood tracking dog comes during hunting season when there is blood on the ground and that is where the rubber meets the road because you will never in the off season create training exercizes that teaches your dog as much as a wounded deer will during deer season.
Now I know some people object to having a dog in the woods during hunting season because you think all breeds are like hound dogs that go for miles, but a good tracking dog should be short range and check back if you are working them off leash.
And Catahoulas are not hounds they are cur dogs which means they are like a bird dog, and relatively short range. Given time they learn to make sure you are on track.
to be continued...
