Bear Grease - Ep. 322: This Country Life Bonus - Talking Dogs with Tony Peterson

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Brent’s joined by his colleague Tony Peterson, host of MeatEater’s “Houndations” podcast, for an informative discussion on the overlap of hounds and upland dogs. They exchange tips on what to look for when picking out puppies and working with older dogs. They also share the criteria for judging a dog's ability to learn and how to gauge and assess progression. For two completely different types of hunting dogs and the environments they work in, the similarities are very interesting. Dog Week is brought to you by Scheels Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eat Eater's Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts that Airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. This dog week's special episode is brought to you by shields.

Head to your local shields for all your sporting dog needs. Tony. Tony Peterson, welcome to this country life. Thanks for having me on, buddy. Man, this is the new project we got going. Something's been a lot of fun, something that you and I both do when we're not on camera or we're not being recorded all the time.

We're talking about dogs. You got the Foundations project going? How's that going, man? It is so much fun because I get to learn a lot about dogs and I'm really enjoying it. Well, this is kind of different for this country life, the listeners out there.

We're going to do some video stuff here and Tony and I are going to be talking about something that's very near and dear to me and that is the overlap of hounds and retrieving dogs, upland birds and coon dogs like we hunt down south. And there's a lot of overlap there. And when you and I got to talk in them, about this stuff earlier.

We were in Bozeman, however many months ago it was, this came up. There's a lot of overlap. Right. Tell me, I mean, what is your views? What is your thoughts on the overlap? And how common is it really? You know, way more common than people would think. Yeah.

And, you know, I'm kind of a retriever guy at heart. I love all dogs, but I like retrievers. And so I kind of look through that lens. But when you start to spend time with people who are running dogs, like we've been coon hunting, and that is a world that, you know, if you looked at what my dogs do in the pheasant field, and then you looked at what your hounds are doing in the woods at night to go tree a coon, on paper people would be like, that's not the same thing at all.

But when you boil dogs down, you kind of distill it down, the foundational level of their performance, you know, out in the field with whatever we're asking them and then at home, or on the way to the field or on the way to the soccer game or whatever, they're just dogs. And so their job is different. You know, their temperament might be a little bit different. You know, their work ethic, discipline, drive, whatever.

However you want to look at that, but generally they're not that much different. And most of what makes a good dog is sort of ubiquitous across all dogs. And that's what I love about it is like, you know, if you want a dog that's really awesome at whatever pursuit hunting ducks or whatever, you've got that upper level stuff that you've got to train them

because that's job specific, but dog specific stuff, like good dogs, they're just good dogs. And you kind of get them there the same way. And it starts, it all starts with their puppies. Once,

you know, with, I've trained a few labs way back in the day, back when my brother and I were running a guide service. So it's been, I've been out of that game for a long time. But I do know this. The foundations of what,

no pun intended, of what you're working with starts early way before you ever hit the woods the first time. I know with like with whalen, that dog, that's my coon dog. I've had he see he'll be six years old this year in August. I got him when he was six months old. And I looked for six months before I found a dog that I ever went and looked at. Phone calls, text messages, searching the internet, talking to making phone. calls to people that man i got a friend of a friend here's his number call him and it just

nothing ever triggered the my desire to get up and go look at a dog until until that one and it was a video that i saw on facebook marketplace of all things and i've got this dog that i've had out there now that i for the last five and a half years that i wouldn't trade for anything what did you see on that video it was i talked i saw people have sent me pictures people sent me pictures people me videos of dog with it. It was something about this one and he was barking at a coon in a cage. A chihuahua will do that. Any kind of dog will bark at a coon in a cage. That doesn't do anything other than it let me hear what the dog sounded like as a young pup. But there was something about it that triggered, you know, I'm going to go look at him. And when I went and looked at him,

it was, dogs have personalities just like people. He was real susceptible to talking to it to looking at me when I was talking to him. And I put a lot of stock in that to a dog that will look. If a dog is looking at you when you're talking to him, he's trying to figure out what is that you want him to do. Have you found that to be the same with Upland dogs? Big time. Eye contact is huge.

You know, and I'm running dogs that are working close. You know what I mean, you're running dogs. So when you train them, when you live with them, that dog's looking you in the eyes. Then it's going off to do its job.

But that is like a fundamental component of your relationship with them. And so I actually encourage that with as soon as I get a puppy, I'm working on that dog. You look me in the eyes because we're going to solve problems together our entire life. And I want you to know, because everything that I'm going to train is going to have a verbal command and a hand signal with it. Because I don't like to make noise when I'm out there hunting if I don't have to. So I like a hand signal for everything. Plus if they get out and it's windy and they're not going to be able to hear me, they'll be able to see, you know, I can make this exaggerated hand signal. But I'm always working when those pups are young to make sure that they look me in the eyes and they know that I'm a source of direction and they can trust that.

Because I want that throughout our entire relationship because it's so important. And then you see that. You know, you know this. When that dog hits a snag somehow when you're training something and it's like can't get through this drill for whatever reason you introduce something new. If you have a dog that's like, I'm going to look at you boss. You help me out here. It's like you're having a communication with that dog. Like you're talking to them in a way that's way more important than you'd think.

Trust is key. Trust is the first thing that if that dog trusts that you're going to take care of him, that you're going to look after him and anything that new comes up. You know, it is my belief forever that a dog's inherent desire is to please the person that feeds him, the person that takes care of him, the alpha in that relationship. and I have always thought that if that dog's inherent desires to do what I want him to do, if he's not doing what I want him to do, I have failed in explaining to him how it is.

And I think you go at that. People go too fast. I get calls and I get a lot of text messages and emails and social media messages like, I've got this five-month-old dog. I've got this six-month-old dog or eight-month-old dog. how do I get him tree and coons like whaling is? And man, you're talking. That's like getting a toddler to ride a Harley.

You got to go slow. And patience has always been the key for me to get out of a dog, what I want to get out of it. And the patients may be me figuring out how I've got to communicate with him to tell him exactly what it is I want him to do. You find that to be? Absolutely. And something you said there, I think, is just, it's so important is when you're developing a dog, we're so impatient.

You know, and it's like, if you have somebody who's like, why can't my six-month-old do what your six-year-old can do, that's just insane. It's like when you talk about your hound dogs and getting to watch them work coons, I feel the same way when I watch my dogs work a pheasant slew or something where it's like they have a certain amount of. reps they have to get in out there doing that before they can be, you can't get there any other way. You can't, you can train a dog really well. But if that dog, if your hound dog doesn't have exposure to raccoons that know how to get away from them and know how to play the game and swim across the river and do all kinds of stuff, they're never going to be well-rounded. Just like if I don't get bird contacts with my dogs, all the training's great.

I might have a dog at home that's amazing and really well-socialized and handles itself. However. Right. But it will never be that just banging hunting dog unless it gets those reps. I look at that like, you know, if Tiger Woods came up to me and he showed me how to swing a golf club, that would be great instruction, right? Right. But it wouldn't change a whole lot until I swung that golf club 50 million times, you know, under pressure, you know, in the backyard, on the simulator, whatever. Well, you end, they could do it the correct way.

Right. You know, because I always say, you know, practice makes perfect. but that's not correct perfect practice right perfect right and we we look at our dogs this is this is the hard part so you know people people ask me about my dogs you know like they'll ask you about your dogs and I always tell people I I give my dogs like two hard years of training and I'm not talking like I work them to death like I want my dogs to love me and work for me like you were talking about before like I don't I don't want a dog to work out of fear I want it to work out of love right but I

still look at it and I go we're doing two years of training every day i'm home and it might be multiple lessons a day they might only be a couple minutes right but it's just that repetitive nature and it's like once you start getting into like two three years old and they those those false positives go away and they know what you're asking of them that's when you start to move into like now i'm going to get you as many reps on woodcock and on ducks and on grouse and on pheasants and everything that we can in a variety of different environments. So when that dog slides into that middle age prime years, I can train to kind of keep things sharp, but that dog knows what it's supposed to do at home and in the field. And we look at

that and go, you know, if I tell you that or I tell somebody that's like, well, yeah, two years, no big deal. It's like, okay, now go do that for two years because that's what it takes. It's, it's kind of a disciplined thing on our part. But if you do that, then you have, you know, seven, eight, nine, ten years of a prime dog before they really start to age out, you know, at least seven or eight years. Yeah. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

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Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Routine is, you know, if trust is first, routine has got to be coming in there close somewhere second. A dog that is,

if you feed him at the same times every day, If you work him out at the same times every day, at the same level, doing the same things, you know, a good lesson for a young dog for me is going out. When I go out, is him coming to me obviously when I call him. And I'll do that at the beginning with feed. I'm calling her name, his name, whatever, at feeding time. And I'm letting them eat when they get there. So they're associating me calling to them with something good, which is food.

And I'm doing that every day. And then once I get that down, I'm going to add another little step into it. You know, I'm going to call them from across the yard. Or I'm going to feed them on the tailgate of the truck and get them to go into the kennel or whatever. And it's just stacking those lessons up, those routine things you do every day over a long period of time that is what it's going to build. You're building off that foundation, that trust foundation. And you're praising the dog when they're doing right, you know, and the praise may just be, be a simple pat on the head, you know, or rubbing on the ribs or whatever. But you stack all those

up on top of each other, and eventually you've got a dog that you can call to you. You can load him up and you can go to the woods and that's when, or the fields, and that's when you start applying the other stuff. So once you get that stuff going and he knows he's doing it right, he knows what, or she knows what's expected of them. And when they're doing good, everything's going right. You only do it once. You don't have any repeats. No do over. and then you start adding the extra stuff in there. Right. And that's an overlap, obviously, between any kind of dog or whatever, whatever you're hunting.

Right. You're talking about fair expectations. So not pushing that dog too fast or not introducing something that's just, you know, like that puppy example earlier or the six-month-old dog earlier, one of the things that people screw up in that stage all the time is they're like, my dog in the backyard can do this first try trick every time, right? Like if I ask him to do this, you know, heal a small. perfect or whatever. And then the minute I try it when we're at the soccer game and there's people

all over, there's somebody else walking a dog across there, some kind of distraction. Now the dog can't do that. It's like, yeah, that's not a fair ask yet. You haven't trained that dog to do that around distractions. And so like fair expectations and then that consistency you talked about. Like, man, if you look at any dog, I'm talking hunting dogs, house dogs, whatever, and there's a hole in their behavior game almost always it's because it wasn't consistently enforced. Absolutely. And you see this all the time. You know, like a lot of times it happens.

The man will be, you know, of the household will train the dog or sometimes it's the woman or sometimes it's like the teenager's dog or whatever. Whoever's kind of leading that dog and kind of has ownership over it, whoever else has some level of control at some point of that dog. If they don't stick to that, whatever the standard is for that dog, that dog is going to default to the easier way to do it. And you see this in the family dynamics a lot. And to be fair, we do this a lot, right?

I think that if you looked at how dogs used to get trained before we had cell phones and a constant distraction, I'm certain that we just as like a, in society right now, are less consistent just because of that because you take that dog out and you're working those bumpers or whatever and we have a constant distraction. Those dogs are paying attention to that stuff. Sure. And the minute that you slide a little bit, you're asking them to do sort of an unnatural thing,

right, listen to something else, you know? And the minute that you slip a little bit on that and you're not consistent with it, that dog's going to go to the, it's going to default to easy mode, whatever level that is that you'll tolerate. And that's just, I know that sounds like militant,

like I'm a dictator, but it's not. It's just like, it's like fair to do for the dog. So if you're like, I want this behavior out of you, I'm going to hold. myself accountable for like i'm gonna i'm gonna keep you honest with that if i don't do that for myself and you slip that's not on you the dog that's on me as the trainer yeah and we see that i mean that is like

that happens with dogs all the time well i think a lot a lot of it comes to if you've got the bloodlines and you've got the dog for whatever game that you're after they're gonna have instilled in them the DNA or genetic code to retrieve or point or tree, all of that, if you can start with that, you know, I'm not trying to make a poodle into a coon dog. I'm going with something that's, that is bred for that over the last 150 years. So I've more or less got to show them what I don't want them to do. You know, I don't want him to chase a deer. I don't want him to tree a possum. I don't want him to go to another dog. I want an independent dog, you know, and I want to, I'm going to show him,

or more or less give him the opportunity to do the right things and then correct what I don't want him to do. And absolutely with my dog Whalen, when I started, he's treated his first one when he was nine months old. And it was because I just kept giving him opportunities after opportunity to go out. sometimes our hunting trips Tony wouldn't be it would take me longer to drive I would drive 40 minutes to a place and I'd turn him loose and he did everything right but he walked out there and he just he didn't know what he was doing he didn't hadn't figured out he hadn't crossed the path of that coonsent yet to figure out that was what was interesting to him but he may have bumped on a deer and I sent him a message through a caller you know a distraction a little stimulus And he's like, okay, I didn't like that. That wasn't enjoyable. It wasn't painful. It broke his concentration.

He put his nose back on the ground to go look for something else. And when he chased that and it went to fruition and I get to the tree and there's a cocoon up there, he's getting all the praise. And he's like, holy cow, where did this come from? This is good. This is great stimulus. I want to keep doing this. And eventually, I mean, it doesn't take them long. They're going to put that puzzle together.

and know that when they leave the house and he's got that collar over and we're traveling it's getting dark outside oh yeah i know what i'm supposed to do i mean what you're talking about there that's you know especially to the sporting dog crowd or the hunting dog crowd that's we kind of laser focus on like what's the mission okay i love to pheasant so i get a dog that should kick up pheasants and bring them back to me when i shoot them right but when you talk about that coon dog like you go you go get a specific kind of dog for this specific task. But when you're taking them out there and when you're training, there's a million different variables coming into play that are going to affect your time out there. So in your head, before you get that puppy, you're like, I'm going to, I'm going to tree a billion coons with this

dog and it's going to be amazing. But really, when you get out there, it is that deer that jumps and the fence and the dog getting out there too close to the highway and all of these other things that you're like, oh, this is, that dog wants to tree coons. I just need to facilitate that and get him the reps. That's going to come because it's in the blood. Just like my dogs, my dogs from the jump love pheasant wings and duck wings. And like they're, they want to go out and do that all the time. What I got to worry about is if we run into a porcupine up in the big woods, can I recall that dog? If that dog takes off after a rabbit out there, you know, jack rabbit when are out somewhere hunting, can I call that dog back?

Like all of this extra stuff that we sort of forget about is probably equally as important as like that. that mission-specific training where, like, I want you to be a dog that can, you know, be steady in the duct blind, take a perfect line, follow the hand signals, all that stuff is super important, but all the other stuff of like, okay, that duck got so far out and it's diving and now we're in two-foot rollers and it's 35 degrees out, you've got to come back or whatever. Like, all of that extra stuff is just as important and we sort of forget it, but man, it's just a part of the whole thing. Yeah, it is.

And it's a journey. It's a journey for, it's been a journey for me. I mean, a lifelong hound hunter from when I was just a little kid, but it has been a journey with me of this dog and watching the progression. I get the most enjoyment out of watching the light bulb go off over their head when they figure out what their purpose in life is. Along with being a member of our family, it is just an added bonus that he's a good hunting dog or flushing dog or pointing dog,

either way. It's a dual-purpose thing that fills a big hole in everybody's life. But it's hard. It's not easy. It takes time. It doesn't take a lot of time, but it takes a commitment every day. Every day. There's no facet of having hunting dogs that I don't enjoy.

I enjoy getting up and going and feeding them in the morning. I enjoy doing everything with them, spending time with them. It is, but it's a commitment, you know. And I see, you know, dogs for sale all the time. You know, I got him, he's a year old, and I hadn't had a chance to hunt him. Right. You know, but it's somebody that wants, that likes to hunt, but maybe their job too much of a commitment that they can't spend the time necessary to train a dog.

My advice is always, look, there's started dogs everywhere. There's people that make a living, getting dogs started and going to. in that direction. And I know there's upland dogs like that too. Oh, for sure. Because, you know, if that's not interest you, if you're impatient, if you've got any impatience whatsoever, the way to go is not with a puppy. Because not every puppy is going to make it.

Right. You know, I got my friend Michael Roseman that I hunt with all the time. He calls me the luckiest guy that ever lived. Because when I brought that dog home, when I brought Waylon home, my wife, Alexis and my daughter Bailey, they were like, oh, he's here to stay. And I'm like, Jesus, please let this dog tree a coon. Otherwise, I'm just going to be feeding him. Turns out he turned into a pretty good coon dog.

My advice would be to keep your dog pin a long ways from the house so the wife and kids can't see him. But people that are not committed to that are don't get lucky like I did. then you've got a dog that you've got to, you know, you've got to sell somebody else because, you know, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Somebody else can do something with that dog. But my advice is always be, and I'm sure yours would be too, to look after a dog that's been started somewhere. It may be a little bigger investment, but it may be a little cheaper in the long run. Right. Well, and I mean, you know, if you want a dog where the odds are pretty good, it's going to do what you want, that's all about the bloodline.

Yeah. You know, I mean, you really have to pay attention. to that because, you know, I'm pretty good buddies with Tom Doc and the dog trainer. And he's, I remember when I went through two dogs ago, I can't remember exactly how it came up, but he was looking for a pup for me. And we were going to go look at a litter. And I had two year and a half old daughters at home and my wife. And he said, listen, don't go look at a litter till I find the litter that you need to look at.

Okay. Because he's like, if you go look at a litter. litter of lab puppies, you're getting a lab puppy. And he's like, it might not be the dog you need. And you see that a lot. You know, people get a little impulsive about it. You talked about taking six months to find Wayland. I go through a pretty good process to get my puppies because I don't want, you know, when that dog comes into my house with my kids and everything like, that dog's, that's my dog. That's whatever I'm going to work with. And so it's, it is an important part of it. But it's also just, you just want to start working with, you know, what you need to get the most out of that

dog and you know you said something you talked a little bit about like how you you love the aspect of every aspect of owning your coon dogs and i think that that's like i think that's an important thing to acknowledge we look at him and go i want this dog because i love dogs i want this dog because i want to kill a limit of roosters every day from october to december or whatever but it's like you have that dog 365 days a year and that dog needs you to do what it wants to do right like it wants work. It wants to like learn. It wants to do those things. And if you embrace that part of it, that year round thing is like that's that's like the best part. You know, the hunting is awesome, right? But just watching a dog develop and figuring out how to work with it and doing some,

you know, doing some drills or something that you're like, I never thought a dog could do this. Or I never thought I would be able to train a dog up to this level. That long game stuff with it is what makes it so special. That's, that's when you get those dogs that are you like, yeah, you want to brag to your buddies that they always treat the coon or they always. always get to limit of roosters, but really it's for you and for that dog to have that life together that's just, it's just at a different level. It is for sure. And it's so rewarding.

It's such a pleasure. I get, I promise you, I get more out of watching that dog hunt and treat coons than probably he does. And he acts like he really likes it. He seems to like it. Yeah, he does for sure. Tony, I appreciate you being here, man. this is this is something new that media started we're going to have some other stuff on your feed and i'm looking forward to seeing where this goes and come back maybe now that you've been out here

koon that i can come up there and we can do something up north yeah you should come up you might fall through the ice but it'll be it won't be that deep buddy okay i'll go i appreciate it all right thanks brother okay last spring clay newcomb and i collaborated with jason phelps at phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for.

I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.