Treeing Walker Coonhounds are loving, intelligent, confident, and enjoy interacting with humans. They make a splendid companion dog for an owner who understands the characteristics of the breed and is willing to work with their in-bred nature as a hunting dog. On the scent, they are tireless, alert, and intense. At home; they are mellow, sensitive, lovers of comfort. They like having their own kennel or other space into which they can retreat at will; provided with pillows and blankets, as they love to nest. Owners have noted that “getting a Walker hound out of a bed, off a couch or away from a fireplace will be a feat in itself.”
Treeing Walker Coonhounds get along exceptionally well with other dogs and with children. Like most hounds, they are even-tempered and difficult to annoy or drive into aggression towards people or fellow dogs. With careful introduction, they will even live in happy harmony with the family cat, despite their nature as a small-game hunter. They are very energetic when young, and some people can be alarmed by their tendency to stand up on their hind legs to pursue their curiosity or to bark urgently out of a desire to meet a new dog.
The Treeing Walker Coonhound dog breed is highly intelligent, and consequently they require absolute consistency of training, as they look for loopholes to exploit. They may attempt to negotiate, responding to human direction by offering an alternative course of action they prefer. They are close observers of human behavior and learn to respond to subtle gestures and a large number of words, though not always in a manner that the human might desire or predict. Their intelligence is thus sometimes underestimated or misunderstood. Because they enjoy interacting with people, teaching them commands and tricks will help prevent the boredom that leads to bad behavior. They have been known to use objects as tools or to manipulate their environment to accomplish a task (e.g., moving furniture to climb over gates, using household objects to manipulate kennel mechanisms, etc.). They prefer complicated toys to simple chew-toys. They are most engaged by toys meant to be taken apart or stuffed with smaller toys, a toy that makes a variety of sounds, or toys with a hard-to-obtain treat inside.
Treeing Walker Coonhounds can be highly focused and idiosyncratically attracted to certain toys, locations, people, sounds, or objects. They will attempt to steal attractive items, and females in particular may maintain several caches of licit and illicit items. One recommended training regimen to encourage self-control is to repeatedly give and take back a toy to be held in their mouth, or to make them sit and wait for a treat or their food calmly until told to take it. Because of their nature as hunting dogs, they can become possessive of any human food they manage to steal, particularly raw meat, and rare outbursts of growling or aggression are often associated with the defense of their prize.
These hounds respond even more poorly than most dogs to being struck, and although grasping the scruff of the neck and firmly asserting control may be required at times, any physical punishment is likely to damage their instinctive trust and to cause personality disorders such as shyness or unpredictability.
Treeing Walker Coonhound – as a Hunting Dog:
The breed’s strong tracking instincts make them popular as hunting dogs. Carnivore researchers have used a single Walker and handler team to locate cougar-cached carcasses up to several months after the kill date. Hunting singly or in packs of two or more, they are used to track and tree raccoons, bobcats, cougars, and bears. Individual hounds may be adept at catching small rodents such as squirrels, roof rats, opossums, and skunks.
A typical hunt starts with getting the dog from the kennel. Since it has been in the pen all day, it is ready to run. Hunting is a hunting dog’s exercise. The hound is checked for good health, then put into the truck. The handler then goes to the area where they plan to run the hound, usually next to or within a woods or forest. When the hound is let out of the box, it runs off happy to be free to run and excited to find a raccoon to chase. When it smells a track, the hound may begin to vocalize sporadically with short sounds that develop into longer, more anxious bawls. As the track becomes hotter, the vocalization becomes a louder, more assertive baying.
The hound follows the track up to a tree, stands on its hind legs, rolls over a big whiny bawl as a “locate”, and begins a chop bark (a “woof, woof, woof”) bark. Meanwhile the handler is standing where he turned the dog loose, listening to all of the different barks, and understanding what the dog is doing and where the dog is going. Once the dog is “treed” with a solid chop the handler walks to the dog’s location, looks for the game, and rewards the dog as necessary. This is repeated throughout the night.
Some dogs track and do not tree. Other dogs tree and do not track. So, some handlers have one of each and hunt both at the same time. Other dogs do both and can be hunted by themselves. These types of dogs are hunted with other independent dogs, and handlers can also compete against one another, with objectives such as first dog to open bawl on track, first dog to tree, most raccoons found, etc.
Treeing Walker Coonhound Videos