I got a 3 month old female a few days ago. She aint got no papers, but looks and acts like one. I plan on training her to tree squirrels. She will be an indoor dog, which I believe compromises their hunting prowess, but her primary job is companion. Any tips for squirrel dog or general dog training would be appreciated.

First impression... she's a killer! She's fierce and relentless, I've never seen a little puppy be so confident. Won't be long before she is alpha over my 70lb dog. Once she's had her exercise, she is very affectionate. Stuck to me like velcro and eager to please.

I have a 3 year old hound/lab mutt that is obedient and good at scent tracking. I'm hoping he can help with training. He'll often correct behavior before I can get to it, and I've been having her watch him track. I've done a pretty good job training him, but that doesn't make me think I have nothing to learn about dogs.

I'm waiting until she has her parvo shots before taking her out to the woods, but I plan on getting her out as soon as possible. I have a couple squirrel tails that she has been playing with, and I plan on getting some squirrel carcasses for training. I've also been thinking about getting some haveaheart traps to give her live ones to chase. My plan is to hide the carcasses in trees then bring her along to find them. I did this with my other dog, and he always looses squirrels once they get up high. I'm not sure if that was caused by the training, or him not being the right breed. Any tips on how to train her to track them in the tree tops would be greatly appreciated. I'm currently thinking that's something she will have to teach herself. She should be able to train future squirrel dogs though.

I've never gun broken a dog with pointy ears before, which has me concerned. I've shot a pellet gun around her with no issues. She does get scared when I run loud equipment though. I think I'll stick with pellet guns and suppressed 22 (which is quieter than my pellet gun) for now.

Put her around as many squirrels as possible. Kill a few and play with her with them. Drag them up a tree just pull them out of reach. Take her to parks with lots of squirrels and accidentally drop the leash a time or two letting her tree them. When she does good and trees pet her up and talk her up making her understand that is what she’s supposed to do. As with anything the more time you spend with her the better she will be.

Turkey is spot on. I did the same thing with my feist and she took to the squirrels in no time. Then she became my little buddy that I didn't take out in the woods after squirrels much and now she just chases after them, barks a time or two as they go up the tree and then loses interest. My best dog I've ever had though.

Rocket got her first mouthful of squirrel today, and she's in love lol. I also let Banjo out to tease her with it. I'll get a few more and freeze them for use as training. Once they get too torn up, she will eat them raw.

I like the idea of taking her to a city park to chase them. Those squirrels are dumb and should be a good start.

I don't bother with anything other than obedience before six or even nine months. Read up on dog fear stages. After that do the 22 at feeding time bit. They turn on, on their own schedule. There's no point in rushing it. It'll happen faster, later.

If the feist has sufficient prey drive, it's gonna chase sq on the ground. It'll trail them, too. Playing with dead sq is just playing with a pup. Probably doesn't hurt unless you inadvertently train it to steal the sq and eat it. Don't ever discipline one if it does. Gotta wait until after it is a tree dog to fix your mistake there.

Treeing sq is a repetition thing. Show it live sq. You may be doing that a while. If it barks up, love on it like it won the lottery for you, tie the feist and knock the sq out and make a huge deal of acting happy over it. Heel the pup away from the tree and cast to hunt again. Repeat. Keep these sessions short. Always tie the feist to the tree, every time. Later you may want to tie it back so it can see the sq fall.

The treeing is the hard part. They have to learn that the thing on the ground and the thing up in the tree is the same. You're dealing with the brain power of a toddler at best; peep-eye, got your nose.

If you really want to do something additional to shorten the curve, build a sq tube. That's a cage that goes up a tree and betwixt the limbs. That will make the repetition of sq being on ground and then up the tree easier to replicate.

Trap some and turn them loose let her tree them. Just don’t leave them in trap long especially in hot weather. They stress easy and may not run if you know what I mean. We also use to tie a tail to a string and drag with stick all around and up side of tree for ours getting started. Like someone said they will tree if the drive is there. And don’t give up too soon on one to tree bark. We had one would tree good but didn’t start tree barking until almost 2 years old. She started barking one day and it was on after that. That may have been because we always hunted her with another very dominant dog not sure the experts might could chime in on that. I miss the heck out of it.

When you're starting a dog, you hunt it by itself. Being around more dominant members of the pack can limiit barking and that includes the handler. It can also be the pup just follows the trained dog to the sq and isn't really hunting and treeing. Maybe take it with an older dog to see whats up a couple times if you really feel like that's the thing, but you train them solo.

Alot of training is seeing problems before they happen and avoiding the problem and the consequence; i.e. don't ruin the pup. Be smarter than a dog.

IF you have one that shuts up when you get to the tree you really have to praise and love it up at any little squeak. That's another point on tree training. The first sq it trees on, it doesn't have to be a bark. Just a squeak is good enough to justify knocking the sq out. Carry a shotgun so you can be sure to get the sq down right when you want it. After each tree demand a little more next time. Don't ever shoot a sq the dog didn't tree on. It has to learn that barking is what gets fur in its mouth.

I killed several squirrels out to mine they weren’t treeing when I was training them. I wanted them to know what we were walking through the woods for when they were young. The one thing I didn’t do was shoot nests unless they were treed on them. That is a bad habit one will pick up on.

There's a lot of depends on the handler in all this talk. What I'm suggesting is what I have found will make a faultless sq dog fastest with fewest culls.

City park on a long lead ain't a bad idea when old enough. The pup catching a live one at a young age may result in a sq hanging off its face and future avoidance of said terror.

howl - what does tying the dog off to the tree do exactly? You're talking about tie them off once they tree the squirrel, then shoot the squirrel and keep them tied off? Then praise them up and untie them?

It conditions them go stay on the tree. It tells them they were right in which tree they picked. I don't release until after I heel them off from the tree a ways. Then I don't let them go back to the tree. If you're not going to comp hunt you can relax on it if you want AFTER you have the dog finished.

A pleasure dog you can eventually do all of it by voice. Real handy when you don't want to cross a creek or ditch. Couple weeks ago a sq layed pretty until I finally threaded a bullets to its head about 70 yards out. Took about six tries. I didn't want to cross the high bank creek. Buck obliged and brought me the sq, too.

Thanks for the tips guys.

A big part of my training with squirrel carcasses is teaching her not to run off with it. I take it from her often, and then praise her when she gives it up. Doing this in a fenced in yard is much easier than in the woods. She still has a way to go, but this worked well on Banjo.

I plan on taking her out to the woods with Banjo initially. He's good about not running off too far and coming to me when called. He should help Rocket figure that stuff out.

Rocket will be doing early squirrel training alone. Banjo searches for them on command, but can't find them when they are more the 10ft up a tree. I'm pretty sure it's because he is all nose. I don't want Rocket learning bad habits from him. I was planning on shooting squirrels she doesn't tree to get her fired up about squirrels, but I've read other things online similar to what Howl said. She won't be ready for that until next season, so I have time to think about it.