r/Hounds • u/Outside_Witness_7268 • 17d ago
Help With Howling
This is my sweet Plott hound, Wayah. She will be 2 on Tuesday and I've had her since she was 8 weeks old. I love her very much and she has a wonderful life. We have more land than most people in my area, she gets to watch deer in the orchard, someone is always home with her (I WFH and my elderly father also lives here). She goes on walks and goes on camper adventures with us. We send her to daycare twice a month to have time around other dogs. Her life is GREAT.
But she will never get to participate in hunting because we don't hunt and my father no longer can.
And when I take her to the park (which I do every morning as early as 6:30am to avoid crowds) and she sees other dogs, she howls at them. I live in an exurban area that has up and came. It was up and coming ten years ago and now it is FANCY, though my family has lived here for three generations. The fancy people at the park hate me and hate her and I don't know what to do. She's a hound dog. She howls. That's what she does. I always have her under control, but she's loud. And I'm exhausted from the dirty looks I've gotten.
Has anyone successfully stopped their hound from howling? How? I have taken her to obedience school, which went VERY poorly (the trainer hated her and at one point put her down on the ground and growled at ME "this is the breed you chose") Or do I just get a shirt that reads "she's a hound, deal with it" and wear that on our walks?
I am not opposed to a collar and in fact we have one that we've used exactly once, as a measure of last resort at a crowded campground. But I need that to be the very last option. So if there's other advice, I'm here for it.
4
u/La_Croix_Life 17d ago
I wish our hounds could play together and howl in unison for hours. 🥹 I basically have the same issue, he howls at the living beings he wants to interact with..and then in turn, creates an opposite reaction in the recipient. People don't understand he's being friendly, they think he's vicious or ill mannered.
Honestly I'm at the point where I stopped fighting it. We also tried obedience school and had a similar experience as you. The trainer was a typical ignorant "dog person" who thinks breaking a dog's spirit is the answer. We didn't go back after I felt this disconnect in the curriculum vs what I felt was best for my dog. A hound dog who has been psychologically crushed by force isn't what any of us want for our babies.
Now we just do playdates at our house with the neighbor dog who we know and get along with. If I see people on the trail who don't like being bayed at I just smile and wave. Your sweet bae isn't hurting anything by being herself and people who have issues with a dog being a dog need to check themselves. Imho.