Thanks guys. Yeah old Monkey is a pretty good dog. He doesn't walk on water but has found a pile of hogs for me.. in front of..and behind...other dogs. I mainly hunt him alone or with one young dog (the red dog baying with him in the above pic is one of his daughters). I no longer turn him out with other peoples dogs as if he thinks he has help, he will catch some hogs he shouldn't. Almost got him wrecked a few times by someone turning in a wanna be catch dog that rushed in like it was going to catch, didn't, but then Monkey did and got hurt. Lots of times it's just me and him in the woods.
I do have a couple young dogs that I need to have in the woods. Have a ringneck dog I call Crash that I have hopes for but he is going to be ROUGH! He might not have a real long life expectancy.......
But when you only hunt now and then, and it's take young dogs and maybe not catch anything, or take Monkey and stand a good chance of catching hogs....well...lets just say the young dogs don't get the hunting they should! At least not yet. I keep saying I am going to leave Monkey at home and hunt them, just hard to do!
crackerc, I know exactly what you mean about it being hard to leave your ace at home, it took me gettin my two best dogs wrecked in back to back weekends to finally step back and say "alright, time for these pups to start earnin their feed." I have been pretty pleased overall with how my youngins are doing (thankfully lol)
Best of luck in the future with ol monkey, like BA-IV said above, its obvious that your monkey dog is pretty special to be a 10yr old one dog show still in the woods!
