Which warren has rabbits?

I am just starting off my young lurcher, but I’m confused at how to tell when or if she is marking a rabbit warren with rabbits in it?

When I got my first lurcher, I only had a few books and the locals in my area, but they really didn’t understand the intricacies of a ferreting dog as opposed to a lurcher. As such, a lot of my training was done on the hoof. I had to correct my mistakes. I got there in the end, but it took a lot longer than it should have.

Today, we are blessed with so much help, advice and education that sifting the good from the bad is the problem — not finding it in the first place. The problem now with getting advice is that, as everyone is different, we all want to train our dogs differently. The only way of knowing for sure if your dog is being honest in its marking is to either physically see rabbits running in beforehand, to ferret the warren and get a rabbit out, or track your ferret to a bottled-up rabbit underground.

This positive reinforcement will always breed more experience and, even with my older dogs, I still drop a ferret into warrens that they haven’t marked, just to make sure and check to see they aren’t missing anything.

What we must remember is that our animals aren’t robots and have off days due to shifts in hormones and injuries that we don’t always see or know about. These all add up to owners questioning them at times — it’s a human instinct to do so. You must trust your dog, though, and guide it through the early years of its ferreting apprenticeship. In reality, most dogs school us owners. SW