We are unabashed fans of “dog lingo,” and have found that every breed has words and phrases unique unto itself. Perhaps few can hold a candle, however, to the Coonhound world. There are too many to cover in one post, so we’ve parsed them out over time, and today we touch upon one of our personal favorites: “Slobbermouth treedog.”

Rather than explain it to you, the video below will illustrate the term. Oh, and turn your volume down,  the video may cause your own dogs to erupt:

As you can see, the dog in this clip was covered in slobber from all that enthusiastic barking and was fast up the tree at the end of the chase. Our sense from reading comments in various coonhound forums is that this is a good thing. One person wrote: “My best dog I have ever owned was the grandson of the first dog I ever owned…Now that pup was a natural, if we hunted with another dog or dogs that ran trash, he would have nothing to do with them, once the trash runners were out of earshot, he’d put the meat on the wood and stayed put. Alone he was a true straight lock down slobbermouth tree dog.”  

Admittedly, the entire sentence seemed to have been written in Coonhound code, but we assume that by “trash,” the writer was referring to prey that isn’t desirable to catch. “Meat on the wood,” is a bit trickier. To borrow a gearhead phrase, we’re guessing that it means that the dog put the “pedal to the metal” and was driven to catch its prey, but we’re open to correction.

We’ve yet to meet a coonhound owner of any breed who doesn’t appreciate their dog’s voice. We came across this comment that illustrates the point: “The blue dog has a super loud bawl mouth on track and tree, the black dog chops on track and has the prettiest ringing chop on the tree that you would ever want to hear. The black dog stands on the tree and blows the top right out of it, stay put slobber mouth tree dog. Nothing better than listening to the hounds sing in the dark.”

In all sincerity, the comment is poignant, if not poetic. It shrieks authenticity.

This site has several more images of “slobbermouth tree dogs,” along with colorful, if not humorous comments about slobber.

Image:”Coon Huntin the Backwoods” by Daniel Butler is available for purchase as lifestyle or home decor items, and of course, art prints here