As I sit here in the mud and snow looking down the barrel of our annual April-August forced-pause from the activity and the lifestyle I am most passionate about, hound hunting, I am faced with a conundrum: what do I do now? How am I supposed to fill my time when all of my free time these last several months has been dedicated to hunting my hounds? I have considered several possibilities: developing a serious drinking problem, working on my opera singing (I'm a lovely soprano?), or try to get my body into some kind of shape that isn't “pear.” While all three are solid options, I think I will continue to put time and energy into my hounds and their physical and mental well-being, even though it will have to look very different than during our chase season. The following is a rundown of how I conduct off-season training.  

I break the off-season into three distinct phases. We have the first phase where the hounds start out “lean and mean” following eight months of hard hunting; I call this phase “Detraining”. The second phase is during the hot summer months when the hounds will be doing lighter duty, a sort of vacation if you will; I call this phase “Maintenance”. The third and final phase is when the nights start to get chilly and the hunting season is bearing down on us like a fast horse; this phase is the “Getting Ready” phase.   

Detraining 

After a long season, the hounds are in the best endurance shape they will be all season. They are ready for anything and able to go hard for hours upon hours, and days upon days. To toss them in the dog yard or kennel on April 1st (a cruel April Fool's joke that doesn't end April 2nd) and not activate them when they are fully fit and raring to go is a recipe for disaster. They will need to find an outlet for all that pent up energy, and if you don't provide them with one, well, I hope you have a good relationship with your vet and local hardware store because it's going to get expensive otherwise. Due to a personal injury, I was unable to activate my pack for several months in 2018. They destroyed their houses, kennels, equipment, and each other. It got messy and expensive. I have vowed to never let that happen again, even if that means asking a buddy for help.  
We unfortunately have strict leash laws here in Norway and no “training seasons”, so I am forced to find other methods of engaging them than slapping a Garmin around their necks and dumping the box. My favorite thing to do, which stems from my 25 years as a sled dog guy, is to put a harness on them and hitch them up to an ATV, truck, or bike, and let them pull. This kills several birds with one stone for me and the pack because I have full control of them the entire time and I am following the letter of the law with leash laws because I have nosey neighbors. During this phase, I can fully dictate how fast and how hard they run, which allows me to slowly decrease the intensity over the next month or so as we approach the hot and humid summer months. Last but not least, it allows me to assess how they are moving in a controlled setting. If they have soreness or injuries that I may have missed during the season, I will see them clearly when they are pulling in harnesses in front of an ATV. For those of you who can legally road your hounds, I would do that instead.  
 
Maintenance:  

Once we have decreased the intensity and taken a bit of the fire out of them during phase one, we enter the maintenance phase. Usually it gets too hot during the summer months to run them in harness. Here in the land of the midnight sun, it doesn't even necessarily get colder during the evenings so I am forced to think alternatively. At this point, the physical training is less important than making sure the hounds are not bored. I accomplish this by giving them as much mental stimulation as possible. A bored hound is a destructive hound. I have a big fenced-in area that I will let my hounds run and play in daily. I am always out there with them when they are loose in order to put the kibosh on bad behavior, but I find that allowing them to be social with the entire pack keeps the small personality issues from festering and becoming major problems. I will frequently toss handfuls of kibble into the tall grass to get their noses and brains working, and will throw tennis balls to get them jazzed and engaged. With younger dogs, I will make short drags with a chunk of fur or a foot and then allow them to play and pull for a while, just to keep some of the activities game specific. I don't think this is necessary with the older hounds because they know the drill. This phase is the least time consuming phase of the year, which allows me to spend time on other projects around the house and give my long-suffering wife the attention she deserves. This spring, she actually recognized me when I popped back up (with roses) after the season ended. There are multiple reasons this phase is called “maintenance”.  
 
Getting Ready:  

As the nights start getting longer and the air gets that nice autumn bite to it in the early mornings and late evenings, it is time to start gearing up again for the upcoming season. I want to take the hounds from “dad bod” to “movie star bod”. To accomplish that, I will bring out the harnesses and bike/ATV/truck and get them moving again. I will do the exact opposite of the first phase and slowly increase length and intensity until they are fit and ready to hit the ground hard when I dump the box on August 21st. I will start slow and short by running 2-3 miles at 12 mph. From there I will gradually work up to where they are doing 10-15 miles at 12-15 mph as we hit the hunting season. My goal is not to put speed on them or try and simulate the speeds they will hit while hunting, but to build muscle and strengthen their tendons and ligaments so that the hounds have a good foundation of strength on which to build their endurance as the season kicks into gear.  
This phase also allows me to assess each individual hound's physical well-being and status after the long break. If I have a hound that was injured last season or a bitch that has just finished raising puppies, I can evaluate that hound and make an educated decision about how ready they are for the upcoming season. Once the season starts, I may decide—based on observations during the “getting ready” phase—that I will plug that hound in later in a race rather than dump them with the rest of the box in the beginning. The same goes for young dogs and older dogs. Training/roading gives me all the information I need to make the right call for oldies and youngsters starting the season, because they may not be ready (for conflicting reasons) to make an entire race “truck to tree”. I also find this time of year to be a priceless time for doing game recon. The hounds will still react while running when we cut a track, and I will note where that happens frequently so that I will have a bunch of good options for where to drop the hounds once the season starts.  
 
When the season starts and the trials and tribulations of finding things to do to keep the hounds from destroying house and home during the off-season are forgotten, we hit the ground harder and healthier than my buddies that do not activate their hounds during the off-season. My hounds look like rugby players and his hounds look like an Olympic curling team. My hounds won't fall out of races due to fatigue, and rarely due to running related injuries. I find that I avoid physical injuries later in the season by having a pre-season training plan. All good hounds are tough and will run and push themselves despite fatigue and injury. Starting the season with fit and healthy hounds makes it less likely to have consequences down the road. My hounds eat his hounds for breakfast (figuratively, of course) and all because I did what I wanted to do anyway: invested time and energy into my hounds. That is time well spent.