The most critical skill for any scent hound puppy to develop in her early months of life is the ability to get a grip on herself. While her brain is still developing, and those little neural pathways are starting to carve out habitual responses to all of life’s exciting or stressful moments, you really want to help her learn how to regulate her emotions. This will not come easily to her, being the naturally impulsive, dramatic, and overly sensitive dog that she is. But you can do a great deal to help her out.

First, consider her basic attributes. Her nose and her feelings are built to get the better of her, to consume her attention completely despite all odds and distractions. That’s what scent hound breeders wanted in their dogs. But it will create some major challenges for her as a pet, and for you as her human companion, if her engine can’t be cooled in the heat of the moment. Whether it’s baying loudly at the cat on the back of the sofa, leaping at a passing dog on the leash, or running across four lanes of traffic after a squirrel, an emotionally unchained scent hound can be a bit of a train wreck. It’s not her intention to ignore you as you try desperately to calm her down or get her back, but it’s likely to be infuriating or even dangerous at some point in your journey together.

Your job is to work with the other side of the coin of her emotional nature by appealing to the sensitive, cooperative, and almost passive social nature she can have when she’s off the track. As she faces those first suspenseful moments in life, work with her to collect herself as she starts to ramp up. Build up her ability to manage her impulses and dampen the furnace under pressure. You can deliberately expose her to exciting smells, people, and places, and to other animals, when she is young, as her instincts are still relatively weak and habits not yet formed. Teach her that self-control and connection to you (like sitting and waiting for a moment before we go say hello to the neighbor’s dog) will pay off for her, and that going it alone at full throttle gets her nowhere.

Your scent hound is built like a freight train, building up momentum on the track. You can intervene before she’s at a breakneck speed. If you wait until she’s full-throttle, you might find yourself sweating it out for a bit. Stopping that train takes time, once it’s really moving.