walk with wick is a good purchase and on coondawgs.com under the training forum has good information. in my opinion i like walkers have yet to run a deer but opposum and skunks a different story. break them the first time they run trash then 5 months old might be too young. take a cage coon water it down and let the pup out. if you know someone witha already trained dog go hunting with him. but a older dog does help out alot especially a slow one. if you do know someone with a trained dog bring that dog over and maybe your pup will get fired up. some dogs never get fired up on cage coons and work out treeing like a pro. but then let it go (coon) and hold on to the dogs until its out of sight and let the pup go first and see how it does. if it dont do nothing dont sweat it wait a month or two and try it again. dogs take patience i got one right now 18 months old and wont leave your side. thinking thats because some people told me to train obiedience and take walks in the woods when its a pup. wont do that again. not all dogs turn out we are at 6 pups and none turned out already and 2 more that are catching what to do. but blueticks another popular breed its tough sometimes to call them from strike to tree and redbones if you got a good one its worth alot of money and black and tans didnt hear much about them because no one really hunts them in my area. but good luck