EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

I keep hearing about dogs dying and real bad cuts and pokes. My cd got it bad here lately too. I'm just wondering why some of you don't run a vest on your dogs. I understand it can hender the dogs performance, but wouldn't that be better than a dead or cut up dog? Sooner or later even a loose bay dog will be gutted and extremely expensive surgery will be the only option. Wouldn't a good vest be the most logical thing to fix a lot of the problems? Sure a dog can still get cut or killed and maybe a pig or two get away, but I always have more piece of mind going to a long bay. My dogs are like part of the family! You wouldn't throw your daughter out there to fight pigs without a vest would you? I hate dealing with cut dogs. It's time consuming and costly, so why not prevent it as much as possible. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks like this. Just a thought. Good luck.

Piglywigly,

    I would say different strokes for different folks...

My bay dogs wear tracking collars and name plate collars.  No cut collars and certainly no bay vests. I may be doing it all wrong, but I have only had one baydog require stapling on hundreds of hogs. Now the next hog might get every one of my dogs, but that is a gamble I am willing to take.

    I would like to add that I don't wear a helmet while riding a bike, or playing on four wheelers.  I don't wear my seat belt when operating my tractor, and I don't wear a life preserver when I am floating down the river.   ;D

in edit,   My bay dogs don't fight pigs, they bay them. My catch dogs that do get up close and personal wear vests.

I agree that every catch dog should have a vest, but as far as the baydogs mine only have a cut collar. I havent found one that is made right for a bay dog in my opinon. Its to hot during the summer, Not flexiable enough, etc. 

my pits wear vests and i usually always run 2 pits on a hog 2 help prevent 1 from gettin hurt  but none of my bay dogs wear anything other than a regular collar   ive had 1 bay dog get cut  but didnt stop him from huntin  so i guess its different 4 every1   i dont see why ppl run 1 catch dog  i used 2 until my bro in laws dog almost got killed  now  never less than 2

This conversation came up the other day.  Dez with horsegate and i got to talking.  For us in South Texas we run very rough curs.  Our bay dogs get cut up just as much or more then our catch dogs.  For now we are running all the protection we can on the good strike dogs and help dogs, and of course all catch dogs.  yes during the summer it makes it much harder but we do basicly only hunt at night in the cooler hours.  We need our stike dogs to be able to put teeth on a pig quickly, and be able to hold it by thereselves for a bit, so with that said we in a perfect world would have some sort of vest on all of our dogs.  Last weekend however is a perfect example that you can have everything you want on a dog and it not matter.  We had a vest and a cut collar on one of the good cur dogs, and he didn't make it out.  As Dez said they don't run as rough dogs as we do, so they don't put vest on there strike dogs.  if you have a need to have rough cur dogs then i guess there is a need to protect more, and if you don't have a need for rough curs then i guess protection is not the most important thing you worry about.   i say our dogs, but for now they are my buddies being mine are just pups, but he still does everything he can to protect them.   

I agree with you boarwild. In summer months it's complicated. I guess some folks have different ways of hunting.

Circle C, you should really look into wearing your seatbelt while driving your car! :angel:

Well, it's a big gamble for sure! I have a few strike dogs I can't replace. They're pretty loose too. They will 90% of the time be in a vest.

Good luck to you guys who take the gamble. Vet bills are tough.

There's nothing more that I hate, than to get to the bay and 2 or 3 dogs are cut bad. Screws up the entire hunt for us. Sooner or later a dog is gonna get cut bad. When it happens, I think most will agree, they wish they could go back and put a vest on that dog or dogs. I know a guy recently who just spent 8 grand on vet bills. He could have bought 2 6 dog tracking systems and shock collars to go with them. Ask him now if he would of vested those dogs before the hunt started.

Pigly,
   I never said anything about a car...I did mention my tractor ;)

Yeah, I was trying to cheat! You caught me. :P

Good luck with your dogs.

A dog that can't move and perform will get cut up. A bay vest won't stop a dog from getting gutted. A bay dog in a full catch vest is a disaster waiting to happen... can't move, heat stroke, getting hung up, drowning, etc...


My bay dogs only hit the ground with tracking collars on... i'll continue to "gamble". ;)

I run a 3 layer vest with 4 layers up front. It's Kevlar sandwiched between cordur, which is briar and water resistant. Also, it has a polyfelt chest plate. The dogs move and swim well with them. They rarely get caught up. These vest have never been cut through. I surely don't see a dog getting gutted anytime soon. Nothing seems to be pig proof though. I only hunt at night in the summer and those are usually the cooler nights after a good rain. Heat is never really an issue. Not saying it couldn't happen though.

how far back on the dogs does your vest go? I dont see a bay vest protecting them from getting gutted. Most vest only go about halfway down the back of the dog, with alot of area left open.  The way i see it, when a hog charges a dog, most dogs are going to turn and run alittle ways back, or jump to the side to avoid the hog, and thats when they are most vulnerable to get gutted. Therefore, the vest doesnt serve much of a purpose of protection, and may just be a hazard for the dog to move away, especially in the thick stuff the hogs love to go to. JMO

I think it's part of the game jmo. If u catching hogs ur dogs will get cut no matter what u do.

All i run on my bay dogs is a tracking collar my cd is fully protected. I lost one of my cd's last
year that had a vest and cut collar. The hog stuck him behind the vest and gutted him the vet
worked on him for 8 hours and i still lost him so now i look at it as its (part of the game).

I run a longer bay vest. Doesn't mean the pig can't hit an artery in the front or back leg. However, when the catch dog catches or misses, and the bay dogs rush in, they are waaay more protected. I've seen hogs run in some thick brush and turn around and wait on dogs to come in. Reguardless, they can't move and I would much rather have a vest deflecting blows to the front and sides of my dogs than to have no protection. Jmo...

hopefully i don't make anyone mad with this response, but this conversation is like trying to beat a dead hog with a stick.  Personal preference, way of hunting, weather and your dog in my opinion are what decide rather you run a vest or not.  We run vest on most of our dogs and don't lose very many dogs.  Two dogs in the past two years with some high pig numbers, and one of those dogs was accidently ran over on a main road.  its going to happen and i don't care what you do to protect a dog.  This is JMO though.  

Well put!

x2 like joe said, its all part of the game.

We used to run vest on the bay dogs until one got hung up in a creek and drown.  All bay vest are hanging in storage now.

Lockedon u should sell me them bay vest if u aint goin to use them, lol

I think it boils down to what style of dog your running.
I own a gritty cur. I run a bay vest with a cut collar and he still gets his fair share of tusk.

My dogs run a tracking collar and a nameplate collar.

i to live and hunt in south texas and i know what you mean about having to run grittyer dogs. but i guess i like to gamble all of my dogs are gonna put teeth in a hog they have to get them stop but the are by no means catch dogs. Me and my hunting partners have ran vest on bay dogs and in the winnter time its ok but there is no way i will run one in summer i have lost way to many dogs to heat the heat than being gutted.and even in the dead of night its still 80 in south texas (got to love it lol). thats why we dont run vest on bay dogs just catch dogs our. We been good so far but who knows.

We own some of the bay vest and we also own some of the strike vests which are longer.  I would say that they definately help prevent vet bills but they are no guarantee that your dog isnt going to get hurt or isnt going to get killed. 

I believe if you are going to run vests then you have to start them in it, we have one that has worn his since he started and he doesnt  know the difference...the others refuse to hunt with them on and most of the time they are with out them.   The only one who is always vested is the CD except on a rare occasion.

We have had some serious vet bills in the last year and a half but I think you owe it to them if you expect them to hunt and catch; it is part of it. 

My opinion is that most people see it as a risk and most prob start using them after a bad encounter as for me only dog gettin vested is the pits have had bad run ins but just not into having my dogs restricted from moving JMO

circle c , mike  , ...
     just wondering why yall dont run cut collars ?not that i care but thought yall might have a very logical answer ..      thanks ,Eric

I used to back when I ran rough dogs, but all I run are loose baying dogs now. I started to notice lack of mobility on some of the smaller built dogs i've owned and some dogs wouldn't hunt as good with the cut collar on... they seemed to be bothered by it. Take it off and they were a whole different dog. Plus, with all the gps collars, radio collars, shock collars, name tag collars... there's not a much neck to play with.

Knock on wood, but i've never had a dog's neck cut open in the ten years i've been hunting... but i've seen several get hooked underneath the cut collar and laid wide open. You just have to know your style of dogs. With mine, sure it may happen, but not likely. Even in the thick stuff, where most dogs get wrecked, they may be back 20 feet or more baying.

I can't speak for them but mine don't have enough neck for all the stuff they wear alraedy  ;D

Something I've thought a lot about... I have a hard time accepting getting burned... a vest doesn't remedy this affliction....  Natural selection dictates my future dogs.... if they can't do it without a vest... I don't want them.

I love my dogs enough to try and breed/work towards a dog that is not un-necessarily self sacrificing... i.e. a dog that's got a good sense of self preservation... yet still maintains a high level of prey drive.... stopping/baying power..... maybe some day I'll actually achieve it ;)

.... but this is just an opinion....

Seems to me that if you start a young dog in a vest, he is more likely to end up a rough dog.

I do run cut collars, but have never owned a bay vest.

A dog is somewhat like a human, they don't like wearing all the extra work clothes ( hard-hat, safty glasses, nomex, steeltoe boots, etc.) But when they get used to it, they do fine. It's been my expirence that most dogs take about five hunts to get adjusted.

Dogs can still move and function in the brush with a vest on. I've seen a few places where a dog backed up cause it was too thick. However, they would have done the same without the vest.

If you have a vest built for you dog, they will be able to swim fine. If you have a dog that doesn't swim that well, there are vest out there that offer flotation devices. They have the same stuff a lifejacket has in them. That doesn't mean it's a life jacket though. It's just going to help the dog out.

My dogs are loose, and I too didn't run vest on my baydogs. When you loose your best strike dog, and come to reality how easy it could have be prevented, it's a hard thing to get over.

I didn't post this topic to have a big debate. I just wanted to hear from others about why they don't protect their dogs. I have a dog that has only been cut once on the front leg. She is a very loose dog. Here recently she bayed a big boar that caught her slipping in a place she couldn't get away from. She took a bad blow to the chest plate.  ;D needless to say, I was very thankful she had a good vest on.

Your gonna come across old grampaw boar one day, he's gonna be quicker than you might think, and poor little Sophie's gonna take a tusk in a bad place.

It's all about the odds, when it comes to old boars, the odds aren't in our dogs favor. I hate to see good dogs hurt or killed. I wish more people would protect their dogs. >:(

Pigly,

   Only dog I have ever lost was a catch dog, wearing a vest and he got poked through the scrotum.  How is a vest going to protect my bay dogs from getting poked in the backside?   I forgot to mention in an earlier post that I did at one time run a vest on a baydog that I thought needed it. I stopped vesting her when I found her hung in a barbed wire fence one night.

A vest isnt a cure all. They carry their own risks, such as over heating, drowning and getting hung up.  I feel that running a vest on a bay dog you are often times putting the dog more at risk.  I put one on my bulldogs some times but then just the other day I had on get hung up going 20 yards to a bay.  I also dont run cut collars on my baydogs for the reasons Mike described earlier.  Dogs body follows it's head, if the head is slow you are going to get cuts in the rear.  I have tried it and quit using them.

I guess you could get a tiny pair off those tusk proof pants somebody posted a while back?  Where me and my friends hunt the dogs run into a ton of barbed wire a feild fence and ive seen dogs snag a cut collar three times, kudos to you for vesting but around here its damned if you do damned if you dont

I just posted the same question a few days ago?? not one reply !! ??  ???
 http://www.easttexashogdoggers.com/forum/index.php?topic=12830.0

Looks like a good topic!

I have gotten every single reason why not to use them since i started to use them both cut collars and vest! i can tell you this not nearly as many vet bills and still catching very good hogs!! I do not run bay dogs all of my dogs (and most folks in our area) run RCD's yes they still get cuts and banged up.
  I can show yall some vests that look like edward sissor hands got a hold of !! could only imagine what the dogs would have looked like without a vest !! as for the cut collar !! ive found (non of mine)one too many dogs layin next to a caught hog with lil minor pokes and not had a cut collar on! 

It was mentioned above different strokes for different folks !! i dont try and convince others to put them on their dogs (unless its a dog i hunt with alot)!! but soo many tell me i should not have em on mine !! It works for me and i catch some stout ass hogs with just two dogs and a rope  ;D!!! 

I think that applies everywhere.  I think it's a personal decision made by the the owner of the dog, and not to be questioned by others. I''ve been on both sides of the vest or no vest issue with regard to bay and catch dogs. These days I do what works for me, and let others do what works for them.

I don't like hearing the implications that if someone does not vest their dog, then they must not care about the dog...   >:(

And yes i agree they do get hot !! i dont know bout yall but we dont run our dogs in the heat of the day?? usually at night !! i also have had a dog get hung up on a fence ONCE in the 12 years i have used a vest !! i will take the vest off every now and again ! and take "That Chance" which we all know is there at any time in this sport !! i would rather fool with a vest and collar and catch a hog or two than carry a dog to the truck to docter him up and not catch that extra hog or two!!!! or three ???  Look at like and extra handle on a dog and heck some of the vest swamp dog is buildin have pockets on em !! good for leashes hobbles tie ropes break sticks ??

Everybody is right in their own ways! Thanks for you time.
I've learned some things here.

I dont think dogs wearing vests have as much mobility as this pup has while seeing his first pig ever  (http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y265/Flatbroke/buster.jpg), but we run a vest on him.  They have helped prevent major injuries for just under two decades now.  I really appreciate it. 
Our dogs dont find many hogs but they tend to grab a hold of the ones they do,
(http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y265/Flatbroke/Hunt2-15-09032.jpg)

   

Thats a sweet pic flat broke !

IMO im not sure a catch dog needs to be able to move like a bay dog would need to?? all mine just go in ballz to the wall anyway,
tuck in and become an anchor ?? (In most situations) Other than that they just hold on for the ride!

 now i can see where it could hinder a bay dog from bein as agile as the pic you posted ! but for dogs like mine who find and catch there own hogs it really does not matter they arent lookin to becareful or cautious their lookin to stop him with a mouth full of ear! 

Yep! And shared by me.  ;D

Damned if you do, damned if you don't AS IN I feel that if I stuck a vest on my dog I feel like he would get it snagged in a barbed wire fence.  I only own one professionaly made collar and somehow my goofus dog Gator got snagged on guacho and twisted it up something bad. Took me like 2 hours to find him. On the other hand he's not even a good hog dog but he's got the scars to prove a vest should be on Christmas list, lol.

I quoted your post to pick on you about yer dogs scrotum getting poked, just messin witcha, never said a thing about folks not caring about their dogs. Sorry if it sounded that way.

How does the keep from getting weighed down with moisture and to those who use vests, do you run the short vests in summer time hunts, or does it matter?

the vest that i have doesn't get a ton heavier when it's wet.  It is a noticable difference, but not that bad, and since it's on the catch dog anyway he hopefully won't be in the water that long with it.  in summer time i mostly hunt at night, if it's too humid I'll just carry the vest until they get bayed and then put it on.  It's all one piece so it's pretty easy.  Then after the catch it's right back off with it. 

i agree to disagree i run all rough curdogs an they never get turned out without a vest an cutcollar. its been my personal experiance for 12yrs. to protect them as much as i can yes they still get poked an cut but if they got a cut for every mark thats on their vest an collar im not sure they would be here today.my preachers dog got killed this past weekend never put his mouth on the pig an got his throat ripped out he had 4 10mnth old pups with him 2 got gutted an others cut to pieces he runs no collars an no vest he has caught hundreds of pigs an then look what happened so to everyone their own my dogs will kep doin what we doin.

check out the very last pic in the last super bowl action shots on ft bayou ranch site !! he is stretched out !!
 try this link http://fortbayouranch.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=522 might have to be a member ??

T-Bob Parker,
  Your posts did not bother me at all.  A few comments by another poster are the ones that I was making reference to. There seems to be an implication in his posts that at some point all people will wish they had vested their dog.... without the consideration that some people have already tried that tactic and decided vesting did not "work" for them.   This same person had another post the same day about their dog being cut through the leg hole in his dog's vest ???  I still say, do whatever works for you, and don't imply that others don't care about their dogs for not vesting.   




Here's a thought while we are on the subject of dog safety.  Maybe people should begin using doggles so that their dogs don't get a thorn in their eye while hunting.  I mean, we have a dog right now that got her eye scratched and I sure wish in hindsight I had been using doggles, it might have saved me buying some medication at the vet. ;D
(http://www.thepamperedpetmagazine.com/images/dog-goggles.jpg)

Also helps keep the bugs out of their eyes for those of you with the more open boxes. ;D

Maybe it was because your opening post didnt imply that those who didnt, must not care about their dogs enough? :-\

I was offended by that at first but, now Im trying to talk my daughter into getting fitted for a cut vest. She has gotten alot rougher since giving birth to my first grand child!  ;D

I've tried vest. I stopped using the dang things for the same reason I tried them to begin with! To make my dogs safer. I sure wouldnt go as fare as to say that all dogs would be better off without them though. Depends on the dog.

Now those doggles are something different. I wish I had a pair on that old dog of mine the day he got his eye knocked out. ;) lol.

Can you get Mike fitted for some of them doggles for when riding w/ Matt?  ;D

Chris,

I'd like to order a few pairs.  I've got a hunting partner that took a stick to the eye last year.  Rough stuff I tell you. 

http://s45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/KevinTX/?action=view&current=20090830064438.flv

After  being hard headed for years and not running any protection and me loosing one of the best hog dogs I have ever seen are even heard of .   I started putting vest on all my dogs find dog , bay dogs, catch dogs the whole nine yards and I got to say with out this protection I would have lost many more.  I just wont run a dog with out protection unless it is one I just know will not even touch a hog and I dont have many like that.   It does what it is suppose to do but then again good ole piggly wiggly is gonna get a lucky shot here and there .

I run cut collars on all my dogs. I had a few vests a couple months back that I let a friend "test" on his pure bull and while I liked the protection it offered I noticed the dog having a loss of mobility which I feel was putting them in the position to take the blow in the first place. I also noticed the dogs that wore the vests became alot more confident and in the end roostery with their grabbing bigger pigs. I had planned to get a Garmin and sold my vests but if I hadn't I would probably vest up a straight catchdog if we were running in open grounds Pasture or Golf course. I went on a hunt last night that a vest could have saved my cousins dog alot of fluids so I definately do understand the guys who won't drop a dog without a vest on.

Wrote on wrong thread but O well heres my .02