I look at it this way, if I am going to call a dog a catch dog that dog better catch every time or he isn't going to be a catch dog. Simply put, no room for error or no time for a dog that I have doubt on. # years is old for a catch dog...a lot of good catch dogs are dead by 3. I sure am not going to feed any dog until they are 3 if they are not doing what I expect them to do and I expect a catch dog to catch every time by 18 to 20 months. Maybe some say that is early, but I've had dogs do it, so that it my standard. If someone else's standards are lower, that is their idea.
Above all else, dogs must be mentally tough. A real good bear dog or lion dog or hog dog is going to get beat up once in a while. But if getting beat up changes their mentality so much that sometimes they do their job and sometimes they don't, than the dog is a cull. If you want to cut your dogs slack and give them excuses that is fine, I'm not giving a catch dog one inch of slack because I am going in behind him (sometimes with my head down to keep briar out of my eyes and most of the time with my 6 or 8 year old son behind me). He must do his job or I am going to be in a bind.
Dogs that get beat up should learn but it should not change them from their job. My idea of a catch dog is catching every time, die trying, or he better try to catch the hog and if he gets slung off, he better try to run to down. Simply going to the bay and not trying to catch wont cut it at my house.
Pit, dogo, cur, or whatever- if he going to be a catch dog he better catch. I've seen great catch dogs that were not bull dogs (and their is a difference) - they were mentally tough and they caught.
I can agree with a lot of what your saying. Once a catch dog is fully mature and switched on, it needs to catch and not be questionable in the least about it.
What your describing though is pretty narrow and shallow when covering the entire spectrum of catch dogs. If you want to single out a pit and this is what it should catch like by this age under the lead in working conditions then you can certainly put such a narrow set of rules on such a dog as a pit eventhough the breed is much more capable than the narrow scope of work your using it for. I'm not trying to say your going about stuff wrong on your own yard BUT what I am saying is your broad blanketed statement regarding catch dogs in general are narrow and shallow and uneducated .
If you think most good catch dogs are dead by 3 years old then you are not around good catch dogs, your just around the ignorant ones or uneducated and or lazy owners.
Good catch dogs should not be getting killed or taking the punishment time and time again like your implying. What I'm reading from you is your idea of a good catch dog is one that's hard but ignorant.
Good catch dogs are all just as hard as the dogs you speak of but they are smart about their holding style and hold clean and avoid taking much punishment while their holding. Some dogs will just set their and take it and get beat to crap and their owners take that as their dog takes hardness to a hole other level and that's just not the case.
Not all dogs even within the same breed hold the same but different breeds as a hole tend to have noticeable differences and also require a different knowledge base. For instance I will compare the 2 ends of the spectrum to one another. The pit and the wolfhound. If you judge a young wolfhound based on your knowledge about pits, you will cull the wolfhound before it even gets started catching. The wolfhound in time would have been just as hard as the pit and would have been able to accomplish with ease what the pit could not or struggled with. The wolfhound are naturally clean holders from the first time the catch. Rarely will they get hit as a result and their cut gear won't have hardly any damage throughout the dogs long career. It is easy to ruin a young wolfhound that's willing to go forth before it's ready. Let a young confident wolfhound take on a big pig to early and get the dog banged up and it will set the dog back a good ways where as the young pit will often times become harder. It takes a wolfhound around 2 1/2 years to mature and mentally mature to the point it's willing to go head to head with big boars. Once this dog is there though you have got one heck of a dog. Now compare what little info I shared about the wolfhound to your standerds. You could not develop a young catch dog as a wolfhound from the time you started it to the time it was old enough to be catching big boars.
Danes are a bit different in how they start out but soon become the same clean holding dog a wolfhound is. A dane when starting out is not normally the natural clean holder a wolfhound is from the first catch and will take a little punishment. This little punishment will then result in the dane developing a very good clean holding style. 18 months with a dane and it's normally ready for any size pig.
There are many many catch breeds other than just these. Hopefully you can see by the few examples I give, that you can not get the same end result by starting and treating each of these dogs as if they were the same whether they are pure breeds or crosses there of.
A pit is the simplest and easiest catch dog to start and get to catching pigs but when you want to step outside this realm and make assumptions and judge all catch dogs based on your simple knowledge of pit type dogs, then you are not correct. I know of examples and even names of people on this forum who have pits and similar dogs that are just as hard as the dogs you speak of that rarely get hurt and have lived a long life already and are still working and working once a week or more still and some of these are working without the use of bay dogs to boot.
To assume that good catch dogs are often dead by 3 is wildly untrue. I'd come closer to saying it's the ignorant ones that hold like crap that are dead by 3. Crap happens now and then and a lucky shot to an artery might get one or one get knocked out in the water and drowned but rarely will a good catch dog die on a pig. Usually it's just an infection that wasn't handled well, lack of feild knowledge to be able to take care of a bad injury that's really not life treating with proper feild knowledge, accidents such as dog getting run over, stolen, or miss used such as running one without a vest because it's hot or gearing the dog up with cheesy or worn out equipment, or vesting your dog so much that it can't move and hold clean, get up fast, entangled and empeaded or hung up and take a sever beating as a result. The more you put on your dog the more heat it traps and the more it weighs the dog down in water and also the more and faster the dog becomes fatigued. Lots of dogs are lost to heat stroke but this is often the result of the owner ignorance or good intentions. Vesting your dog with gear from head to toe again fatigues a dog quicker, limits the air movement that can cool the dog and whisk away heat, the dog is out of shape because it just sits in a small kennel till the owner takes it out hunting where the catch dog rides to the bay on a buggy or truck, now put a vest on the unfit dog that traps heat, limits it's movements resulting in the dog having to work harder to move, the added weight etc and act suprised when the unfit poorly conditioned dog kills over in the short amount of time it's working hard and expending such a great amount of energy in such a short amount of time. Extend that time or run that same dog on a hot day and it will die a young dog. Really no suprised at all and is very predictable. An out of conditioned dog will heat stroke pretty fast. The build of lactic acid in an unfit dog can seemingly mysteriously kill them, the inability too of the body to shed the build of lactic acid before the dog is taken out again the next day or two combined with that days work will often result in a dead dog. The list goes on and on but the point is good catch dogs don't usually die at an early age because a pig killed them.
