What are your dogs missing?

Awe now see, there you go! You’re holding out on us. We’re all family here, no secrets.

I had the rough dogs at one time too. I was the same way. I didn’t like not being able to go when I wanted because everything was beat up. I want and expect every dog on my feed bill to be able to do it solo. We cast hunt 99.9% of the time. We may drop one to five dogs at a time depending on circumstances. We usually have a couple of older dogs, a couple of young well started dogs, and then a pup or two we are getting going. Like I say, just depends on circumstances as to what we drop. My dogs are all pretty natural about using the wind. When we cast, they may all leave in one direction, but unless they find hogs immediately, they are going to be fanned out. Outlaw and Ava are a little different in their styles. It’s funny because their color and markings are a representation of their style. She’s a brindle and he’s a blanket backed dog with white like a lot of the old Lipper dogs with the exception that he has some brindle on his cheeks and forelegs. If he smells it he is going to work it out. If she smells it and it’s cold, she is going to go hunt for something hotter and if she doesn’t find that she will come back and grub out the colder track. I like it because I feel like I’m getting a great chance of producing a hog faster. When the weather is hot, that matters. I don’t want rough but I want what I have in Outlaw. If that limits me to fewer dogs out at a time then I’m ok with that. Our country is really shrinking, so stopping power, speed and bite, are more important than ever I feel as well as discipline and being able to tone dogs in.
I tried a few running dog crosses. I just couldn’t get what I wanted consistently. One problem was boredom after the chase was done. They would leave and look for the next one before you could get there. Another problem was wanting to run so bad that they would be a mile out before they started hunting. And then there was the issue of over running their nose. Because of those last two issues, we bayed lots of hogs behind them that they overran. They were the dogs that taught me that foot speed and tracking speed didn’t mean the same thing. My old Clyde dog was half cat/treeing walker. He was average speed in a foot race, but he was a track driving fool. I had a running walker/bird dog cross at the same time I had Clyde. Now let me tell you, he was beyond high strung. His wheels were spinning in place before you could open the box. He didn’t quit moving like that until you put him back in it. The crazy part at the time to me was that if him an Clyde stared a hog at the same time, Clyde would be looking at it well before the running dog. His foot speed and brain were to his detriment.

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