"Better than what I got"

[Reuben]

Coyotes have to "hunt" to survive, so ofcourse they are born with the "want to"......

Replace the "want to" with "have to"

Yep, and mother nature has been culling the coyotes for thousands if not millions of generations. A coyote does not need an 8 in 1 shot and if it don't hunt it don't eat etc. etc. If it doesn't meet the coyote standard it won't live to reproduce it's kind.

[t.wilbanks]

Coyotes have to "hunt" to survive, so ofcourse they are born with the "want to"......

Replace the "want to" with "have to"

What ever you want to call it , they have it.... and if you breed another dog or coyote with it, it will most likely have it too... therefore, it is "Bred" into it, not trained....

[chainrated]

If everyone would cull as hard as mother nature there would be more good dogs around..

[Kessling Kennels]

Not just dogs people too.

[t.wilbanks]

If everyone would cull as hard as mother nature there would be more good dogs around..

x2 .... but if a dog can be "trained" to hunt, like they say, then why do we have culls?

If you cull a dog because it wont hunt, then isnt it your fault for not being a good enough trainer?

[Reuben]

If you cull a dog because it wont hunt, then isnt it your fault for not being a good enough trainer?


[/quote]




Maybe yes...Maybe no...

[geronimo]

this is very intresting here is my take, no you cant make a dog hunt. you can cull the thing if it dont but you can provide the best chances for the dog by putting it on hogs, in sign etc.. another words putting time and energy in it not just pulling up to a fedder casting a dog and if it dont roll out and find a dog then call it a cull? i mean put the dog in some hogs over and over. a dog man will know when an individual dog should be doing something i mean is there a set standard? every dog is different there are so many varrible.. but i have heard this line breed theory for so long and i know your chances are better but you still inherit some problems. if it was the perfect solution then there wouldnt be so many different people trying to find better dogs all the time? you would just buy you a linebreed dog and catch pigs right?

[Noah]

OK... here I go... 

Here's the deal.  There's horse riders then there's trainers... just as there's dog hunters and dog trainers.... But not all trainers are created equal...

As a trainer, one can usually spot out the "great" trainers from the herd... They are the ones that usually seem to have the best animals.... because they are genetically superior animals or because the animal has been trained to be superior by a good trainer?.... truly an un-answerable question...

I've spent a good portion of my life studying this type of trainer.... and I've had the priveledge to spend time with some of the best out there...  Here's a story that might help exlplain where I'm coming from...

Hands down, the biggest influence in my career as an animal trainer was a man named Pat Parelli... As close to genius as I have known to this day.  The man was, quite simply, on another level, dimension if you will, of thinking and of animal psychology...  Saw a video of him riding horses bareback, bridleless, doing advanced reining maneuvers... jumping fences... cutting.... you name it...  THAT captured my imagination and for the first time, opened my eyes to what was possible with the right training...

In school at UF for engineering at the time... I basically knew nothing about horses, growing up on the ocean(son of a commercial fisherman out of Tampa Bay) I had little experience with livestock to that point, but I fell in love with the idea of it immediately... that was all the incentive I needed to pull out and head west to try to learn this radical new training technique... little did I know this "new" training technique was not all that new... just forgotton in a modern world.  Xenophon(350 BC) is testament to that...

Went to work for him as a hired hand that summer... oblivious to what I'd gotten myself into    I knew that I wanted to be able to train a horse to do what he could do but never could have imagined how much more I'd come away with... The first couple mnths I spent building his new international study center in Pagosa, CO... I'd taken my own horse, Beaver, a 3yo foundation bred gelding, out there with me... worked from sun up to sun down 7 days a wk for no wages... my salary was nothing more than food(vegetarian at that...which I secretly supplemented with grouse I gathered in the forest  ) and board... and the opportunity to learn from the master... a master that was over in Australia teaching while I was breaking my back  ...

The "international study center" we were constructing in a valley amongst the Rocky Mountains, was just that... Wealthy, overly intelligent, scholars of animal psychology from around the world actually PAID to come over to "talk dogs".... er... I mean "horses".... basically it was the same thing we do here... like minded souls getting together to form a think tank to stimulate each other to a higher level of understanding of what it is we do... and what it is that might be possible...

I remember the first day I met him... there's certain people in life that have an "energy" to them... you know it when you see it.  Eccentric, unorthadox, brilliant... sometimes seemingly insane... within a few wks his right hand man and I had a fallin' out that got perty ugly...  .... the next mornin' that same man was made to come apologize to me and ask if I wanted his position...  ... Was his shadow from that point on... absorbing all of it as fast as I could...

I was granted access to true genius.... What I learned was "how to learn".... more important than any "trick" in the book...

....To be continued... got to go to work... If this does not make any sense to you then it was not meant for you and I apologize for wasting your time.





 

[Silverton Boar Dogs]

You have an advantage coming from this type of horse background as a dog trainer. You learn to controll your emotions and to be ultra sencitive to body language and timing of the release and the preasure.

[t.wilbanks]

Noah, instead of quoting your "book", ill just reply... 

It sounds to me like this guy was good at bringing out the best in the horse....
Give him a Shetland Pony and let him train it to race... no matter how much training you put into it, it will never beat even the sorriest of race horses....

Just like with dogs, a good trainer can bring out the best in a dog with extensive training and exposure....
But If the dog doesnt have the hunt or want to, it will never perform at a level that meets a trainers expectations.... therfore we have culls....

oh and by the way, that guy must have been a REAL genius to have your working all those hours and days for a few pieces of lettuce..  J/K!!

[BarrNinja]

How about that zebra you busted Noah?! Lol

[Noah]

False alarm... may I continue... 

You have an advantage coming from this type of horse background as a dog trainer. You learn to controll your emotions and to be ultra sencitive to body language and timing of the release and the preasure.

Understood as only a trainer could understand...

T.wilbanks... I ain't got to my point yet... 


SO.... Basic animal psychology 101....

"When training all living things, make desireable actions easy... undesireable actions difficult... consistency over time creates ingrained habits unbeknownst to said specimen"...   Pavlov's dog at it's most simple...

Pavlov was a pioneering Russian psychologist from the late 1800's(sorry if you've heard this story, but a lot here I'm sure have not)... basically, ol' Pavlov took a dog and cut a hole in the side of his jaw to it's salivary glands... stitching in a tube for drainage...

Each day Pavlov would ring a bell, then feed the dog... day after day...

One day he rang the bell but no feed... the tube began to drip immediately... and thereby showing a fundamental basic of psychology... conditioned response...

As my psych professer told the story to me... "Pavlov rang the bell and beat the chit out of the dog... after a couple days... every time Pavlov rang the bell... the dog chit all over hisself...  "  .... graphic, yes... but to the point.

When you truly understand the power of psychology you can train anything to do anything.... limited only by physical ability(I.E. a basset hound entering a grey hound race...  ...) ... and the amount of effort you're willing to put into it 

I'll give your brain a break...    (Bo-Ninja I'm still tryin' to forget about that son of a bitch thank you very much  )
 

[hogaholicswife]

I am not a great writer, so hopefully this all makes sense….if it is rambling I apologize but I am most definitely enjoying reading this thread -  GOOD STUFF!

....To be continued... got to go to work... If this does not make any sense to you then it was not meant for you and I apologize for wasting your time.

Noah, I always enjoy your posts, they make me think and are extremely insightful....almost philosophical and I cannot wait to hear the rest of your story.

I often ponder the same thing…..is it genetic, a learned behavior or a combination?  All dogs have prey drive in them, some more than others obviously and I don’t think that can ever be bred out of them.  The smelling/winding (whatever you want to call it) ability IMO is part of that prey drive once needed for survival but it also must be a learned behavior in some sense.  

As an example, a coyote puppy does not hit the ground hunting but they do hit the ground smelling…..they have to learn how to hone that sense of smell, control it, associate it with prey and follow through to a kill.  

Another example, I got a wild hair a few years ago I wanted a house dog (wrong).  I searched high and low for a cocker spaniel….drove a few hours away to pick him up.  He was a two year old PURE city dweller that they were going to use to have puppies but his puppies were HUGE so they decided he didn’t fit the “bill”.  Well, I got him home and after combing his fuzzy hair, washing him every other day and then him dragging his rump across my carpet he soon became an outside dog.  

We were working puppies one day and out of nowhere this little liver and white fur ball comes flying under the board fence and starts baying like a champ….when the puppies caught, he caught.  I made the comment to my husband that we could shave him and put him in the sugar cane since he was so small….but unfortunately he ate a cane toad a few weeks later but I am pretty sure I could have had him finding hogs.

My husband also had two little mutt dogs, one was part cocker spaniel and the other was part austrailian sheppard that I think his brothers had drug home or something….they were of no special breeding but were both hog finding/baying maniacs ……was it genetics or just that prey drive that all dogs posess with a little fine tuning?

I believe that a seasoned trainer can access parts of an animal (horse, dog, etc) that others cannot, whether it is from either lack of knowledge, patience or a combination thereof.  They can take a genetically superior animal and make it into a superstar by optimizing that animals capabilities and I also believe that they can take a less than genetically superior animal (conformationally correct or equal, just genetically lacking super stardom) and turn them into a hand….at times they even turn out better than that tight bred, genetically superior animal.

Give him a Shetland Pony and let him train it to race... no matter how much training you put into it, it will never beat even the sorriest of race horses....

I guarantee you if he had that Shetland he could train him to race without a doubt….now as far as winning you are correct, he would never beat even the sorriest race horse because he isn’t built to run against something who's legs are two times longer but that doesn’t mean he isn’t trainable....you are just setting him up to lose because they are not conformationally equal.  

That is almost like taking a gritty little Chihuahua and expecting him to hold a 200lb hog….he may lock on until all freezes over but he isn’t going to hold him because he isn’t conformationally equal to that big bull dog or gritty curr dog that could stand there and hold him.

You have an advantage coming from this type of horse background as a dog trainer. You learn to controll your emotions and to be ultra sencitive to body language and timing of the release and the preasure.

I couldn’t agree more….

[t.wilbanks]

Spaniels and Aulstralian Shepards have both been bred as working dogs... so they should have drive to them....

Also, your dogs showed to have the "drive" in them, you just showed them what you wanted them to hunt.....
They werent "trained" to have the drive.... You cant force the dog to hunt no matter how much time and training you put
into it.... it has to WANT TO HUNT!!!!

We are never gonna agree on this are we!!   


 

[hogaholicswife]

Spaniels and Aulstralian Shepards have both been bred as working dogs... so they should have drive to them....

If you look back, almost every (distinct) breed had a purpose with some sort of necessary prey drive, whether it was herding or hunting of any given type of game.  Some have just about had it bred out of them for pet and show animals because it isnt needed....but if given the opportunity you can almost always tap that natural instinct, some will excel and others will fail miserably just as not every coyote pup wouldnt make it.

[Noah]

Thankyou hogaholicswife... you and I on the same page 



Now here is a "wrap your head around this chit concept".... hopefully I can adequately describe it...

So... I was out in Colorado training horses, watching horses being trained, talking training 25 hrs a day.... 

I remember his face.  The blank expression on his face before that moment was what made it memorable....


I was in a very large birch railed, open air arena on the side of a mountain.... In this arena were 50-60 horses flown in from around the world... mustangs, olympic champions... mares, breeding stallions.... ALL loose... all "at liberty" to do as allowed by "us" as a collective group of trainers....

To say it was an "intense" environment would be an understatement... The idea was, "keep every horse moving until it finds it's master"... not an easy task with estrus mares and multiple breeding stallions tryin' to kill each other... (anyone who's had to break up a stallion fight knows what I'm talking about)....

In the chaos of it all was my Beaver.... I'd spent an inumerable amount of time with the colt... he and I had been through more riding than most horse and rider get in a lifetime...

Being at liberty(loose and free to go where he wanted) .... amongst the fighting, kicking, running chaos that was around him, I saw(from the far side of a huge arena) Beaver LOOK at me...

Let me explain what this means... When I say he "LOOKED" at me... I mean, in the midst of a tornado he looked through the turmoil and literally "asked" me what I wanted him to do... I can't make this chit up.

At a distance and environment that would be completely impossible for him to actually hear me... With two studs standing on their hind legs goin' at each other right behind him, I looked at my Beaver and asked him to come to me.  And he did.... He looked through the chaos into my eye.  He "saw" me ask him to come to me and he began walking to me....

Dumbfounded... I asked him to stop to convince myself that what I was seeing was not real... and just coincidence...... but he STOPPED. 

As best as I can describe this is as follows... imagine a computer.. doing what it was told because that's what it understands... but one day it becomes "self aware"... at which point, it is no longer a one way conversation... rather a partnership... with a mind that understands you, great things can be accomplished...

In this surreal blur of dust, fighting horses, whips, and screaming were myself and my Beaver... looking at each other, eye to eye from several hundred yds with a world of commotion in between...   I asked him to come towards me again and a skirting runner smacked right into him hard... immediately he regained focus on me and continued to come to me as I'd asked... flat   out   spooky.  I asked him to stop, even to back up... and he did.  Laugh if you will, but he still does it to this day...   When he finally got all the way to me I realized what it really meant to reach "that" level of understanding with an animal... it takes time...

.... one more break and I'll get to my point ...

[t.wilbanks]

Spaniels and Aulstralian Shepards have both been bred as working dogs... so they should have drive to them....

If you look back, almost every (distinct) breed had a purpose with some sort of necessary prey drive, whether it was herding or hunting of any given type of game.  Some have just about had it bred out of them for pet and show animals because it isnt needed....but if given the opportunity you can almost always tap that natural instinct, some will excel and others will fail miserably just as not every coyote pup wouldnt make it.

Why would the others fail if they can be " trained " ?? It would be more of you failing to be able to train them....

Ok, forget about just a breed of dogs, and find a dog that does not have the will to hunt.... then you try to train him.... and let us know when you cull it...  

THE DOG HAS TO HAVE THE WANT TO NO MATTER WHAT KIND OF DOG IT IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Noah]

... so, as this whole shpeel relates to hog dogs...

It is my hypothesis, that there is a level of time put in on a dog that "evens out" any advantage/disadvantage that similarly equipped dogs may exhibit in their first few yrs as a hog dog...

The idea of a high-end bred, early starting dog finishing the same as a "scatter" bred, slow starting dog...  given the time to develope( in my opinion 3-5yrs) and an adequate volume of hogs to bring out the necessities in both ...

Does this mean I don't believe in culling?... Nope.  But it sure does make me think about it more when I do...

And now for training a dog to hunt...

All dogs can smell adequately enouff to run a hog... once a dog has been trained to please it's master... it can be trained to engage anything, if not for self gratification, then for approval from it's master...

Been studying some Shutzund trained dogs lately... they base their training on a reward/conditioning program and it's hard to deny the results... I still am a long way from understanding the entirety of the concept but the amount of ferver dogs trained in this fashion exhibit is immeasurable....

A dog that wants to please can learn to hunt.

**** Disclaimer***** These thoughts are not representative of Noah Metzger's long term understandings... merely an attempt to understand further that which he has yet to make complete sense of.... 

[SCHitemHard]

NOBODY SAY ANOTHER WORD... i need more popcorn... 

[Bryant]

Noah,

It all sounds good in theory, but here's the deal.  You're taking a horse and training it to do something that a horse in it's natural environment, and without your direct influence would never do.

I'm taking a dog, and with the assistance of what I call well bred genetics I'm expecting it to do what it was strickly bred to do without ANY of my influence.

Now...if your knew there was a way you could breed all of what you described into your horses without influence of a human hand, wouldn't you do so?

I'll use THIS example.  My hunting partner breeds a line of some of the finest BMC dogs I've ever seen go.  He NEVER interacts with his dogs.  Doesn't feed them himself, his hired hands do it every evening. He very seldom even goes down to the kennels.  Most of these dogs (even 8, 10, 12 years old) don't even know their name.  They are sometimes a bit wild...can be a bit hard to catch in the wood.  They don't really care for people...they have honestly had very little human interaction.  Having said all that, when you take any of these dogs to the woods, you better have your game face on and be ready to hunt.  Drive like you can't imagine.  Long range...care less about you or what anyone else or any other dog is doing.  They have one thing on the mind...hog.  NOW...what drives these dogs...trainer, or genetics?  I've met a lot of good people who would consider themselves good trainers, but never one who could consistantly produce dogs as good as these.