Catch dog stopped catching?

[hoghunter71409]

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.

[Sambo5500]

71409 I'm pretty sure everyone on here knows a true catch dog is supposed to catch. That's why black streak said right after your uneducated response about not reading after the first sentence that a 3 year old pit bull not catching is a cull. If you would have kept reading you would have realized that he was saying they can do so much more than just catch. He never said not catching was acceptable. You can't possibly understand what he's talking about unless you've owned or been around dogs of this caliber. I have hunted with black streak and know him and his dogs well. They are awesome specimens that can do it all. They are huge, fast, powerful and excellent hunters. I have pit x cur mixes that I also expect to do everything. Find catch and hold. Yes they catch true 100% of the time on any size hog. So yes catch dogs catch but they also are capable of so much more as he said if you would have kept reading.

[hoghunter71409]

Hmmm....my uneducated response?

He spent 6 paragraphs explaining a science laboratory of testing to train a catch dog...only to say in the last sentence..."what I am trying to say is"...

I don't think I missed anything Sambo.  I don't come on here to read blah, blah, blah.

Doesn't sound like drifter is looking for a research thesis or Six Sigma project on catch dogs.  He asked if anyones catch dog quit catching.  He is not asking about versatility and all the things a catch dog can do.  Tell me this.  What good is a versatile catch dog if he don't catch every time?

Drifter here is where I will leave my 2 cents.  If you take him hunting and you turn him into a bay like you said you do and he runs to the bay hard and don't catch- either get rid of him on the spot or don't call him a catch dog and find you one that will catch.

[Sambo5500]

Yes I did say your response was uneducated because you did not continue to read the rest of his post which would be uneducated since you responded without reading. I wasn't talking about his post with testing the dog a bunch of different ways on if he will catch or not. I was talking about his post that catch dogs can do more than just catching. I am talking about do it all dogs. Obviously you don't understand that. Maybe it was a little off topic from the original post so sorry about that. Like I also said everyone on here should know catch dogs are supposed to catch 100% of the time. He was just trying to enlighten people that they canado more than that. It wasn't blah blah blah just cuz you can't understand it.

[Sambo5500]

And also who's said these versatile catch dogs don't catch every time other than you just now? Again do it all dogs that you obviously know nothing about.

[Sambo5500]

Hog Hunter I'm not trying to say you are uneducated and don't mean to sound like that.I was saying your response was as it didn't seem like you read it completely and then answered. So sorry for that. I'm sure you are a great guy and have killed plenty pigs. Black streak was simply showing there can be more to catch dogs and I was defending him because they can be more than just catch dogs. Honestly this did get away from the original post and I too believe as you do that a dog that doesn't catch isn't a catch dog.What we are talking about should be in a different thread on the versatility that some catch dogs are capable of.

[Judge peel]

I have seen pit bulls turn into bay dogs most of this is due to lack of hart or hard ness. A cd to me best catch and hold at all cost cuz my cuts do it and they have no bull dog in them. So if they can do it a pit better get with the program. I think dogs sometimes take on the spirt of there owner if you lack confidence in your self or the dog it might transfer over to the dog. Just like a horse that knows the Ryder is over matched. No matter the breed if you want a caught hog you need a good quality dog that will get the job done period no matter the route it goes to get there


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[Black Streak]

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.

[Black Streak]

Hmmm....my uneducated response?

He spent 6 paragraphs explaining a science laboratory of testing to train a catch dog...only to say in the last sentence..."what I am trying to say is"...

I don't think I missed anything Sambo.  I don't come on here to read blah, blah, blah.

Doesn't sound like drifter is looking for a research thesis or Six Sigma project on catch dogs.  He asked if anyones catch dog quit catching.  He is not asking about versatility and all the things a catch dog can do.  Tell me this.  What good is a versatile catch dog if he don't catch every time?

Drifter here is where I will leave my 2 cents.  If you take him hunting and you turn him into a bay like you said you do and he runs to the bay hard and don't catch- either get rid of him on the spot or don't call him a catch dog and find you one that will catch.

 

   You called the dog a cull when you didn't know what breed it was, or how old it was.   I just spent a little time explaining why one would want to know these things about a catch dog before calling it a cull.   If the dog was young or young for its breed then that opened the door for a lot of different  factors that could be resulting in the dog only catching sometimes at this stage in its life.     You didn't have the intelligence to ask or think of this before you told him to cull it.  So yeah, I used the term uneducated.  Often times truth hurt and people get offensive when confronted with it.  Shows insecurity and lack of knowledge when they do lol

[Black Streak]

I have seen pit bulls turn into bay dogs most of this is due to lack of hart or hard ness. A cd to me best catch and hold at all cost cuz my cuts do it and they have no bull dog in them. So if they can do it a pit better get with the program. I think dogs sometimes take on the spirt of there owner if you lack confidence in your self or the dog it might transfer over to the dog. Just like a horse that knows the Ryder is over matched. No matter the breed if you want a caught hog you need a good quality dog that will get the job done period no matter the route it goes to get there


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   Judge you are very correct as usual.  I wasn't surprised to see mention that the owners confedence or mentality plays on the dog too but was very glad you did mention it.   That's not heard a lot and I think it's EXTREMELY important when developing young dogs.   Dogs are reading you constantly whether you know it or not.  We forget this or over look it or are not aware of it to begin with.    How we conduct ourself and our patience, our mental stability, and our confedence goes a long long way in developing young dogs and establishing ourselves as pack leaders and having content dogs and also having stability on your yard.        If the leader of the pack is not confedence the rest of the pack senses it and it will often erode theirs as well.  If a lack of confedence is maintained, it opens the door to be challenged as well.

[Judge peel]

Ya I feel a strong bond with your catch dog is very important. But when u have the thought that a cd is just a cd then you are limited to that 


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[Goose87]

This is my opinion and strictly that, a catch dog is the navy seal of your pack, he's never supposed to question his job and never once be out of the fight until he takes his last breath, every single time out no matter the circumstance, my advice would be to make him a pet and move on if your attached to him, folks can church it up however they want but a dog who doesn't do his job when he's asked to do it is a cull, no different than a man in the work force, if you pay a man to weld and all he does it tack then he ain't a welder and he gets fired and is replaced with a welder. I don't have the time to put a lot of time into trying to make a catch dog, some say I'm a little harsh but after a dog catches the first time if he ever questions his job then he no longer resides on this earth, I hunt by myself a good bit  and need a dog I can depend on when called upon, not one I've seen back down before, that will always be in the back of my mind every time I hunt.

[Black Streak]

Goose when a young pit pup at 6 months old catches a 100 pound  pig today and tomorrow you send that pup to a 250 pound dog savy boar and he strip the pups confedence away because of the beating he put on that pup, will you see the pup as a cull if it then goes to barking at that pig like the other dogs are?

[Judge peel]

Lol that's funny


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[Slim9797]

The one thing I don't enjoy seeing on here is someone making a mockery of another mans post because they gave an opinion and someone disagreed/challenged it and it Ruffled their feathers. The OP didn't ask if we thought he had a cull, he asked if anyone had been in his position for and for any advice and insight on how to maybe get this dog lined out. Some did their due diligence to help the op and I enjoy getting on here and seeing it. I've learned tons in the last 2 years from that kind of thing happening. But a couple just said "you have a cull" which honestly, isn't your call to make for somebody else's dog, and it wasn't what he was asking for.


OP, I'd advise again, try and peg down what went wrong where for this dog. Or what it is that messing him up. If you do your due diligence and just can't get it sorted out, if you like the dog, I'd say get another Forsure catch dog and run them together. I personally like running 2 Bulldogs when I can.


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[Goose87]

Goose when a young pit pup at 6 months old catches a 100 pound  pig today and tomorrow you send that pup to a 250 pound dog savy boar and he strip the pups confedence away because of the beating he put on that pup, will you see the pup as a cull if it then goes to barking at that pig like the other dogs are?

First off I wouldn't be catching with a 6 month old dog, yes maybe playing around in a pen at the house, and dang sure wouldn't put him on something he wasn't equally matched with at that age, and to answer your question about the culling, here's my outlook on it, if and when I feel he's ready to haul to the woods, if from that moment on that dog even so much as thinks twice about not catching, then like I said before, he will not take another breathe, there's a difference in going out with his boots on and just plain out getting whipped of its job, I've seen some Bulldogs do some amazing things and display the true heart of a warrior, I'm not going to go into detail about how, when, or where because that's irrelevant. Everybody has their own ideas and goals for their dogs.

[Black Streak]

Goose when a young pit pup at 6 months old catches a 100 pound  pig today and tomorrow you send that pup to a 250 pound dog savy boar and he strip the pups confedence away because of the beating he put on that pup, will you see the pup as a cull if it then goes to barking at that pig like the other dogs are?

First off I wouldn't be catching with a 6 month old dog, yes maybe playing around in a pen at the house, and dang sure wouldn't put him on something he wasn't equally matched with at that age, and to answer your question about the culling, here's my outlook on it, if and when I feel he's ready to haul to the woods, if from that moment on that dog even so much as thinks twice about not catching, then like I said before, he will not take another breathe, there's a difference in going out with his boots on and just plain out getting whipped of its job, I've seen some Bulldogs do some amazing things and display the true heart of a warrior, I'm not going to go into detail about how, when, or where because that's irrelevant. Everybody has their own ideas and goals for their dogs.

    Good deal.      In bulldogs you can have standerds like that and the average young bulldog fulfill these standerds of progression.  However certain things can keep the first timer from performing as you so desire.   Once the young bulldog has it down then such standerds are usually easy for the bulldog to fulfill.
      Other breeds of catch dogs take more understanding and patience to develop but once they are fully developed and hard can easily outperform most bulldogs when hunted the way I do.  It's all a matter of understanding breeds and knowing what you can expect while they are developing in order to see such dogs through.       The end result in my standerds for a catch dog far exceeds that of yours but in order to get a catch dog to do the things I demand, takes work on my part as well as patience and understanding and persistence.         Knowing what I do about the different breeds and crosses there of catch dogs, I knew to ask how old the dog was and what breed it was before I told the man his dog was a cull.  I didn't know it was a 3 year old pit before I asked.   A pit should be performing it's lead in duties by the time it's a year old.  Makes a difference as to what breed and how fast you can expect it to progress till it is catching and holding big boars 1 out.
   

[Scott]

Goose, did you post an all inclusive list of your standards for a catchdog?

[Goose87]

Did I or would I?

[Scott]

Did I or would I?

Did you? Just saw in the post above where your standards were mentioned

The end result in my standerds for a catch dog far exceeds that of yours but in order to get a catch dog to do the things I demand, takes work on my part as well as patience and understanding and persistence.
   

But I didn't recall seeing your standards in previous posts. If you have previously posted them could you direct me to the post. If not, and you don't mind sharing, I'm interested in seeing them.