I'm not totally against vest or any cut gear for that matter, and once I find something I like I do what I need to prolong its use in the bushes and brood box BUT I have to see what I like first, I know there's examples that can be used for and against the use of cut gear, a buddy of mine hauled a cd around for 3 or 4 years and caught a pile of hogs with him heck I even tied quite a few he caught, but he was always ran with cut gear on and a pack of dogs backing him up at the catch, he gets out of hunting and wants me to take the CD and got mad at me when I wouldn't and I told him why I didn't like the dog and couldn't promise him I wouldn't cull the dog and I valued our friendship more than I did the need to own that dog, so I sent some young boys who hunt with me to go get the dog and they took him to a bay pen to catch, hog wasn't big and teeth weren't big enough to do any internal damage, he took to the hog, got the snot popped out of him and got cut on his shoulder and straight up QUIT, turned around and came back to the gate, that was exactly what I saw coming from him and why I didn't want him, he had never done that in the woods but had never been cut either, another instance I was trying a blue dog out and had been running a vest on him and the one time I sent him to a solo dog baying without any cut gear he got a good nick on his side and was baying when I got in there, luckily my cur dog saw me and caught which prompted the cd to catch, needless to say he didn't make the ride home, from then on out my mind was made up, now I'll go out on a limb and will say I've caught quite a few hogs that if the dog didn't have a vest on there's no way it would've survived, in those instances none of those dogs had the catching style I like and that was the very reason for them taking the whoopings they were, they all would catch and immediately pull away from the hog lining their body up in front of the hogs and putting their neck and chest right in front of the hogs business end, the first cut vest I saw was made out of wet felt and it was also the first "murder" scene I walked in on, the poor catch dog was massacred and the hogs tooth had gotten hung up in the leg hole of the vest and just wollered a hole in the dogs chest cavity, this being an older cd that had caught a pile of hogs before hand without any type of protection other than a two inch wide regular collar, there are just as many of these stories as there are success stories about cut gear so it's all personal preference I have my reasons why I do things the way I do...
I don't personally but one of my closest friends does, not as much as he used to but will still put one on if he has a dog that's starting to get to catchy, me and him made some a long time ago out of an old tow strap and some old collars we had, he used them for years and I used one on my CDs, they were extremely flexible and offered enough protection to keep the main artery from being cut, we made some from an old fire hose and a wide strap that's used on trailers to secure the load, again they weren't as tough as Kevlar but they didn't hinder the dogs movement in any way, I'm like Old Man on this one and I never have and never will run a vest on my bay dogs, main reason being that Mother Nature never makes mistakes and a dog has the ability to quit the hog or get away from him took protect and save himself but CANNOT escape the heat that comes from the use of a vest, it's not so much a factor in the cooler months as it is during the summer months and it may not seem like a lot of extra weight to us but to a dog it might feel like the equivalent of ten extra pounds when you compare their body size to ours if and when those vest get wet and soak up water, a few extra pounds may not seem like a lot to us who are mostly getting around in buggys and bikes and not making the step for step trips the dogs are making, another thing you can look to for comparison, go run your dogs in the middle of the summer and let them get good and hot and put a wet towel on them for just two or three minutes and observe how much heat that wet towel traps and holds in around the dogs body, that's heat thats not being able to escape the dogs body and cool the dog off, maybe I look to much into things, maybe I don't look enough, who knows, I read a book on animal psychology and mainly cattle handling written by Temple Grandin, those of you who are deep enough in the livestock industry ought to know who she was, if you've ever worked cattle in any modern day working pens or facilities then you've seen her work and might not know it, how she became so successful and world renowned was she put her self on the animals level and observed things as the animal would and made some major break throughs in cattle handling that beforehand had baffled the "professionals" and most today don't even realize it, I took what I learned from the book and applied to how I handle my dogs...
