Bobby,Bobby Vest wrote:I have always tried to tell things like they are or how I see it, so if you have a minute just read what I have to say. This morning I had two guys drive a little over 2 hours to watch both hounds I have for sale run and I could tell from talking to the buyer on the phone that he was serious about buying a dog. I won't mention his name on here because it may embarrass him. I have been listening to dogs run rabbits and watching them ever since I was about 3 years old and I am now 65. I met these guys this morning at the local McDonalds so they could get a bite and a cup of coffee. The man ask me to get the Rebar dog out of the box so he could take a look at him and I opened the door and Rebar wouldn't even come out of the box. This is a hound I have had since he was a baby and he was raised around 5 of my grand kids and I have had the dog all over the country and have had him around hundreds of different people and I have never seen him act like that. I am not going to tell all the details because it would bore you to death. We get to the running spot and turn the dogs loose and they mill around a minute or so and they finally go in a little. When I say a little I mean very little. The one dog opened a couple times and didn't produce and Rebar pretty much stood around and acted like I just gave him a couple shots of morphine. The two dogs in about a 20 minute span opened many times and tried to make a line but I never saw them produce a thing. The point I am trying to make is I feel like a liar. a wanna be thief, whatever you could think of to call somebody that is no good. I have put down many dogs in my life that looked a lot better than my dogs looked this morning and I was asking decent money for them. I don't want to sell a dog, run a dog, play with a dog and I sure don't want to feed a dog. I have shown dogs before that had an off day but I have never seen anything in my life like I saw this morning. I am so sick to my stomach I could throw up. I am going to take a little while and see if I can get over this feeling and if I don't I will never run another dog in my life. I apologize to the man that wasted his time and gas money with all my heart and I hope he can forgive me. He was a gentleman about it and I offered him gas money for his trouble and I offered to buy them a good meal but they kindly refused both and I can understand why. I guess if I had drove that far and saw what we saw I would have wanted to shoot the man showing them instead of shooting the dogs. Again if he reads this I apologoze sincerely and if I can ever do anything to make it up to you I will. Right now I don't feel like showing a dog to anyone and I wouldn't ask anyone to walk around the corner to see these crap eaters. I have lost all the feelings I have ever had for the hounds as of right now. I do appreciate all the calls and all the interest. Thanks for reading this Bobby Vest.
I wouldn't let it affect me too bad but I do understand exactly what you feel. I have been hunting over beagles all my life and have been running and raising my own to run for over 25 years. I decided to sell two older running dogs (you can count on one hand how many running dogs I have sold in my life) and had a guy travel nearly 3 hours to look at the two dogs. Both dogs were good rabbit dogs and were by no means culls. I would have felt confident at the time in saying you could take either or both of these dogs anywhere anytime and run a rabbit, either of them could make the adjustments necessary to bring the rabbit to the gun. The guy and his young son came and spent the night with me and we went out that night and ran my young male that ran a rabbit like he was tied to it for over an hour, so his expectations were high the next morning when we took out the older male and female. My uncle that I have hunted and ran dogs with all my life went with us and we took the dogs to a farm that I knew he would get to see alot of rabbit and dog work and to top it off it was the last weekend of hunting season and his young son had never killed a rabbit and I assured him that he would get plenty of chances that day.
Well, we had a hard time getting rabbits up and when the dogs did finally jump one it ran right past our feet and down the edge of a cut corn field for atleast 120 to 150 yards in plain view. Wouldn't you know the dogs did open when they smelled the rabbit at the jump but were never able to get it away from the squat. finally I called the dogs in the direction of the line and those dogs didn't have a clue a rabbit had ever been through there. I walked those dogs down the edge of that cornfield the entire way and then into the thick where the rabbit finally went back in and those dogs never could smell that rabbit at all!!
We went on to the back of the property and those dogs popped and barked all over that property without ever producing a rabbit the entire time!! I was shocked, I just couldn't believe it. After changing spots later in the day they did finally get after a rabbit thay could run and the boy did get a shot or two at a rabbit.
This taught me one thing for sure;
As sure as someone comes to look at a dog it will make you a liar everytime. And I will tell you now that I was not selling those dogs at cull prices either, I had them priced at what they were worth and they performed at one tenth the price that day.
Anyway, the guy bought both dogs and I held that money for three weeks before I put it into my checking account. I wanted to make sure he was satisfied with the dogs abilities which is something I have never done, when I sell a dog I don't give trials out of my place and I don't buy them back, period. If and when I sell one it is worth every penny of what I ask for it and you can run with, hunt over , and look at it as much as you want and as long as you want with any dog you choose to bring to run with it, but once it leaves me it is your dog. In this case though I just couldn't adhere to that rule, had the roles been reversed I would never have left with either of those dogs after their performance that day. Needless to say the guy called me after about three weeks and said he owned the best two dogs he has ever owned in his life and the dogs were better than I had described to him, so he was content.
I know exactly how you feel, just gotta remember their just dogs and prone to stupidity just like we are.
Good luck and hope everything smooths out for you in the future.
