Who gets the credit for a great hound??????

[rmaynard]

Why is it that some guys always have a good dog? I think in most cases its both breeder and trainer. Why I say that is how many farm dogs have you seen run the guts out of a rabbit and then you try to hunt with them wow what a mess.

[tenntreedog]

all I know is that the best bred dog in the world can`t make a top hound standing in a lot.Be it beagles, coon hounds, bird dogs makes no differance you have to invest time putting them in the field for them to amount to anything.

[Alabama John]

Great hounds are in every line in a small percentage and so are culls and mediocre ones, but at a much higher percentage. Whether you are getting a great one, average one, or a cull at 6 weeks old is just providence or luck.

Training helps, but training beagles is not like training a bird dog or german shepard. You just put it out there where rabbits are and leave it alone to do it instinct. Beagles operate far more on instinct and not so much on brains. They are not known for brains among the dog world.

The men I know that feel they have great ones are those, to a man, that go see what they are getting after thinking a lot about what they really want in a beagle. Each person is different and YOUR dog or pack reflects what YOU want in beagles.

So, great hounds are in the eyes of the beholder. All lines, the farmer down the roads dogs no one ever heard about, different training systems, all produce great ones if it is what you YOURSELF call great!!!

[Bobby Vest]

The best trainer in the world can't get it out of a dog if its not bred into it, you have to have the genes no matter what. You can polish on a turd for a month and it will still smell like poop.

[Alabama John]

Leave it to Bobby to make it simple. Wise man!!!

[deadeyebeagle]

wouldnt be up to a good trainer to no if he was working with a turd??????because in the end only a good trainer would know if its a turd or a great dog to even spend countless hours of time watching too see

[Buckeye Blues]

I disagree deadeye. I'm not a great trainer because I realize there's not much to train in a beagle. I like my dog because she's my buddy and we're a good fit together. Not because she's the best dog out there. I cant help but think that the people patting themselves on the back for being great trainers are just people starved for attention. I dont understand how you dont give the hound 100% of the credit. Honestly, you guys who actually have great hounds tell me how YOU made them that way? The 1st thing you're gonna say is well I watched this dog and that dog run and then I decided to breed mine to this dog..................BINGO. Now go out there and see if that now shiney turd still smells like poop.

[Bunnyblaster]

Well for starters it takes all 3 in my opinion. Without the genes that make that dog have the brains, nose, foot, etc there wouldn't be anything for the breeder to work with so he/she could choose to make a good cross and have some pups that the trainer will eventually exploit by taking that hound out and letting a beagle be a beagle. Now that being said I think most people would agree that some dogs will be great almost regardless of who trains them and there are also some hounds that can be a little better than they maybe should have been based on who is the trainer...............so I think in the end it has to be in their genes at least to a degree. You can't create a great hound because if you could I would like to think that I would be smart enough to have made one for myself by now instead of having a pack of just average ones. I don't care who says what, a breeder just chooses the dogs to cross but he/she can't create the favorable traits they are after and bobby you must be right because I've been polishing on this thing for the last hour and it still smells like crap...............and it hasn't gotten any shinier yet either.

[flinger]

well said buckeye , i see there are still no takers on that second question , WHO GETS CREDIT FOR THE BAD ONES ? my feeling is , if the abillity of the dog is determed by the trainer , he has to take the bad with the good , are there any takers out there ? oh yeh ! and i think were forgeting was was ask ! there is a big difference between the GREAT ones and the good ones ! a great dog is few and far between , very few , if any that have responded , have owned or seen a trully great one ! i know i havent ! so for those trully great ones ! we need to thank the man upstairs and the dog !

[BCBeagles]

I have had two I considered great, imo. I can only take credit for getting them to handle the rest was them! They hunted hard and ran wtih no bottom on all days, bad or good.
A trainer is only a very small part. The dog is the main part and as said in earlier posts on this there are great in ALL lines maybe some more than in others. I have said this
before and I will say it again, one man's great is not another's. We need to be real selective with GREAT for the ones wo really are.
As for the bad one's credit that can as well be a trainer, excessive shocking, lack of exposure, etc. But, most likely it is just the dog. Not all of them are born with the same
desire as others or other skill sets. We as humans are the same way. I think the breeder can be very selective in breeding but CANNOT eliminate the possibility of a dud at
a pretty regular rate. Thanks much!!

[deadeyebeagle]

well i hear your point and i dont think im some great trainer lol but i agree to disagree thare is a big dif in what you do with yours and some do with thares i can train my hounds 1 time month and be ok with thare performance when i go run with joe shmoe. or i could train 5 or 6 times a week and train my dog into top performance and blow joe shmoes dog back to thare feet.because i dont care how well a dog is breed if someone dont train it it aint going to perform ps i never said i had great dogs (you guys)

[Alabama John]

Don't get too sensitive Deadeye. LOl

You are right, all we need to do is take them somewhere where they can hunt and run, Its that simple. All the rest is instinct at whatever level they have it.

All we ever teach ours is to come when we want to load and go, and that only works when they have run down some and are not on a rabbit.

They do, with time, learn to come quickly when we call excitedly after a shot, or many shots are made, to pick up the trail and get the front when others in our party miss.

It helps if they know how to lead, but, I don't know when we have lead ours, and I don't know who will and who won't, so that is not too important.

[bucks better beagles]

Bobby Vest said: "You can polish on a turd for a month and it will still smell like poop."

While this is may be metaphorically true of poop. It must also be remembered that Michalangelo destroyed many pieces of marble before he created the "Venus".

I have seen many well bred hounds ruined by people with shock collars and abuse. I have seen dogs that hunted with verve piled high but destroyed by trainers who wouldn't let them out of their site. You can take the hunt out of a dog but you cannot put it in.

I don't believe in the theory that "beagles will train themselves". This is redundant. Beagles are born with certain instincts as are all living things, but these instincts must be channeled in the right direction. Case in point, I knew a man who had 9 well bred pups. He kept them all together in a pen for 1 year before he ever tried hunting them and the only human they ever saw was him. By that time, they were what I call "stir crazy". None of them could be tamed. They were socially unable to be around other people or dogs. Though, one of them was able to become a good companion, none of them ever made acceptable hunters.

As for who takes credit for failures in beagles, I will take credit for mine. I've never owned a "great" as many others seem to have but, I have owned many pretty good ones. For every good dog I have owned, I have owned 10 that were failures in one form or another.

JMO-Bob

[warddog]

What part of taking a dog to the field is training? To train would be to teach which would mean to cause your student to know a subject. Now all you great trainers out there please explain to me how to teach a dog what a rabbit smells like, how to tell which way a rabbit is traveling so as not to backtrack, how to tongue and do so when the rabbit is up, where to even search to find a rabbit or to even track such a scent in lieu of standing there blowing a hole in the very spot that scent was smelled. How do you teach a dog to even want to pursue game when they probably would much beter enjoy sitting in their dog house as all that excercise is alot of work. By the way do you professors of dog training make them write on the black board all these lessons hundreds of times so as to pound it into their skulls or do you merely take them to the field and let NATURE take it's course? Since the domestication of the dog the top trainer is Professor EXPERIANCE as that is the only way any pursuit dog will even be given the opportunity to excell at what they are genetically programmed to do. These animals are programmed to pursue a specific game as their main quarry for survival and if man would not intervene then they would either learn on their own how to survive or they would perish. Their desire is to survive and all the rest of the stuff put into rabbit hunting is for the benefit of the individual captor. That's why I challange any so-called trainer to take one of those dogs that has been in the pen or on the chain for a couple years and teach it to be a top rabbit dog. Teaching has no bounds when it comes to age as I see many folks getting TOP degrees after they've retired from their regular line of work. My wife is in her 50's and just got her master's degree and graduated with honors. I guess someone taught that old dog how to be a top dog!

[xdawg2]

Question, at the end of the day, whats it really matter who to give credit... Not a one of us can even smell a rabbit well enough to bark...

They are just dogs, though we can better our odds... There is still a ton of luck on getting a really good one... When you get a good one, cherish it...

Jack