August 27, 2025 • 18 mins
This week, Tony explores how we look at dog breeds generally, but also as our dogs as indivudals, and how we can get into trouble with either when it comes to training and hunting.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundation's podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about how we
think about our dogs and our dog breeds and why
that can get us into trouble. Look, humans are goofy
in a lot of ways. For example, my Instagram feed
is full of a few things. Fish just clabbering topwater
(00:27):
lures all over the world, dogs while doing dog stuff,
which should come as no surprise to anyone, And a
hell of a lot of people getting injured while attempting
to rope, swing over lakes, or parkour on small ledges,
drive vehicles over and through objects that won't allow a
whole lot of safe passage. Now, as a group, we
(00:47):
have those kinds of people and the individuals like myself
and I hope you who would never attempt most of
those things, even if we could get a lot of
social media clout for it. While this might seem like
it has nothing to do with it does and that's
what I'm going to talk about right now. If you
(01:10):
could hop into the wayback machine and program it to
take you to May eighteenth to twenty twelve, you would
have a chance to buy stock in Facebook, which ipo'd
on that date for just thirty eight bucks a share,
you could have gotten in on the ground floor. Now,
while it did eventually sink to eighteen bucks a share
for a while, it didn't stay there very long, and
Zuck and crew have done a pretty good job of
(01:32):
building a giant company that nearly prints money. Today those
shares would be worth just shy of eight hundred bucks,
which means if you had dumped just a grand in
on that IPO date, you'd be sitting on twenty thousand
dollars today in meta, which is what Facebook turned into
a few years back. Not a bad return, And how
did they do it? Well? They figured out how to
(01:54):
get anyone and everyone to sign up for their own
personal page to show off their latest meals and wish
happy birthday to Grammar. Then they expanded. They started selling
ads to us, since we are the audience and there
was a hell of a lot of us. Over time,
along the way, they bought a few other companies, including Instagram. Now,
(02:14):
the real secret to the sauce was realizing what kind
of content kept us engaged in angry, Because the more
time we spend on their platforms, the more ads they
can show us, and the more attention to platforms get
from the general public and the media, the more the
sites can grow. While it's not all negative, social media
thrives off of our tribalism. We love to think of
(02:37):
ourselves as individuals while thinking of people who we don't
really know or who we disagree with, as one lump
sum of two legged pond scum who would probably take
a dump in our bowllet cheerios if we weren't paying attention.
It's literally coded in our genes to be social and
to crave belonging in small groups. It's how we got
to where we are today, because being alone throughout much
(02:59):
of his was as close to a death sentence as
it would be to jump into the nile at midnight
to wrestle some crocodiles just for fun. That tribalism is
on display all over and it sucks, even if it
is a part of us now. It allows us to
be comfortable with ourselves while feeling superior to others while
(03:20):
they are being comfortable with themselves and feeling superior to us.
We can't help ourselves, and we do this when it
comes to dogs too. Now. I've written about breed loyalty
a lot, and I think it's important to understand there
is comfort in sticking with golden retrievers our whole lives,
just like there's comfort in fishing the same lake your
family has had a cabin on since nineteen oh seven.
(03:43):
After all, why mess with a good thing. Breed loyalty
is partially about the breed, but also about allowing ourselves
to feel like we belong to a group. The more
popular a breed is, the less profoundnesses a lot of times,
but not always. And if you're into a I don't know,
a newer type of breed, or at least one this
new to yer region or whatever, there can be a
(04:03):
lot of personal identity tied into that type of dog
we choose, and you can get extra super bonus points
in this category if your chosen breed is truly rare.
That allows us to feel special. And that's a nice,
warm blanket that we can pull up to our chins
every night before we drift off to sleep. We know
something the others don't that our breed is awesome and
(04:25):
the best, and there sucks a whole lot. But beyond this,
there is a thing that happens to us with dogs
that can get us into trouble in a variety of ways.
It involves thinking about our dogs as total individuals, while
also not quite understanding or acknowledging general traits and issues
(04:45):
with specific breeds. I'll give you an easy one here,
Golden Retrievers and biting people. The thing about this is
we think about dog attacks and the usual suspects here.
If you want to feel better than someone, just talk
to a pitbull owner who will inevitably tell you how
loving and caring and gentle their dog is. And their
dog might be, or it might just flip its bobber
(05:08):
and attack in a way that could kill someone. Now,
Golden Retrievers aren't overly likely to kill someone, but they
are more likely to bite people than a lot of
folks care to admit. That doesn't mean anyone should shy
away from the breed, but instead should consider that while
they are known for being goofy, lovable dogs, they also
aren't immune to aggression. The worst case of a bite
(05:31):
in my circle of friends who all have dogs happened
when my buddy's son woke up their old female Golden
retriever and she instantly snapped at him. He got a
bunch of stitches in his face from a dog that
I'd have bet real good money would go its whole
career without injuring anyone. It can happen, and it highlights
(05:51):
the difference between what we think about dogs in general
and what they can be as individuals. Another way to
look at this is the dangerous ground we get into
when we want a certain breed for whatever reasons and
we try to plug them into an unfair situation. Now,
in the hunting community and just the general dog loving
(06:12):
community as a whole, we love dogs that aren't bred
or normally used for a certain job, but then take
to the role and shine brightly. In our world. You
might see a little Jack Russell terrier who retrieves ducks
all day, or someone else who decided a German short
hair is just right for the duck blind. Sure, there
are individual dogs that you can color pretty far outside
(06:34):
the lines with, but in general, buying a German short
hair and trying to get it to be a really
good duck dog doesn't make a lot of sense. This
general sentiment has turned a lot of potentially good bird
dogs into mostly house dogs, and as per usual, it's
not the dog's fault. This is also a little like
something else we do with dogs sometimes, which is assume
(06:55):
they'll be one way because they are a certain breed.
An easy example here would be the problem I had
with Sadie, my four year old lab, when she was
a pup and I tried to get her into the water.
I had never encountered a lab that just had a
mental hard block on swimming, and it really never occurred
to me that I would let alone, that I would
own one, and that she would give me anxiety for
(07:17):
a few months over this whole thing. Now. At one
point I even interviewed a trainer from South Dakota who
talked about this extensively, where he said that he runs
into a pheramountal labs that need a lot of coaxing
and a careful plan to get them introduced to water
in a way where they wouldn't be terrified. So think
about this situation and the potential for danger. We have
(07:37):
this idea that labs are all water dogs, and for
good reason, they've been bred to retrieve in the water.
They're literally built for it and generally are very good
at it. But that's an overarching belief about a whole
breed and not an individual case by case thing. Where
we get into trouble here is not that we might
have a dog that doesn't conform to the breed standard
(07:59):
on some te ask, but that some level of hesitancy
on their part can cause a pretty quick level of
frustration on ours. Dog training and dog ownership comes with
enough obstacles, so when we have to deal with something
we just didn't expect, it can break bad in a hurry.
But we need to look at our dogs as individuals,
because they are and they are all quirky, and they
(08:20):
all have their own things. Where this gets even trickier
is that if you lean into this mindset too hard,
the individual dog mindset mind you, you can give yourself
plenty of reasons to give up on your dog in
a certain way or excuse away bad behavior. Think about
this like you would with kids. If you have a
kid in elementary school that won't behave and no one
(08:41):
makes an attempt to mold his behavior in a better
way because he comes from I don't know, a rough
home situation or seems to have some other confounding issues,
then it's never going to get better. That behavior is
going to develop deep roots, and it won't do him
any favors as he grows up in the real world
and all of its obligations come to calling. If you
(09:12):
have a bird dog that doesn't do something or is
scared of something, and you give them a pass because
you believe that's just how your specific dog is wired,
you gotta be careful. This is where acknowledging what the
breed is and is known for matters. When you think
about a lab that is terrified of water at four months,
for example, you have two things going on. You have
(09:33):
an individual that isn't ready to take a swim yet,
but it's also the kind of dog that is very
likely to enjoy the water when that mental dam breaks open.
Your job isn't to give him a pass on this
because he doesn't want to do it and it would
be easier than trying to figure it out. Your job
is to facilitate the introduction however you need to, in
(09:53):
order to remind your lab that he is a lab.
Let's look at this another way. Have you ever spent
time with an English cocker or maybe a Springer Spaniel.
They bounce around with curly ears, flopping like adorable lunatics,
and generally seem to kind of be having a party
at all times. This is appealing as hell, because it
(10:15):
is fun to have a dog show up for work
and be excited for literally everything you can do with them,
but that can also wear you down some. That frenetic
energy level is great for an all day pheasant or
grouse hunt, but not so much for a day stuck
at home when it's storming outside. It can also lend
itself to issues with recall and steadiness, because a dog
(10:36):
that is built to go will fight you some when
you tell them they can't go, especially if you do
it in a situation where they're highly excited and really
want to go. Now. You might think, I've never seen
an English cocker that would slow down and truly listen,
so you might assume that's beyond your dog's reach. That's
using the general trade of a breed as an excuse
to not train in good behaviors. Again, if you get
(10:57):
a dog that is wired pretty hot, you have to
do extra work to get them to throttle down. But
you can get them to throttle down, and you should try,
because getting a handle on a bird dog is MOOI importante.
I guess an easier way to frame this up is
to take a huge step back and think about working
dogs in general. I have a really good buddy who
is a canine officer here in the Twin Cities who
(11:18):
has a Belgian Malanoir that is, by all accounts a
true fur missile. The dog's name is Gus and he
has drive four days. He also has had the training
to bring out his most Belgian Malanoa traits, and he
is perfect for the job of taking down bad guys
and then sniffing out all the illegal things they ditch
(11:39):
while trying to run away. I also know a woman
who has a Belgian Malanoir that is the biggest chicken
shit I've ever met in a dog. It's racked with
nervous energy and in some ways is one of the
most annoying dogs I've ever met because she can't not
be in constant contact with humans. I think you could
train that dog for a thousand years to do basically
(12:00):
work and it would never quite get there. Now, if
you looked at the two, you wouldn't be able to
see a real difference. Esthetically, they represent the breed equally well,
but internally they are as opposite as dogs could be.
What does this mean for most of us, Well, if
you go to get a new hunting dog and you
decide I'm going to get a German short hair because
(12:21):
I don't know they are hunting dogs, I'd say, well,
which one are you going to get? Which one are
you talking about? Generally they are pretty solid when it
comes to taking to anything bird related because of the breed,
But the individual is what matters. You might be able
to get every GSP on the planet interested in a
pile of feathers to some degree, but getting one that
will hunt all day and point like it's set in
(12:42):
stone is a different thing. So what's the takeaway here,
besides once again how important the best blood is. It's
that you have to acknowledge two things about your dog,
especially when it comes to preseason training and then actual hunting,
which is what we're dealing with right now with our dogs.
The first is that your dog is a specific breed,
which comes with specific traits and expectations and behavioral realities.
(13:07):
The second is that your dog is also an individual,
which means it's gonna have some quirks, it's gonna have
its own ideas and what to do for you, and
its own set of internal drivers that you have to
figure out as you go. What this means is that
if you're fighting something within your dog, maybe that's just
an off switch at home or whatever. Ask yourself what
you're dealing with. Is that GSP you own that won't
(13:30):
throttle down at home a problem just because it's a
GSP and they are generally high drive. That's a good
excuse to you. But is it entirely true in your
specific scenario, or is it because your dog is a
well bred GSP and it gets one walk in the
morning and one walk in the afternoon. Because just walking
with a dog like that will do almost nothing to
take the edge off. That's a dog that needs to
(13:51):
run for real and work for real. How about your
lab that won't stop whining and barking every time you train.
In this case, you might think that they aren't overly
known for being super vocal, but they certainly can be.
Maybe just got allowed one and that's what he is
as an individual, and there's nothing you can do about it,
maybe short of a bark collar. Or once again, maybe
(14:15):
he's just an individual dog that needs to get in
more reps every day. Otherwise he's in a state of
constant nervous excitement, which manifests itself in a bit of
overload when he finally gets to do what he needs
to do after being created all day. Maybe your dog
will point or flush birds like a champion, but won't
pick them up once you knock them down. Is that
your dog's breed peeking through or is it up to
(14:38):
the individual? Is that behavior that should be dismissed and
just accepted as an individual quirk? Or is there something
you did wrong training wise that caused him to never
really get the spark necessary to pick anything up, at
least anything with feathers and hold it until you can
take it from him. What can you do about that?
I guess the final takeaway from this one is that
(14:58):
we choose our breeds for a specific reas. We like
their looks, we like their personalities, their hunting styles, their
goofiness at home, whatever. We know that they generally have
the capability to do certain things really well, and that's
maybe the biggest selling point. But we also know their
individuals and when they don't do what we expect them to,
we can go a lot of different ways with it,
but mostly we should acknowledge that they are probably capable
(15:22):
of the tasks or behaviors that we want them to do,
we just can't seem to get them there in that moment.
This is where pro dog trainers tend to earn their
money because they don't have a choice but to try
to get the most out of every dog, regardless of
blood or how they've been handled before showing up at
their kennel. There is a dance here between the breed
and the specific dog, and pro trainers will default to
(15:45):
belief that the individual is capable of a hell of
a lot, and they'll lean in that direction with their
knowledge of the breed riding shotgun in their brains. Amateur handlers,
of which we all are, often go the other way
and dismisbehaviors we know our dogs should be a to
do or offer us because we don't know how to
coax them out correctly. It's kind of like being a
(16:06):
parent and deciding your child shouldn't do math because the
first lessons on adding and subtracting just didn't stick in
early elementary school. Sure, maybe you have a child that
is more into words, but that's not a great excuse
to not work on the fundamentals of math at such
a formative age. We do this with our dogs throughout
their lives, but it comes with a cost that might
not show up till a few years down the line.
(16:28):
That's dangerous territory and it often stems from us not
quite understanding what our dogs really are and what they
can be with the right guidance. So think about that,
you know, this fall, this preseason. You know, maybe as
you're heading out to hunt the first doves or ducks
or grouse or whatever in the early season, think about
(16:48):
that about your dog, think about your training style with them,
and if you do get out there for some early
season bird hunting, good luck and stay safe. That's it
for this week. I'm Tony Peterson in this This has
been the Houndation's podcast. As always, thank you so much
for showing up and for listening. Cal and I here
really appreciate it. How the whole Mediator crew does. If
(17:10):
you need some more hunting content, or maybe just need
something to entertain yourself, you can head to the mediater
dot com. We have new articles, tons of stories of
news happening in the outdoor world. We have some great
writers covering like really relevant events. We have new films
dropping all the time. The whole crew is putting out
(17:32):
tons of content, and of course we have a lot
of other podcasts. I know you know about the Mediater podcast,
but have you ever listened to Brent Reeves This Country
Life and just heard his voice That guy was meant
to do that. Go give it a listen, Go check
out the mediater dot com and thank you once again,
(18:00):
how Man
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundation's podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about how we
think about our dogs and our dog breeds and why
that can get us into trouble. Look, humans are goofy
in a lot of ways. For example, my Instagram feed
is full of a few things. Fish just clabbering topwater
(00:27):
lures all over the world, dogs while doing dog stuff,
which should come as no surprise to anyone, And a
hell of a lot of people getting injured while attempting
to rope, swing over lakes, or parkour on small ledges,
drive vehicles over and through objects that won't allow a
whole lot of safe passage. Now, as a group, we
(00:47):
have those kinds of people and the individuals like myself
and I hope you who would never attempt most of
those things, even if we could get a lot of
social media clout for it. While this might seem like
it has nothing to do with it does and that's
what I'm going to talk about right now. If you
(01:10):
could hop into the wayback machine and program it to
take you to May eighteenth to twenty twelve, you would
have a chance to buy stock in Facebook, which ipo'd
on that date for just thirty eight bucks a share,
you could have gotten in on the ground floor. Now,
while it did eventually sink to eighteen bucks a share
for a while, it didn't stay there very long, and
Zuck and crew have done a pretty good job of
(01:32):
building a giant company that nearly prints money. Today those
shares would be worth just shy of eight hundred bucks,
which means if you had dumped just a grand in
on that IPO date, you'd be sitting on twenty thousand
dollars today in meta, which is what Facebook turned into
a few years back. Not a bad return, And how
did they do it? Well? They figured out how to
(01:54):
get anyone and everyone to sign up for their own
personal page to show off their latest meals and wish
happy birthday to Grammar. Then they expanded. They started selling
ads to us, since we are the audience and there
was a hell of a lot of us. Over time,
along the way, they bought a few other companies, including Instagram. Now,
(02:14):
the real secret to the sauce was realizing what kind
of content kept us engaged in angry, Because the more
time we spend on their platforms, the more ads they
can show us, and the more attention to platforms get
from the general public and the media, the more the
sites can grow. While it's not all negative, social media
thrives off of our tribalism. We love to think of
(02:37):
ourselves as individuals while thinking of people who we don't
really know or who we disagree with, as one lump
sum of two legged pond scum who would probably take
a dump in our bowllet cheerios if we weren't paying attention.
It's literally coded in our genes to be social and
to crave belonging in small groups. It's how we got
to where we are today, because being alone throughout much
(02:59):
of his was as close to a death sentence as
it would be to jump into the nile at midnight
to wrestle some crocodiles just for fun. That tribalism is
on display all over and it sucks, even if it
is a part of us now. It allows us to
be comfortable with ourselves while feeling superior to others while
(03:20):
they are being comfortable with themselves and feeling superior to us.
We can't help ourselves, and we do this when it
comes to dogs too. Now. I've written about breed loyalty
a lot, and I think it's important to understand there
is comfort in sticking with golden retrievers our whole lives,
just like there's comfort in fishing the same lake your
family has had a cabin on since nineteen oh seven.
(03:43):
After all, why mess with a good thing. Breed loyalty
is partially about the breed, but also about allowing ourselves
to feel like we belong to a group. The more
popular a breed is, the less profoundnesses a lot of times,
but not always. And if you're into a I don't know,
a newer type of breed, or at least one this
new to yer region or whatever, there can be a
(04:03):
lot of personal identity tied into that type of dog
we choose, and you can get extra super bonus points
in this category if your chosen breed is truly rare.
That allows us to feel special. And that's a nice,
warm blanket that we can pull up to our chins
every night before we drift off to sleep. We know
something the others don't that our breed is awesome and
(04:25):
the best, and there sucks a whole lot. But beyond this,
there is a thing that happens to us with dogs
that can get us into trouble in a variety of ways.
It involves thinking about our dogs as total individuals, while
also not quite understanding or acknowledging general traits and issues
(04:45):
with specific breeds. I'll give you an easy one here,
Golden Retrievers and biting people. The thing about this is
we think about dog attacks and the usual suspects here.
If you want to feel better than someone, just talk
to a pitbull owner who will inevitably tell you how
loving and caring and gentle their dog is. And their
dog might be, or it might just flip its bobber
(05:08):
and attack in a way that could kill someone. Now,
Golden Retrievers aren't overly likely to kill someone, but they
are more likely to bite people than a lot of
folks care to admit. That doesn't mean anyone should shy
away from the breed, but instead should consider that while
they are known for being goofy, lovable dogs, they also
aren't immune to aggression. The worst case of a bite
(05:31):
in my circle of friends who all have dogs happened
when my buddy's son woke up their old female Golden
retriever and she instantly snapped at him. He got a
bunch of stitches in his face from a dog that
I'd have bet real good money would go its whole
career without injuring anyone. It can happen, and it highlights
(05:51):
the difference between what we think about dogs in general
and what they can be as individuals. Another way to
look at this is the dangerous ground we get into
when we want a certain breed for whatever reasons and
we try to plug them into an unfair situation. Now,
in the hunting community and just the general dog loving
(06:12):
community as a whole, we love dogs that aren't bred
or normally used for a certain job, but then take
to the role and shine brightly. In our world. You
might see a little Jack Russell terrier who retrieves ducks
all day, or someone else who decided a German short
hair is just right for the duck blind. Sure, there
are individual dogs that you can color pretty far outside
(06:34):
the lines with, but in general, buying a German short
hair and trying to get it to be a really
good duck dog doesn't make a lot of sense. This
general sentiment has turned a lot of potentially good bird
dogs into mostly house dogs, and as per usual, it's
not the dog's fault. This is also a little like
something else we do with dogs sometimes, which is assume
(06:55):
they'll be one way because they are a certain breed.
An easy example here would be the problem I had
with Sadie, my four year old lab, when she was
a pup and I tried to get her into the water.
I had never encountered a lab that just had a
mental hard block on swimming, and it really never occurred
to me that I would let alone, that I would
own one, and that she would give me anxiety for
(07:17):
a few months over this whole thing. Now. At one
point I even interviewed a trainer from South Dakota who
talked about this extensively, where he said that he runs
into a pheramountal labs that need a lot of coaxing
and a careful plan to get them introduced to water
in a way where they wouldn't be terrified. So think
about this situation and the potential for danger. We have
(07:37):
this idea that labs are all water dogs, and for
good reason, they've been bred to retrieve in the water.
They're literally built for it and generally are very good
at it. But that's an overarching belief about a whole
breed and not an individual case by case thing. Where
we get into trouble here is not that we might
have a dog that doesn't conform to the breed standard
(07:59):
on some te ask, but that some level of hesitancy
on their part can cause a pretty quick level of
frustration on ours. Dog training and dog ownership comes with
enough obstacles, so when we have to deal with something
we just didn't expect, it can break bad in a hurry.
But we need to look at our dogs as individuals,
because they are and they are all quirky, and they
(08:20):
all have their own things. Where this gets even trickier
is that if you lean into this mindset too hard,
the individual dog mindset mind you, you can give yourself
plenty of reasons to give up on your dog in
a certain way or excuse away bad behavior. Think about
this like you would with kids. If you have a
kid in elementary school that won't behave and no one
(08:41):
makes an attempt to mold his behavior in a better
way because he comes from I don't know, a rough
home situation or seems to have some other confounding issues,
then it's never going to get better. That behavior is
going to develop deep roots, and it won't do him
any favors as he grows up in the real world
and all of its obligations come to calling. If you
(09:12):
have a bird dog that doesn't do something or is
scared of something, and you give them a pass because
you believe that's just how your specific dog is wired,
you gotta be careful. This is where acknowledging what the
breed is and is known for matters. When you think
about a lab that is terrified of water at four months,
for example, you have two things going on. You have
(09:33):
an individual that isn't ready to take a swim yet,
but it's also the kind of dog that is very
likely to enjoy the water when that mental dam breaks open.
Your job isn't to give him a pass on this
because he doesn't want to do it and it would
be easier than trying to figure it out. Your job
is to facilitate the introduction however you need to, in
(09:53):
order to remind your lab that he is a lab.
Let's look at this another way. Have you ever spent
time with an English cocker or maybe a Springer Spaniel.
They bounce around with curly ears, flopping like adorable lunatics,
and generally seem to kind of be having a party
at all times. This is appealing as hell, because it
(10:15):
is fun to have a dog show up for work
and be excited for literally everything you can do with them,
but that can also wear you down some. That frenetic
energy level is great for an all day pheasant or
grouse hunt, but not so much for a day stuck
at home when it's storming outside. It can also lend
itself to issues with recall and steadiness, because a dog
(10:36):
that is built to go will fight you some when
you tell them they can't go, especially if you do
it in a situation where they're highly excited and really
want to go. Now. You might think, I've never seen
an English cocker that would slow down and truly listen,
so you might assume that's beyond your dog's reach. That's
using the general trade of a breed as an excuse
to not train in good behaviors. Again, if you get
(10:57):
a dog that is wired pretty hot, you have to
do extra work to get them to throttle down. But
you can get them to throttle down, and you should try,
because getting a handle on a bird dog is MOOI importante.
I guess an easier way to frame this up is
to take a huge step back and think about working
dogs in general. I have a really good buddy who
is a canine officer here in the Twin Cities who
(11:18):
has a Belgian Malanoir that is, by all accounts a
true fur missile. The dog's name is Gus and he
has drive four days. He also has had the training
to bring out his most Belgian Malanoa traits, and he
is perfect for the job of taking down bad guys
and then sniffing out all the illegal things they ditch
(11:39):
while trying to run away. I also know a woman
who has a Belgian Malanoir that is the biggest chicken
shit I've ever met in a dog. It's racked with
nervous energy and in some ways is one of the
most annoying dogs I've ever met because she can't not
be in constant contact with humans. I think you could
train that dog for a thousand years to do basically
(12:00):
work and it would never quite get there. Now, if
you looked at the two, you wouldn't be able to
see a real difference. Esthetically, they represent the breed equally well,
but internally they are as opposite as dogs could be.
What does this mean for most of us, Well, if
you go to get a new hunting dog and you
decide I'm going to get a German short hair because
(12:21):
I don't know they are hunting dogs, I'd say, well,
which one are you going to get? Which one are
you talking about? Generally they are pretty solid when it
comes to taking to anything bird related because of the breed,
But the individual is what matters. You might be able
to get every GSP on the planet interested in a
pile of feathers to some degree, but getting one that
will hunt all day and point like it's set in
(12:42):
stone is a different thing. So what's the takeaway here,
besides once again how important the best blood is. It's
that you have to acknowledge two things about your dog,
especially when it comes to preseason training and then actual hunting,
which is what we're dealing with right now with our dogs.
The first is that your dog is a specific breed,
which comes with specific traits and expectations and behavioral realities.
(13:07):
The second is that your dog is also an individual,
which means it's gonna have some quirks, it's gonna have
its own ideas and what to do for you, and
its own set of internal drivers that you have to
figure out as you go. What this means is that
if you're fighting something within your dog, maybe that's just
an off switch at home or whatever. Ask yourself what
you're dealing with. Is that GSP you own that won't
(13:30):
throttle down at home a problem just because it's a
GSP and they are generally high drive. That's a good
excuse to you. But is it entirely true in your
specific scenario, or is it because your dog is a
well bred GSP and it gets one walk in the
morning and one walk in the afternoon. Because just walking
with a dog like that will do almost nothing to
take the edge off. That's a dog that needs to
(13:51):
run for real and work for real. How about your
lab that won't stop whining and barking every time you train.
In this case, you might think that they aren't overly
known for being super vocal, but they certainly can be.
Maybe just got allowed one and that's what he is
as an individual, and there's nothing you can do about it,
maybe short of a bark collar. Or once again, maybe
(14:15):
he's just an individual dog that needs to get in
more reps every day. Otherwise he's in a state of
constant nervous excitement, which manifests itself in a bit of
overload when he finally gets to do what he needs
to do after being created all day. Maybe your dog
will point or flush birds like a champion, but won't
pick them up once you knock them down. Is that
your dog's breed peeking through or is it up to
(14:38):
the individual? Is that behavior that should be dismissed and
just accepted as an individual quirk? Or is there something
you did wrong training wise that caused him to never
really get the spark necessary to pick anything up, at
least anything with feathers and hold it until you can
take it from him. What can you do about that?
I guess the final takeaway from this one is that
(14:58):
we choose our breeds for a specific reas. We like
their looks, we like their personalities, their hunting styles, their
goofiness at home, whatever. We know that they generally have
the capability to do certain things really well, and that's
maybe the biggest selling point. But we also know their
individuals and when they don't do what we expect them to,
we can go a lot of different ways with it,
but mostly we should acknowledge that they are probably capable
(15:22):
of the tasks or behaviors that we want them to do,
we just can't seem to get them there in that moment.
This is where pro dog trainers tend to earn their
money because they don't have a choice but to try
to get the most out of every dog, regardless of
blood or how they've been handled before showing up at
their kennel. There is a dance here between the breed
and the specific dog, and pro trainers will default to
(15:45):
belief that the individual is capable of a hell of
a lot, and they'll lean in that direction with their
knowledge of the breed riding shotgun in their brains. Amateur handlers,
of which we all are, often go the other way
and dismisbehaviors we know our dogs should be a to
do or offer us because we don't know how to
coax them out correctly. It's kind of like being a
(16:06):
parent and deciding your child shouldn't do math because the
first lessons on adding and subtracting just didn't stick in
early elementary school. Sure, maybe you have a child that
is more into words, but that's not a great excuse
to not work on the fundamentals of math at such
a formative age. We do this with our dogs throughout
their lives, but it comes with a cost that might
not show up till a few years down the line.
(16:28):
That's dangerous territory and it often stems from us not
quite understanding what our dogs really are and what they
can be with the right guidance. So think about that,
you know, this fall, this preseason. You know, maybe as
you're heading out to hunt the first doves or ducks
or grouse or whatever in the early season, think about
(16:48):
that about your dog, think about your training style with them,
and if you do get out there for some early
season bird hunting, good luck and stay safe. That's it
for this week. I'm Tony Peterson in this This has
been the Houndation's podcast. As always, thank you so much
for showing up and for listening. Cal and I here
really appreciate it. How the whole Mediator crew does. If
(17:10):
you need some more hunting content, or maybe just need
something to entertain yourself, you can head to the mediater
dot com. We have new articles, tons of stories of
news happening in the outdoor world. We have some great
writers covering like really relevant events. We have new films
dropping all the time. The whole crew is putting out
(17:32):
tons of content, and of course we have a lot
of other podcasts. I know you know about the Mediater podcast,
but have you ever listened to Brent Reeves This Country
Life and just heard his voice That guy was meant
to do that. Go give it a listen, Go check
out the mediater dot com and thank you once again,
(18:00):
how Man
Host
Cal Callaghan
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