4 Hound Dogs

DAW

.. . . continuing from sprinthounds..

4) TRACKING HOUNDS CLAN:

Hardware: small to bigger dogs, usually with short hair.

Good hardware for all the groups within this family are the same - a well balanced dog not extreme in anyway - except the basset varieties which have shorter legs but should be otherwise the same..

Use: tracking the trail left by an animal or person.

Bio: starting with the friendly stage where puppies beg food from the adults. Through the stage where puppies follow the adult pack as they leave the den, following migrating herds.

A long stage, lasting through where older puppies help chase the prey in the hunt..

Software: all the tracking hounds share the instinct to follow scent paths left by animals. They hunt with their nose. They usually bay (howl) while tracking. They have a variety of other instincts and can be grouped according to what other instincts they have:.

A) Tree Hounds: the software to run full tilt down a scent trail, these dogs race to get there first. Used on raccoons in America, and called "coon dogs", they can be used where the hunter wants the dog to bay at the treed prey - not to get the the end of the trail and then wonder off because the track ends at a tree or a hole in the ground..

B) Pack Hounds: the software to stay in a pack, a faster pack hound will not pull away from the slower ones, if walked alone with a person, they wont run off to the next county - they stay with their pack or their person.

Used on predators where it would be fatal for a fast dog to arrive at a bear, mountain lion, or feral hog herd alone. .

C) Rabbit Hounds: a variety of pack hound used on rabbit or hare. They are bred to stay way back from the rabbit so the rabbit can be shot without the dog getting into the line of fire, and without the hound frightening the rabbit into going to ground or the hare running far off. They try to help you hunt - not to kill the rabbit themselves..

D1) Blood Hounds: used to tracked wounded animals, like where a hunter has shot a deer with an arrow, and the deer has run away. The hunter wants the dog to follow that one particular deer - the wounded one, even if it is fleeing with a herd of other deer. A hound with the wrong software will not differentiate between individual deer, and when the wounded deer breaks off from the main herd to die, the non-blood hound might continue to track the un-injured deer in the herd, while a bloodhound will follow the scent of fresh blood to where the injured deer has laid down.AND

D2) River Hounds: a slower variety of hound with an instinct called "cold nose" meaning that they are good at working out old scents, faint scents, cold scents, and broken trails. Used to hunt water going animals like otter, the dog may be asked to sniff faint scents that drift to the surface. River Hounds have a different use, and sometimes a different coat, but are very close to blood hounds, and IMO should be interbred do to the rare nature river hounds, and the over abundance of too heavy for land show type 'bloodhounds'.

.. . . next the bird dogs.

Have you ever thought about how much foxhounds and smooth coated pointing breeds have in common?The difference between tracking hounds and bird dogs is that hounds track scents on the ground, while bird dogs go after scents in the air.

Okay, there are a few other differences, like bird dogs like to watch birds..

The same divisions that are found in hounds are found in bird dogs, it is just that one clan looks to the ground, the other to the air. .

This is because bird dogs, as we know them now, are very new. You can't really have a gun dog until after you have the invention of the gun, it's being small enough to carry hunting, and accurate enough to shoot a bird with, and a small enough shot to not make a pile of feathers out of your fowl dinner. .

Before the gun, bird dogs were used with falcons, hawks, or nets. They were often noblemen's dogs, sporting dogs, not working dogs.

But the hounds have been everybody's dogs, the wealthy with a pack, down to the farmer with one beagle.

It has been common, for each farmer to have one beagle, and then for a group of farmers to meet and each bring one beagle, which makes up the pack. (Don't bring two beagles from the same yard into a small pack with singles- it has been know to cause a fight, where they can gang up on a single dog).. . . next the bird dogs.