The Versatility Of A Catahoula

Here is a link to a website for J Cross Catahoulas.

Now I am not endorsing these folks, and as far as I know, I have never met them personally, and frankly, would like to, based upon what they have done with their breeding and day to day working service of NALC registered dogs.

I have put their testimonial below the link because it is a great description of the working versatility of Catahoulas for penning cattle, and hunting hogs.

So many people want a dog to do one thing and one thing only, and the rest of the time, leave the dog tied up or kenneled and get no socialization. This drives a Catahoula nuts!

If you can haul your dog to work everyday and give them a wide variety of outlets for their energy, not to mention being with you everywhere you go, you will be amazed how much they can learn and work in your program.

It drives me nuts to deal with the public who it appears about 90% of the time want to buy a finished dog, meaning they want to invest money, and no time and expect the dog to work for them. I don't care how good the dog is, if they don't know you, they will need a warm up period which may be a few weeks or perhaps months to come around.

But if you spend time like these people do at J Cross Kennels, you will be amazed at what you can acheive with a Catahoula.

Best way to build a relationship if you are not a breeder and trainer, is to buy a puppy and give it time!

I have actually watched people spend thousands of dollars on well bred and well trained dogs, and the dog was less after coming back because the "new owner" did not know what they were doing.

Now these folks at J Cross pen wild cattle for a living. If they don't have a relationship and a handle on their dogs and horses, what they are doing on a daily basis would not be possible. In one word: Teamwork between man, horse and dog, can get the job done.

www.jcrosscatahoulas.com

Below is from their "about J Cross" page:

J Cross Catahoulas is a dream we're seeing come to reality. We took an ordinary pack of "cow dogs" to a show for fun....and BOY! What a ride it's been. It's been a lot of fun showing to earn 16 championship titles with our personal dogs and 6 earned by dogs we have sold - hopefully, there's more to come.

At J Cross, we use our dogs penning cattle, hog hunting and competition cowdog trials and hog baying, the same ones we lead in the show ring. The versatility of the Catahoula breed is uncanny, we hope to continue proving that through generations to come. The desire to please, the willingness to give and the determination to complete a job and know it's well done, that's what we want to see today and tomorrow. Thank you for visiting our site. If we can ever be of service, we're but a phone call away.

In February 1993, we began breeding for Catahoulas with an extreme working drive for our own personal use. Our need for a dog that can find cattle in the woods and bay for extended periods is the sole driving force for breeding, as we use our dogs in our daily business penning cattle for the general public. It is necessary to have a good tempered dog that is "hot" enough to stay when the cattle are rough and soft enough to bay when the cattle are already dog broke. We soon learned that not only are they exceptional cow dogs, but they can excel in any endeavor.

We began hog hunting and found that the same cow drive we'd bred for produced excellent hunting dogs. From there, it snowballed. Justin, my son, became interested in competition hog baying. In August of 2002, we formally named our kennel and began offering for sale a few pups with the J Cross name.

Through selective breeding of proven working stock, we have been able to not only do the day to day work, penning cattle or hog hunting, we've been able to show that it is possible to breed one dog for all jobs. While we immensely enjoy showing our catahoulas in the different venues, and are mightily proud of the titles they've earned, we refuse to hang our hat on just a title. However, it is with great pride that we announce, EVERY J Cross Catahoula shown to date has earned NALC Championship points in some venue, without exception.

We've borrowed this quote from our Canadian friends at Cross Check Catahoulas, simply spoken, it says volumes.

"Pedigree indicates what the animal should be. Conformation indicates what the animal appears to be. Performance indicates what the animal actually is." - Anonymous