A lot of my buyers are confirming that there is a great deal of difficulty finding well bred dogs in this day and time. One said he has been wanting a dog like this all his life. Another told me they would buy 10 or 20 dogs before they get a good one, and were about to give up on Catahoulas until he bought a couple from me.
For about 10 yrs. I tried to find good dogs to breed with Maurice and was mostly disappointed with the results, but all that changed when I found the dog below.
In 2004 I bought a dog at Uncle Earl's that changed my life.
His name is C Arrow Patch and his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren are as magnificent as he was in his day.
Patch is gone now but in his life he taught me what tough was because the more he got beat up the more determined he was to win.
I retired Patch from competition and hunting early on because I am a breeder on a mission to bring good dogs back into the hog baying competitions and the mainstream working dog world and finding something like Patch is rare to find in this day and age.
I could not risk him getting killed by a hog in the woods or the pen. Because along the way to producing offspring that would hunt and compete, generation after generation and go on to be high performance hog dogs, I had learned that a stud dog like this does not come along very often.
Below are 2 of Patch's grandsons out of Angel, notice how flat their heads are.
Below is Spider, also a grandchild of Patch who I sold at 2 yrs old and he right out the gate out hunted every dog the man had who had yrs of experience hunting hogs in the marsh and the funny part is; Spider had never been to the marsh or found a hog in his life until my friend hunted him.
But before I get into Patch's heroics, I would like to point out that I was advised by an old timer to get a certain named bloodline that I will not mention here because the last time I did, it caused a great deal drama, and we are here to address genetics and how to 'handle' and breed hog dogs that are breed to hunt, not trained to hunt.
In fact they are so well bred, gamy, confrontational, motivated, and hunt naturally, that I can keep them out of harms way until they are 2 yr s old as a rule, and in that 2 yrs 'training' period, I do not 'need' to train them to hunt, because they all hunt in the end, and instead I train them to survive hog hunting.
I have had people claim there was no way they would feed a dog for 2 yrs and risk it not being a good hunter when they got there. Well, what if experience taught you that with the right genetics, they are all natural hunters even if they are 'raised' by a little lady in the city, and never seen a hog in their life until they are 2 or 3 yrs old? And I have seen it again and again, if they are breed right, I don't care when you start 'em, or what the background is, if they are genetically predisposed and naturally bred to do something, it comes out of 'em given the opportunity! .
In fact the dog you see inn the photo above was 1 1/2 yrs old when I got him as a rescue from a little lady who gave him up because she could not "make him into a pet". Without any training a well bred dog will hunt when given the chance if it is in them genetically.
And it is on that note that I want to address 2 important points we are going to examine.
1. If a dog was not bred in the first place to be a hog dog, good luck putting it in them by ''training 'em to be a hog dog''.
2. And to quote an old timer;"A hog dog is only as good as the man hunting him."
Notice the flat head in the photo above. We will be talking about that later...
Below is Bijeaux a daughter of Spider when she was about 6 months
Hey y'all, the sun is shining outside and I got puppies to feed so we will edit more in here later...
I am going to publish this as unfinished for now, and expand this article later.
I am Marcus de la Houssaye and I can be reached by cell phone @ 337 298 2630
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