Bred To Hunt, and Trained To Survive

Today, I got a big reminder of why I got out of the hog dog business years ago, and why most of the top breeders do not breed and sell to the public.

Two of the puppies I sold to a rancher in south Texas did not survive to be one year old. Why?

Because I told him: "Do not put them into harm's way until they are two years old."

And if you put them in a bay pen, you put them in there to teach them to survive, not to hunt!

You don't use something that will kill them, and you bay them alone. If they have too much help, they will catch. If they get stupid and make a mistake, the hog will punish them, but he will only teach them to back up and respect a boar hog and not kill them.

Ironically I did not sell the puppies to be hogdogs, I sold them during deer season to be blood tracking dogs for hunting guides. Turns out these deer hunting guides have a full-time job as cowboys AND have a lot of hogs too. So they get a wild hair to bring the puppies hog hunting with their Plott hounds. Well, they took the puppies hog hunting and ran into a herd of bad ass south Texas Brahma cattle and the puppies got off on baying the cows after the mature Plott Hound hogdogs got going on hogs and ran off without the pups. The pups were all alone and bored and went to baying a large heard of cattle without any experience on cattle or back up to protect them, and the cattle ran them down and stomped the puppies to death!

I don't train my puppies to hunt, I train them to survive!

Why don't I train them to hunt? Simple, I don't have to. I BREED them to hunt.
And, because they are well bred and have such a strong 'prey drive', if you don't keep them out of harm's way for two years they have a 90% chance of getting killed.

Below is a video of three young pups who had never seen a pig in their life. I had three in there to get them started. After that I put them in the pen alone with the hog. Other wise they start getting catchy.
And you do not want a puppy to start catching in the pen, because when they get to the woods on a rank hog, they don't have enough sense to back up and bay, and they catch and get killed.

If you DO keep them out of harm's way for two years, they have a 90% chance of survival.
And in the wild, a wolf does not leave the pack to go out and hunt on their own until two years old! Why? Because a wolf inherently knows better than to go out on their own without back up when they are too young.

 What makes you think it is any different in a domestic situation?

Unlike most people, I have used a wolf for hog hunting ...

And I used the same dog for tracking wounded and dead deer.

When it came to a blood tracking dog, he was the best running catch dog I had because of speed, a nose, and his sheer size.

I am not finished wrapping up my story, but I just got called out, so maybe I can come back here later and wrap it up...