Thread: First hunting dog

Originally Posted by phillipgr

A question for some of the guys on here who have had multiple dogs. At what point do you decide the dog lacks the blood (or whatever you want to call it) and ought to be put down so you can start over? If I face that decision with my first dog in the coming few years I'd be forever asking "is the dog a cock up or am I just training it wrong?".

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we own a kennel full here, they are all different, have different strengths, temps and weaknesses but they are all still here.
all get as much work and training as we can get into them, some more than others purely on the above differences.
and yet they all do the job they were intended to do.
this advice to shoot the rubbish shouldn't even be in this thread as wirehunt says it has nothing to do with a pigdog or a rabbit mutt.
for a gundog / hunting dog get the cross or purebred that rocks ya boat and put the work in, if ya can't put the work in do the potential pup a favour and let someone else take it instead........ ya always hear the expceptions about how a pup was half trained and seemed to be doing it all at 10 mths old, but the reality is that's not the norm and you seldom get a free lunch no matter wot you pay..... expect to actually do some training and sometimes a lot more.
I hear more positives from guys who's best dog was there first one, and i have no issue selling a pup to a keen young competant hunter after his first pup and is keen as hell to put the time in. 90% of my pup buyers are hunters after a replacement but I enjoy getting the progress reports from the first timers.
you seldom get a complete cock up, a mismatch maybe but most can be trained to a usable standard with a little time and some advise.