The American Beagler Forum

How long do you keep from running a dog before a trial? I was unable to run my male for 4 days before the last trial and he really seemed sluggish and lacked the hunt he normally has..

Over all he did very well and ran like normal after the rabbit was up, but just walked around without searching for minutes at a time

depends on the dog for us. Some we run the day before trial and some we stop the week before.

mine seem to do better when i run them once early in the week ,then the morning before the hunt a short hunt not much more than an hr.

For me, I never run the Friday before a trial. I originally started this so I could give the dog a full days rest, but now it has almost became a superstition of mine. I will run every day of the week before Friday, and limit the Thursday run to 2 hours or less.

Mad Dog is right though, that it depends on the dog. Some dogs need to be run down to take away some extra mouth or smooth out rough running, etc.

Cornerstone, it might just have been the heat that made your dog sluggish. I don't think its natural for a dog to run in extreme heat. I think it is a lot to ask of our hounds to hunt hard when it is so hot.

some high strung dogs i run day before to take the edge off and some other dogs get laid up three days before depend on dog.

My higher energy dogs I run about 4 hours on Wednesday, 3 hours on Thursday and about 1 1/2 to 2 hours on Friday. This has worked pretty well for me, as the others said it would depend on the dog, the reason I do this with the dogs with a little more energy is they tend to handle better with the "Edge" wore off. Hope this helps. Hare