cold nose

[snowshoehareguide]

i understand what your saying steve C . can u send me a pup with that big nose .. the big nose is what ive got to have... a little extra mouth is someting i dont mind at all.... one problem ive had is the extra mouth gets more and more as they get older...ill always put up with it if they have the nose.... .i think everybody gets a little bit upset, theyre just dogs.. i mite not like the same the style dog u do.. very few houndsmen i dont like and respect even if i dont like same style of dogs they keep..merry christmas pete

[bob huffman]

Gee Tony you sound like a real expert. When it gets down to about 0 degrees, come see me and bring your best and we will see how good you know dog work. Talk is cheap.

[bob huffman]

Why would you pick the dog up?

[snowshoehareguide]

bob at least he was honest and told u hed pick it up. i thought he should watch it run first. but hes the judge.. who are we to argue pete

[blackdirt beagles]

hey tony kildow - its judges like you that keep real hunters away from the trials. good job buddy .

[Joe West]

Actually fellows Tony is right. The hound had the high scent and should have been driving with an animated desire to over take it's game and not settleing in and paceing herself. She should have taken full advantage oif the conditions and strove to over take her game and not be satisfied with mearly following it. Only potterers are satisfied with mearly paceing themselves when they could be pursuing their game on the high scent.

[bob huffman]

I see he is a young fellow who has a PP CH. Has some turbo by prop stuff. What kind of nose does he put on his pups? Hard to figure out what he wouldn't like about the dog. She don't do much wrong and produces rabbits consistantly. Close on the line and checks with an honest mouth. She has a lot of endurance and won't quit hunting. I guess Mr Kildow don't like her and wants a hot nosed dog. The rabbits don't like her either. They call her the Grim Reaper. Maybe he didn't understand that I wasn't talking to him but was talking to all the folks that were trying to convince us that having a good nose was a fault. Or maybe he thinks cold nosed means babbling idiot who works bad tracks to no conclusion. Most of my serious hunting is done in January and all of february as our season runs till feb 28. By then rabbits are scarce because of heavy predator populations and the weather is nasty with lots of ice and crusty snow etc. Them dogs that look like champions in sept and oct just won't work too good here in January and February.

[lee ga]

this is good reading and the discussion has been fairly clean so far. i would like to say that once again it seems that the written word is getting in the way of progress. specifically, the definition of cold traling seems to be the major problem with this thread. my definition of coldtrailing is this; a hound that is wasting time on a scent trail that can't be worked out. this scent trail was layed down by the rabbit at midnight and here we are at 9AM and my hound is trying to work this line that could be 2 or 3 hundred yards long(twisting and turning).this is an unworkable line. tounging or not, its a fault. this type of hound will almost always fail to produce a rabbit and i will freeze to death. now i doubt seriously that anyone here would want a hound like this. this is my definition of a coldtrailer, so when someone tells me they like a cold trailing hound, the above example is what comes to my mind. now if you spot a rabbit and 10 minutes later cast your hound on this line and he takes a few minutes to put the rabbit on the run , then congratulations, you have a hound with a good nose that has jumped a rabbit by following a workable line. this is not what i consider coldtrailing, but to someone else it may be.

[bob huffman]

Old Joe never misses an oppurtunity to look like a fool. Actually Joe, she was pursuing her game. That was the point. She can make it look easy while other dogs look like they are working their butt off and really digging in. I love your sophisticated langauge using the term potterer. She can run a rabbit faster in her comfort zone than most can in high gear. Not once did I talk about her speed so how would you know how fast she was going. She covered a 1/4 mile in about 2 minutes. When a dog runs in their comfort zone, it means they don't try to outrun their nose. Since she has a great nose, she can track faster than most and make it look easy. You know, hooked up. Like she is in a trance and must go wherever the scent goes and just keeps right on running not breaking stride. It looks like a sunday drive until you realize how hard she is pushing and driving the rabbit. Sort of like when you learned to drive, every mile was exciting and new to you but now that you older, you just get out there and go and don't have to think about how to drive any more. It is habit and you know the routine. You can drive for miles and not remember most of the scenery because you can think of other things while you are driving when you have lots of experience behind the wheel. That is what I was trying to explain but some people need road maps just to get out the front door. Quit cold trailing JOE!!!

[Joe West]

Quote: " She was settled in and paceing herself." Now maybe that is not what you meant but that is what you said. Naturally when you SAY she was paceing herslf I beleived you. You didn't have to mention her speed if she isn't takeing full advantage of the conditions then she is not makeing the best possible progress.

Quote: "Not once did I talk about her speed so how would you know how fast she was going. She covered 1/4 mile in about 2 minutes." At that rate Bob in two hours that rabbit would have ran it's butt off and covered 15 miles of covert unless the hound spent more time off the line then she did on it which you assure us she did not. I say your babbling because no rabbit is gonna run at that pace for 15 miles, they can't. Now maybe you meant something else but that is what you said and it's rediculas.

If you are going to try and impress us with tales of great performances posted by your hounds then you should at least know how to properly describe a great performance, if you know what one is. You and others were quick to jump on Tony when he didn't like the performance you described when in fact as you described it the performance was not great.

It was the right thing for you to do when you refused to get into specifics about the standard.

[bob huffman]

OK Joe I will be specific. At one point she covered a 1/4 mile in 2 minutes. Did I say she run that hard the whole run---NO. Keep discecting my written word and disagreeing with me. You are something man. How do come with all this crap? You are brilliant man. At that rate she would have covered 15 miles. Can't you do any better than that. If I tell you I shot a rabbit, are you gonna say I kill people too? If I cross a fence are you going to say I won the high jump at the Olympics?? If I write that I bred my bitch are you going to say I am having sex with animals?? Joe you have a personality disorder. If you wonder why you have such a hard time it is because there is no cure. As long as you disagree with me, I know I am doing something right. Keep up the good work. What does the rule book say about personality disorders? Why would I try to impress someone with my hounds prowess. I leave that to people like you. I was talking about a cold nose in my original post. No I didn't put my dogs nose in the deep freezer. It is an expression or term meaning good nose for smelling. No I don't mean it smells like a fart or dead fish. I mean it can take up scent and send a signal to the brain. Seems funny that most other folks understood what I was talking about. Not Joe though-- he has to be differant. No argument here--- you are differant. I think we need to run dogs together so you can see first hand what I am talking about. Really hard to be clear on the board. Lets run heads up and let Butch be the judge. Of course he is not as smart as you and can't say COVERT or FORM but he can say PICK UP YOUR DOG JOE. LOLOLOL Quit cold trailing JOE!!!! Are you ready to run dogs Joe so I can see how smart you are and how much you know and how good your breeding practices are and how fault free you and your dogs are? I am ready anytime you are and will drive right out there to your grounds. Let me know cuz I an anxious to see some good dogs and a great trainer and breeder.

[bob huffman]

By the way Joe, I was pretty specific when I talked about field trials and the rule book. I used terms you don't understand. A field trial is a comparison study. To maintain the integrity of a comparison study, you must have controls. The word controls is a huge word in my specifics but if you don't understand what it means, I can see where you would not understand any of the rest of my post. I talked about this in a post about field trials. In order for a field trail to be true and honest in its assessment, it must be run under controlled conditions. All dogs would have to be testedunddr the same exact conditions such as the same rabbit, the same time of day and temperature, the same group of dogs doing the same performance etc. These are called controls and no matter what you do, they will be differant for each dog. The variables that can't be controlled would be randomness and will have a differant affect on each dog and will affect the performance. This would be faulty research because without controls, it can't be repeated under the same conditions and that is what it takes to prove something to be fact. It must be repeatable time and time again to be considered a fact or law. Even if we could control the condition we do our experiment under, the whole design of the experiment is wrong if you are trying to find the best hunting dog in a given group. To do that you will have to run them under hunting conditions. You will have to state ahead of time what the main goal of a hunting dog is and prove that the goal is indeed the proper goal of a hunting dog. In other words is the main goal of a hunting dog to bring gunning oppurtunities to the hunter, or is it to run the rabbit by a set of certain rules. I think most hunters who are designing this experiment will say that it is to bring the rabbit to the gun. It appears that a field trial does not do this so they can't be selecting the best hunting dog. They are selecting the best dog that runs the rabbit by a set of rules. it is obvious that there is a good chance that this would be a differnat dog than the dog that brings the rabbit to gun the best. They are 2 differant and specific goals. You can claim that a certain set of rules is abetter goal than bringing the rabbit to the gun, but our comparison study will always show this to be false. In any case, it is a moot point because without controls, your quantitive method of searching for the BEST hunting dog is faulty research. Points for search and points for check work and points for pack cooperation will give you a good tool to measure the performance if the goal is to run by a set of rules. It cannot give you a valid comparison if your goal is to measure a hunting dog and shooting oppurtunities for the hunter. This would be measured by the number of times or the number of shooting opputunities of the hunter. It would be measured in the number of times the hunter can get a shot at the rabbit. Its like which came first, the chicken or the egg. The main purpose is the harvesting of the rabbit first, not how it was done. How it was done is secondary because if you harvest rabbits time and time again, it is a given that how it was done must be correct. It is a by product of the desired goal of shooting the rabbit. When the mail man delivers you a leeter, do you worry about how he did it? NO, as long as the letter makes it to your house, you can assume that it was handled properly. You don't ask the driver of the mail truck if they obeyed the speed limit and signaled before he turned. These are important rules in being a good mailman, but you just assume that they are doing this properly if your mail arrives day after day. If the mailman is faulty and has a wreck, you will know it when your mail doesn't arrive. If your dog is faulty, your rabbit won't arrive either. Same thing. You don't have to follow the post office around to know if they are handling your mail properly. You will know it by the end result or goal. It is scientificly redundant to measure how and when and by what methods the post office handles and delivers your mail. Those things are by products of the goal. They can be measured, but only in regard to the final goal, which is the final or determinate measure. A field trial is good but it can't be more than what it is. It can somewhat measure behaviors and which dogs exhibit those behaviors, but not total performance of a hunting dog under hunting conditions.

[Guest]

This morning I took one of my females out by herself. She is usually a hard hunting hound , but this morning she disappointed me. When I first cast her, instead of going into a huge thicket that looked like a great place for a rabbit, she decided to work the paths along the outside. She worked old scent silently for a while on these paths and would even open occasionally. I just let her do her own thing for a while and we ended up about 3 hundred yards from where we started and still hadn't jumped a rabbit. Finally I got tired of it and thought," ole girl, if all you're gonna do is be lazy and try to work these old lines instead of hunt the thickets, I'll go home and get a real dog." When I got back to the truck, I looked at that big thicket and thought there has to be a rabbit in there. I had cooled off a little, so I turned her loose and made her get in there and hunt. Lucky for her she decided to get in there and tear it up. Within 2 minutes she had jumped a rabbit and the race was on. She hammered that rabbit for about an hour without a check over 30 seconds or so until I caught her off of it. On my way back to the truck I thought, " that's why I don't like cold trailing. I've wasted half the morning letting this dog trail old lines all over the place, when there was a rabbit sitting 30 yards from the truck!"

[bob huffman]

In addition, there is the problem of human value judgements entering into the results of your rule book and filed trial conclusion. Human values skew the results toward their own bias. The tendancy to prejudge reality on the basis of our expectations is one of the most important facts about human thinking. Your definiton of a good dog may be differant than someone elses. This is avoided when the number of shooting oppurtunities is used a judge for a dog. Hidden values can't help but enter into the mix. If you buy a dog sight unseen and the seller says the dog is good check dog and then you find he has to be because he creates his own checks, you will be unhappy. Maybe the seller has a bunch of dogs that create their own checks but this one just happens to be able to work his while his other dogs couldn't, his definition is totally in sink with his experience. His value judgements are differant than yours becuase he uses his own view from his own experience. What one person describes as good check work, the other sees as a dumb dog that causes checks. Both are being honest in accordance to their own view point. Then there is one of the most seductive errors people make in value judgements. They convert WHAT IS into WHAT OUGHT TO BE. This is known as THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY. The gulf between "is" and "ought" is wide. If most dogs do something, it doesn't make it right and if most dogs don't do something, it doesn't make it wrong. There is no way we can move from objective statements of fact to prescriptive statements of what ought to be without injecting our values. Those that have known only their own cultures see the world through its view. Many times we are not even aware of this prejudice. It is called cognative dissonance and is very simple. We feel tension when 2 of our thoughts or beliefs are inconsistant with each other and we try to justify our beliefs. We adjust our thinking to reduce this conflict in our minds. I could arouse this justification in you by telling the following example. " A man and his son are out driving and have a wreck. The man is killed and the son goes to the hospital emergency room. The doctor comes in and looks at the boy and says " I can't operate on him, it's my son" How could this be? A large portion of people will fail to solve the riddle. The doctor is the boys mother. Those that fail to solve the riddle will also claim that they are not sexist but suddenly realize that they made sexist assumptions and now they must justify their failure to solve the riddle. If you asked these people later to judge a case of sex discrimination, how do you suppose they will react? They will react with a very strong support for the victim, thus reducing their dissanance and reassuring their non-sexist self-image. This is the tip of the iceberg when discussing biases and each persons interpretation of what reality is. If you will let the rabbit do the judging when evaluating a hunting dog, you will be closer to an accurate test for a hunting dog.

[Joe West]

Bob: If you don't want to come off as if you are trying to impress someone with your hounds then don't talk about your hounds. Your posts loose their effectiveness when you keep changeing them when someone finds fault with them.

Isn't it funny that when someone doesn't agree with you there is something wrong with them. Perhaps the fault lies within your post. Actually I'm not having a hard time but I wonder if you are.

The beagle is a trailing hound whose purpose is to find game, to pursue it in an energetic and decisive manner and to show a determination to account for it. There you go Bob the main goal of the hunting hound stated ahead of time.

The rules you speak of in the standard are not rules but descriptions of both desireable and faulty actions. That is, they are descriptions of hound qualities that will either contribute to accomplishment, fail to contribute to accomplishment or interfear with accomplishment.

While many trials fail in practice due to their disregard of the standard the trials are designed for and supposed to be conducted for the purpose of selecting those hounds that display sound quality and ability to the best advantage.

The quality of a hunting hound cannot be measured by the number of shooting oppertunities the hunter has but can only be measured by the quality of the hounds performance. If we have a pack down and we get shooting oppertunity after shooting oppertunity how do we know which hound is is keeping the rabbit going for us and which ones are just along for the ride?

We could run hounds solo day after day and then just record how many rabbit each either accounts for or looses and the one who has the most rabbits accounted for with the least amount of loses would win but in practice we just don't have time for that.

Trials can measure the performance of the hound FOR THAT DAY if the standard is followed. But as we all know one cannot judge any hound based upon a single days performance.

In order for there to be bias the judges must change the standard. While that is exactly what does happen in many cases the fault does not lie with the standard.

If a hound action promotes accomplishment it is right. If it fails to promote accomplishment or interfears with accomplishment it is wrong.

Your descritions of human fault while possibly correct in many instances fails to recognize that the fault is with the humans and not with the standard. Where IN THE STANDARD are those sections that would allow for the failures you speak of?