Breeding 2 Gun Shy Dogs

[bill huttozac]

I am not convinced that being gun shy is a hereditary thing. It is often a learned fear caused by careless, ingnorant hunters jump shooting rabbits or firing guns near the kennel , more often, careless use of fireworks. In short. a product of a poor environment. If I had two very good hounds that were both gun shy, I would not have a problem breeding them.

[rabbitearl]

Hey I done it when I was young.Got the dog from a dog trader for 50 dollors.Didnot have much money and didnot have this net to get help.She could run a rabbit fair and hunting fair.I want luckey like alot of you as to have somebody around to help out.Being on a farm my daddy just wanted to work.So I breed the dog.Never had no gun shy pups from her.

[PREACHERS,KENNEL]

I AGREE that gunshy dogs are mostly made that way .. but if after trying to undo the damage someone has done ,they are a head for the hills kinda dog or they just quit hunting for the day ..then they r toast ..i have fixed a few young dogs that had a small problem with the gun ,,,,but still ,aint there 2 dogs that aint gun shy, you would rather breed too?
why take the chance ? why oh why lol. when there are so many good dogs around ,would this be even considered.

[Bobby Vest]

I wouldn't breed one much less two of them together.

[old blood beagles]

I had a gun shy dog once. Key word is ONCE. I worked with her for a year and she would never come out of it. She could run a bunny like she was glued to it then after one shot she was finished for the day. Why take the chance on passing this on? If you just like to hear them run, put the knife to both and let them run but dont breed them.

[mitchell cates]

Hey ricky you said shoot them but would you shoot that dog you got from kentucky that runs deer or the best young dog you have that wouldnt leave our feet monday.lol what about them apples buddy

[mitchell cates]

we gun hunt every chance we can get and both the dogs do fine one day and might not the next but i will tell you this the male is heck on wheels i hardly dought there are many dogs in this area that could run a rabbit as fast as him and do it with as much line controle, and the female i am talking about we have breed before and not a single one of the pups are gone shy so it will be hard to convince me it is born in them its all about how you raise them in my opinion

[PREACHERS,KENNEL]

the dog from kentucky wil be deer broke very soon . she had 2 lessons so far and jimmy is putting the eletric to her this wee..k for me .......
its not fair to pick on zach thats the 1st bad day he had in his 14 months of life ....lol... he;ll be fine ....gun shy i got no use for at all.. try to fix it first if it dont help they gota die or leave ..
i didnt know you had 2 gunshy dogs ..i thought you were talking about someone else lol. what good is a rabbit dog ,that when rabbit season gets here, you gotta leave it at home lol get real ...

[Bunnyblaster]

Nearly every gun shy dog I ever saw was made that way by stupid owners. The only one I can think of otherwise was a people shy dog also.

I agree but in my opinion there's a big difference between the two and I would like to think that the people shy thing, if not a learned trait, is a very small percentage of the dogs both hunting and house pet.

[Tundra Beagle]

If pups are introduced to gun fire at an early age and people don't beat them, most dags will do fine. All of my dogs hear a starter pistols every time they are fed for about a month from about 4 months old. After awhile they just associate the noise with something good and no gun shyness to worry about. I do not think the gun shyness is hereditery. If you really have doubts, don;t breed them. If you think you know why the dogs are gun shy, their history, then you make the choice.

[RiverBottom]

I'm always suprised at how much junk gets passed around in the form of dog training advice and how many people take this stuff as gospel and start passing it around themselves.

Let someone come on here and ask what to do about their dog that is rougher than a cob and can't run a rabbit more than 50 feet without a loss and he will hear "solo, solo, solo". Yet if the same guy asks what to do about his dog that ran for the truck the first time he shot a gun next to it and the "experts" will say to shoot it

One of the most simple, basic methods of dog training is called the conditioned response:
The conditioned response is probably the simplest form of learned behavior. It is a response that — as a result of experience — comes to be caused by a stimulus different from the one that originally triggered it.

The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov found that placing meat powder in a dog's mouth would cause it to salivate.
The meat powder, an unconditioned stimulus (US), triggers a simple inborn reflex involving taste receptors, sensory neurons, networks of interneurons in the brain, and autonomic motor neurons running to the salivary glands — producing an unconditioned response (UR).

Pavlov found that if he rang a bell every time he put the meat powder in the dog's mouth, the dog eventually salivated upon hearing the bell alone. This is the conditioned response (CR).
The dog has learned to respond to a substitute stimulus, the conditioned stimulus (CS).

We assume that the physiological basis of the conditioned response is the transfer, by appropriate neurons, of nervous activity in the auditory areas of the brain to the motor neurons controlling salivation. This involves the development and/or strengthening of neural circuits, which — we may also assume — is characteristic of all forms of learning.

You are already doing this without even knowing it. Watch and experienced beagle that has had lots of rabbits shot in front of it when it hears a gun go off. If this dog isn’t hunting at the moment and someone shoots close by he is going to get there as fast as he can. He has associated gunfire with rabbits.

If your dog is afraid of guns going off all you need to do is teach him to associate gunfire with something good. Food works just as well as rabbits. Shoot, feed, repeat. After enough repetitions you will be able to prove out Pavlov’s work. Shoot and your dogs mouth will start watering. No more gun shyness. Much easier and more effective than spending 10,000 hours soloing a dog that was born with some major faults.

Is gunshyness hereditary? Yes and no. How a beagle reacts to something like gunfire before it has had any conditioning (and there is no such thing as a dog more than a couple days old that has not had any conditioning) is based completely on heredity. Every dog would react differently. On one end of the spectrum are the dogs that would not pay it any mind at all, on the other end are dogs that would pee all over and find a rock to crawl under. Most dogs are somewhere in between. There is no black and white in genetics, it’s all gray.

[Newt]

Amen River Bottom.
I sold a young started male pup. Season opened and the guy took him out with his buddies and they started shooting as soon as the unloaded. He called me and said the dog was gun shy. I said bring him back but he is not gunshy. You guys scared him. I took the pup out with my dogs. When they circled a rabbit, I shot and the pup came to me. Then as the pack continued to run he got back in the race. The next circle, as they passed close to me, I shot again. He hesitated and looked at me and continued in the race. On the next circle I shot again and he never looked up. I called the guy and told him to pick up his dog.
As you mentioned, before the season was over, when a gun was shot and they wern't running, he would come running to the gun. He hunts that dog every season and according to him he jumps more rabbits than any of his other dogs. I and several other hunters have bred bitches to him and I can't remember a gun shy pup.
If the dog had not been returned to me so I could socialize him to gun fire, he would have ended in an animal shelter as a bad statistic.

[eddywilliams]

Most of the dogs are shy to begin with of noises ,people ..... Yes you can take time and try to work with them to see if they come out of it .I handle mine at a young age and you can tell if one is shy and grows being shy ,yes some shyness is man made but most is hereditary .Why would you want to breed 2 gun shy dogs together if they were like this all along ? Not me

[PREACHERS,KENNEL]

remeber guys this post is about BREEDING ...so the dogs should have at least 1 gun season under them before that is considered ..that being the case every opportunity to fix that dog should have already been done ,,,,,
so now its a seasoned dog ,and its still gunshy ,,,the dog runs good but is worthless if you shoot ..... I SHOOT IT ! these dogs that are champion dogs that you cant shoot over ,is a bogus title on a worthless dog .
gotta be a gundog 1st or it wont live here!

[eddywilliams]

Way to preach PREACHER