Catch dogs

Goose,

That makes perfect sense to me. I feel like I’m always trying to learn and change what I’m doing with dogs, trying to find the magic sauce. I’ve had some that I had sleeping inside, and others that I never fooled with in hopes of them having more range. Well my old bulldog Thorn was the first dog I had that was MY dog and not technically my parents. Growing up we always had 1-2 dogs but my parents would never let me get my own dog. I graduated Basic Training and went to AIT, and my uncle called me about that bulldog. He always had real nice pits when I was growing up and I went over to his house to fool with dogs a lot. There was an old man named Jimmy Ray that he had known for years and years, and they would pass dogs back and forth. He said there was a litter on the ground and that if I wanted one he would keep it until I got back. So he kept the most dominant puppy, which turned out to be a great pet/yard dog that would catch anything you directed him at. I got the second most dominant, a nice red puppy. He had him in a pen for about 6 months until I was home, and then I took him with me. I didn’t start hog hunting until he was somewhere around 2 years old. That first part of his life he ran loose often, was in the house sleeping next to my bed, and rode all over the place with me. I’d take him hiking a lot too. He turned out to be a great RCD. He had his quirks, he got to where he absolutely did not want to be in a dog box. At the end of the hunt he would lay down in the woods about 40 yards from the truck and I’d have to go get him. Lord knows he pissed me off a lot, but he was a smart dog and always knew what you were saying. He was a real sweet well mannered dog too. Towards the end of his life my dad had been bugging me about wanting to have him, and I kept telling him that he was crazy, that dog wasn’t going anywhere. Now I wish I would’ve given him to him. He ended up getting out of a pen, and locking up with my lead dog through the hog panel. My lead dog had his head stuck out through it and couldn’t do anything, I’m presuming what killed him was his neck being broken. I have security cameras all around my house, I went back and watched the footage later because I had to know what happened.

I think he got rabies. It had been awhile since I gave the dogs shots and something I never really thought about. On the cameras he came over and laid on the front deck of my little storage building by the kennel. After 30 minutes he randomly got up and attacked the side of the kennel. They were locked up for an hour and 3 minutes if my memory serves me right. He went back and laid down, then randomly would attack the dead body throughout the night. When I got there I thought it was a coyote, until I just happened to see Thorn laying curled up in a bale of wheat straw on the deck. I walked up to him and he never wagged his tail or anything. He looked up with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen in a dog. You absolutely could see that he knew exactly what he had done and that he knew how awful it was. You see those dogs had been best friends for several years, sleeping together inside the house. He looked up for maybe 3-4 seconds and we just held eye contact, he laid his head back down as if he knew it was time. I went and grabbed my gun and when I came back he never even looked up again. My wife was crying and being loud begging me to take him to the vet to be put down and not to do it myself. Even with all that commotion he never looked up, it was if he knew. I lost two absolutely amazing dogs that day, and still have not recovered from it. I’ve been trying to rebuild the team since that day.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk