Here are some of my random thoughts....
1. My most heat tolerant dog is a gyp that has loose thin skin with very little fur. She has almost no hair on her belly and chest, thin hair on her sides, and normal hair down her back. She is lightly muscled with a light bone structure, and pointy head w/ a long narrow muzzle. She weighs around 45-50 lbs and hunts with a very busy pace. My two males are completely wiped out after a hunt but she is usally still ready rock.
2. I honestly do believe that different types of muscle play a role. I've been told numerous times regarding atheletes that large more bulky muscle will consume more oxygen then lean muscle mass. Kind of like a marathon runner vs a running back....different muscle types and different abilities to handle fatigue from long term muscle stress.
3. 20-26 miles is the norm for our dogs on a 4 hour hunt. We reset each color so that we can see what each dog does on every hunt and what we have found is the two strike dogs will always travel 20-26 miles on hunt, my short range dog will average around 18 miles and the help dog we hunt with is normally around 14-16 miles. The catchdog has a collar on to so we can usually get a good idea how far we walked and that's normally around 3.5-5 miles for the hunt(just depends on how much trashing I have to break up
).
4. Males vs females....I don't know if there is anything to this but as I mentioned the gyp I hunt is much more heat tolerant than my males. I tend to believe this is because of reason #2 above. Both males are in that 65-75 lb range and have pretty thick muscle tone, much thicker than the gyp. I consider both males to be in very good shape and show a little rib. The gyp has a slighter build but doesn't show any rib at all and could possible benefit from losing a pound or two. Go figure....
