Build me a heat tolerant dog

[USHOG]

Yes you are right. I consider a hunt to be letting my dogs out and then picking them up to go home. Some times it is an hour some times it can be a week. Kelso and I caught 8 boars in 2.5 hours not behind a fence just bay catch bay catch you get the point. We had covered over 8 miles in that time. Every hunt is different and can not be planned for in my experiance. Plan on an hour takes 5 and so on.

 I think how your dog is hunted is how he will perform.  If he is taken out for a hunt every other week he will be lucky to be at 60% of his ability. If he is hunted 2 or 3 times a week he will preform at 100% of his ability. Excersize can substatute for hunts.  This includes diet excersize and what ever it takes to keep them in shape and healthy. Just like us our dogs have to get used to the heat every year, and there is still a limit to how much the dogs can do when it is so hot. Our low last night was 81.  and the dogs worked good but not like when its colder. Plus each dog is different in how they reacts to heat.

[TrueBlueLacys]

I think Mandy was on the right track with her phenotype comments. The one thing Sadie has going for her is that she's extremely efficient in the heat. Lacys in general, at least the smaller ones bred from Hill Country stock, seem to handle the heat very well. Still, she usually outlasts the other dogs, which is partially due to her endless energy but also thanks to her perfect cooling system.

- Long, lean build. When she was a pup, everyone thought she was a Whippet mix. Her rib cage has filled out a bit, but she still has the legs and muscles.
- Slick, flat coat. She doesn't have the short hair of a greyhound, it is much longer than that, but it lays very smooth and is relatively thin. There is no dense undercoat.
- The biggest tongue I've ever seen. And as soon as it gets just a little bit hot, she has it hanging all the way out her mouth.
- A desire to jump in every single puddle she sees. If there is water around, she runs in and gets her feet wet, and she'll often lay in it really quickly to wet her belly too.

Put all that together and she does the 25 mile hunts Monteria is talking about with no problem. I've seen her almost hyper at the end. And yes, she does have a blue coat, but I don't think that would matter when hunting at night.