Hunt drive - Page 2

Good point Joan.....I had an all Czech female that would literally bloody her nose in briar and thicket to continue to follow something she wanted....no quit in her whatsoever.

Good questions here. Is raw, natural, hunt drive (or hunting behavior if you wish) something that breeders should be concerned about? Personally I feel it is. True hunt drive that is not taught through prey, or developed from a puppy, can be difficult to find. Prey drive does not equal hunt drive. We have begun testing raw untrained dogs for hunt drive in a few different ways, but all tests are done to judge the dogs untrained, natural, behavior. Once the dog is trained it's more difficult, retrieves and tracking can both be taught through force if the dog doesn't have the natural ability.

Ang

All dogs have adequate faculties to hunt with.  It's not an 'ability', but a DRIVE or desire to hunt.  And, it CAN be taught, in the sense that a dog that doesn't ordinarily hunt but has the desire to do so can learn the pleasures of hunting and quickly pick up the searching techniques involved via demonstration by other dogs who are engaged in the drive.

hunt drive may or may not include tracking.  hunting is nailing down the exact location of an item, bag of dope, explosives, favorite toy.  if you want to see how strong your dogs hunt drive is,  take him out into a field of long grass or weeds with his favorite ball and give it a good fling.  make him work for it.  if he doesn't have much hunt drive, he'll give up quickly.  strong hunt drive will keep him searching until he finds it.  #1 dog will ride home pouting unless you know exactly where it landed.  #2 dog deserves a steak supper.  :)
pjp

my female will search all day and it is soo hard to call her off if it went too far into the woods we use a chuck it and hold her back for 2 mins and then send her in for her ball she freaks out untill we release her and i would bet money that she will 99% of the time bring it back even dead tired she will one time she scared us all because i was kinda dumb and threw the ball down a hill well the bottom of the hill was wild roses. and ofcoarse she bombed down into them yikeing and yiping limping ect but she had her ball i had thought she broke her leg or something but just poked the crap out of her self nose side pads ect but she still brought the ball back she is a dog who has the highest hunt drive and always gets put back because she isnt a protection dog but she has such a good nose and is in training for sar. she started sar tracking at 7 months by 1 year she was flawless she loves the work i worked her for a few more months and then had to take a year and a half break we went out and did a good track with her not too long ago and she ofcoarse was flawless and went straight to her person so proud to own a dog who loves to do the job i want to do with her and she is good at it.


 i also have a mali that insane drive for the ball play drive out her bum she must use it as rocket propulsion but she will only search for it for like 2 3 mins and then come back and bark at me like i didnt throw the ball.

see......there you go.  you have seen strong hunt drive at work  and you have seen high prey with little hunt drive.  which one is more useful in practical application?
pjp

Ang,
 
 I agree with some of what you are saying, but disagree on a couple points.

 Yes hunt drive is genetic, but I disagree that it is not something that needs to be developed. Raw ability is great and is evident when a dog has it, but with out direction or development it will never reach it's full potential. You can't build hunt into a dog, but you can certainly build up the intensity in which they search. Forced retrieves or tracks have nothing to do with using a dog's natural drive (if they have it to begin with) during detection work or tracking in drive, these methods have no place in training outside the realm of sport and they wouldn't give me any false sence that a dog possesses hunt drive.

 Gustav,

 I agree that nose work makes up the majority of a SAR, police, military or security K-9 duties. Hunt drive is critical in order for a dog to be effective in any of these roles.


I can't remember what thread it was in when you mentioned Cordon An-Sat and some qualities you noticed when linebreeding on him, but from I can see high hunt drive and tracking ability seem to a fairly consistant in this line.  
 

I had a narcotic contraband dog that had insane hunt drive but prey drive was only mediocre. When you could appreciate it was when you were working in 90 degree weather on car after car at roadblocks. Where other dogs had problems maintaining drive in these conditions....he just would not quit. With dogs with genetic hunt drive you see intensity and total commitment to the task....you don't have to restart them. You really just get out of the way and let them go. Liberatore( Ang) brought up a good point....sometimes you don't want too much training when properly utilizing hunt drive in a task. Sure you teach the dog odor whether it's explosives,drugs, or peopli, but you than get out the way and you let the dog use the drive and natural ability to work out the problem. One of the reasons I brought this topic up is because used properly it showcases the dogs ability to problem solve while working. This has always been a valuable trait of this breed, going back to real herding. When a dog is working in hunt drive we need the dog to be thinking while working without interference from us. Trust you dog is an old familiar phrase, but I submit that we often strangle a dogs hunt drive with exercises that place more emphasis on training/ obedience than the dog. I further submit that an indirect consequence of this is we have breeder,handlers,and trainers that really don't understand hunt drive or how to effectively use it much less look for it when making breeding choices.

got a high hunt drive dog sitting right here next to me....never have to coax this boy...natural and percise...doesn't have to see me throw anything...just give him the command to search....he came out the womb that way......

Fell, my comments were not in regards to training for deployability (or sport v. work) rather testing for baseline genetic ability and breeding.

Ang