Kingudaroad,
I own a catahoula mix with no hunting training. I can not get her to retrieve doves but she will chase them in the yard. I can't even imagine her capabilities if she had some formal training.
I don’t know if you
want to train her to retrieve doves or not, but I have the same issues with my dog and retrieving. I think it stems from their intelligence, they get bored with the game. After a few times of retrieving whatever it is she’s supposed to retrieve, my dog will give me a look like, “I keep bringing it to you. If you’re too dumb to hold on to it, don’t expect me to keep bailing you out”, and that is pretty much the end of the game. I’ve found that retrieving different objects helps combat this. I’d bet your Catahoula is smart enough to figure out that each time you shoot a dove, she would be bringing you back something new.
Impact,
ahenry I have a big male Catahoula that is 11 months old. This dog is so easy to train. All he wants to do is learn and please and oh yah! Play! I want to train him to find lost deer. And hunt hogs and coon… The next time someone shoots a deer I'm going to drag the feet and endtrails behind a ATV through the woods. Put Rocky on the trail and have him find the deer parts. And give him some of the scrap meat from the deer when he finds it. I'm sure he will learn real fast!
You’re not kidding. I’ve
never had a dog as easy to train or as smart as this one. In fact, I sometimes think she might be just a little too smart for a dog; she can quickly get bored with the “simple” doggie games like fetch. Normally I wouldn’t think it would be possible to train a 5 year old dog to hunt, but in a matter of about a day I taught her to go find various toys and bring them to me on command. I imagine doing what you’ve said with the entrails will work just fine. Seems like all you have to do to train these dogs is communicate the idea. Once they understand what you want they’re good to go.
Good luck with your dog. They are butt ugly but a fantastic dog that I love.
Well, there are a wide variety of looks with Catahoulas. There are lots of solid colorings (red, brown, black, yellow, white) as well as the leopard or “merle” colorings. Mine is a black and tan brindle, which is technically considered a “solid” color. The merle or leopard colorings include patchwork, tri-colored, quad-colored, gray, and black. Some have a natural bobtail and some have the more extended tail with that question mark kind of carry.
Some have those blue eyes (the “glass eye”) that to me, look like ice. Some eyes are “cracked”, meaning the eye has one color with some amount of another color within it (BTW, that “cracked” eye is due to the merle gene, the same gene that causes the leopard colorings).
Some Catahoulas have mismatched eyes. Some Catahoulas have slick coats, shaggy or coarse coats, and some have wooly coats. Catahoula looks range from a mutt sort of look all the way to a purebred coonhound sort of look. There is a look for all preferences.