What about hounds turns people off?

[Brattina88]

I LOVE hounds especially beagles, and black and tans (don't have a lot of experience with too many other hounds, actually). I have to admit I'm kind of surprised that so many think they are hard to train. I've found them to be pretty easy to train, & HIGHLY food motivated lol

If my situation were different I might've had a rescue-hound by now. The only thing that turns me off of the breeds is the "off leash issue"

 

[darkchild16]

Ahh... Hounds...... I love them! A baying coonhound is a very calming and proud sound to hear. (At least for me).

I could listen to a distant bay easier than most radio stations.

To me its better then any music besides country of course .

Most people i know that dont like them are actually city people. go figure. Meaning practically everyone in Quincy and Alabama i know LOVE hounds, Pits and Retrivers (sp?). Those to me are country dogs
While the people i know here in Clearwater like boxers, shepards and the like. More of the city type dogs.

Oh and just so you know whoever said they love Ridgebacks and Beagles. Beagles are hounds


Hounds are my favorite type of dogs hence my adopting Walker. Hes got the Shepard noble look and the hound personality what more could you want.

A day behind a pack of coonhounds is a dream day for me. Which is why my mutt hunts coon LOL.

THey are also GREAT family dogs. They are protective when it comes to strangers around their family. But when it comes to the kids they can do wahtever thy want and the dog wont flinch.

The bad side as some have said is that they are stubborn but dont take that as untrainable. Walker is the best trained dog in theis household. Beating a greyhound, havanese, and St. Bernard.

Hes the only one that is a 100% reliable offleash and the least likely to bark. And yes even though he is shepard his attitude is ENTIRELY Coonhound.

 

[houndlove]

What my "untrainable" coonhound did this evening:

-->Laid down and stayed on his mat off-leash while every hyper freaked out puppy from the puppy class walked by him. Didn't move a muscle.

-->Laid down and stayed on his mat while I walked around a warehouse-sized building moving various agility things around and sweeping up for about 15 minutes.

-->Rocked the weave-o-matic like woah for a beginner.

-->Ran an entire agility course several times over, from different directions, with no reinforcement until the end of the course. We only started this 7 weeks ago.

-->Came when called every time in a huge building full of agility equipment and another dog training class in progress (and the enticing melange of food and dog smells that only a positive-reinforcement dog training center contains).

Seriously this dog amazes me. He may be awesome at hunting coon, but that is not the only thing he's great at. This just seemed like a good thread to brag him up and down in, because independent really does not mean "untrainable".

I wish city people would warm up the hounds too because I think often they can do very well in cities. I think suburbs can be confusing to them: there's all that open space and all them furry smelly things everywhere, but they're not allowed to go get them.

 

[darkchild16]

Heres what the Walker dog did last night on our walk.

Walked off leash with all the exciting smells around (today is trash day). Only left my side in the area he is allowed to.

Ignored the cat running across the street.

Came and sat at my feet after he used the bathroom.

While Scirrocco my moms greyhound

sniffed every thing in sight.

wouldnt heel for the life of him.

tried to pull my arm out of the socket when he saw the cat. (grey instinct so i wasnt to mad just hurt LOL)

Walker also sat and waited for me like a perfect gentleman outside McDonalds this morning even though there was dropped food not 5 feet from him that he could reach.

 

[Xerxes]

I'm hoping to get a sighthound eventually, but I'm sure it's going to take a lot of adjusting to get used to.

The adjustment isn't that big. And sighthounds are very "in" to their owners, just in a completely different way.

 

[Xerxes]

What my "untrainable" coonhound did this evening:

-->Laid down and stayed on his mat off-leash while every hyper freaked out puppy from the puppy class walked by him. Didn't move a muscle.

Great job Cressida.

What alot of people don't realize is that hounds are probably the easiest to train to ignore other dogs. In fact, most of them will do it when they're on a scent, so it's easy to reinforce and apply that lesson to other situations in daily life.

Heck, I've walked by a reactive dog and Xerxes barely looked at the dog, preferring to keep moving on.

 

[darkchild16]

i have found that actually to be true with most hunting dogs or breeds. Where i used to live we didnt have a leash law but when we had a city festival or event everyone had their dogs with them off leash and we didnt have one fight or anything all the dogs jsut ignore eachother.

 

[darkchild16]

and all were either hounds, labs, and pits or mixes of them.