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| Those evaluations have to do with endurance,
not the narrow window of opportunity afforded when a well conditioned
gun dog sustains his performance peak. They also reflect miscalculations
by the majority of hunters as to how long, how often and how
hard they actually hunt and how much is taken out a good dog
by an actual long hard season of hunting that may be half as
rigorous as they imagine theirs to be. Let's bury one myth at the onset. There is no such thing as an "all-day, every day, all season" gun dog. If one ever did exist, his genes weren't passed on, because he had to be too tired during the off-season to perform as a stud during his recuperation. There are very few fortunate hunters out with their dogs virtually every day of hunting seasons that run from two to four months. They get decent dog work through this season because each owns more than one dog at time. There are fine gun dogs who are hunted virtually every day for entire seasons. But their hunting day consists of two hours, maybe three on occasion, or less. Dawn to dusk hunting days they are not. Gun dogs get really burned out when their owners save all their "hunting time" for a week or ten day out-of-state jaunt, pouring it on every day afield in order to get their money's worth. Dogs and owners may be in equally poor physical condition. But in these situations owners usually managed to out last dogs, travel stress being added to the canine woe. I have hauled eight to ten well-conditioned bird dogs (with a couple months of three to four times a week bird hunting under their collars) on 10 to 15 day safaris and those which saw the most work came home gaunt, field worn an appreciative of a couple weeks layoff. Of what a hunting day consists of varies greatly, of course, in respect to time and response of individual dogs. Badly out of shaped dogs will peter out on the first day they are down more than a couple hours and there will be no tomorrow because a sore, stiff pup just can't cut the second day of the weekend. But this rule of thumb is offered as a guide for hunters who make reasonable effort to condition their dogs prior to their hunting dates: be conservative, consider two-three hours of running a good hunting day, four-six hours a hard hunting day and eight-ten hours an excessive of effort that rates laying that dog up for two or three days before turning loose again How often you "rest" a dog during the hunting season will have as profound an effect on how well your dog operates when he's on the ground as did the conditioning undertaken to get into some kind of shape prior to the season. Reasonably conditioned dogs can easily handled two-three hour days for a five to seven day week before being given the day off. If you expect your dog to put out while he is down for four-six hours, figure he can handle it three or four times; not consecutively but separated during that week by the rest and recuperation days. If you are going to embark on a "marathon" hunt where the pastures are greener than in your locality, do your dog a favor by providing him some local hunting time before you go big time. He should encounter a lot more game during your adventure hunt (that's why you are going) and this added exertion and excitement requires some beforehand conditioning. In pre-season workouts, you may gradually work your dog up to the optimum running time you figure to reach on the season's first day, but it probably isn't necessary. But some running is. Pacing back and forth in a kennel run or lunging on a chain won't cut it. What with today's traffic and the leash laws, unsupervised running isn't an option and you'll have to use some ingenuity to come up with an exercise regime, depending upon your circumstances. You may not have a football field sized exercise area fenced for turning out your dogs. But you may have a fenced yard or some ground nearby were automobiles risk is minimal. Either giving a dog supervised exercise and/or training, or turning loose for short periods during the day to just be a dog, can be a pretty effective year around conditioning program. It's another reason for owning more than one dog. A couple or three dogs romping around hike the vital activity that keeps dogs in shape. Regardless of whether or not they are trained that day, or any given day my dogs are turned out for 10-15 minute romps twice a day when I'm kennel cleaning and they moved into the opening of a gunning season without any special, crash conditioning routine and harden in as the season progresses. Probably not one hunter in 100 really needs more than one dog. It all depends upon how much you really hunt. Going on 76, I don't |
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