Bad Habits

[SteelyDan]

The reason you gave for a dog to fight his chain is just one reason. Ive found some dogs are just destructive to everything they can touch, call it the stress of confinement or whatever. Outlets detour nothing for some. When they didnt have a chain they chewed a pen.

From what i have seen here, these few chain fighters that cant be detoured are more often than not unexceptional or some flat out dont start. So what may have been true with your dogs is not the case with these. Some call these dogs chain curs or chain bad asses. They act real willing until the hammer drops.

If it was the case that my more exceptional dogs were chain fighters on a consistent basis id have to breed far far away from that, which means culling. Why would someone stack the odds against their future dogs by incorporating that into a breeding program?

[Officially Retired]

The reason you gave for a dog to fight his chain is just one reason. Ive found some dogs are just destructive to everything they can touch, call it the stress of confinement or whatever. Outlets detour nothing for some. When they didnt have a chain they chewed a pen.

I've had those too ...

But I still think they're uncommonly driven dogs, usually.

From what i have seen here, these few chain fighters that cant be detoured are more often than not unexceptional or some flat out dont start. So what may have been true with your dogs is not the case with these. Some call these dogs chain curs or chain bad asses. They act real willing until the hammer drops.

Interesting point.

If it was the case that my more exceptional dogs were chain fighters on a consistent basis id have to breed far far away from that, which means culling. Why would someone stack the odds against their future dogs by incorporating that into a breeding program?

I agree it is a pain in the ass for a breeding program. But whoever said raising highly-spirited performance dogs was going to be easy

I've had some ordinary palookas that were hole-diggers, that's for sure, and I've had some amazingly-talented dogs that were pretty good on the chain. Silverback, for example, never chewed a thing: died as an old man with a PERFECT set of cutters.

So there are always exceptions to every rule I suppose ...

Still, your points conceded, I renew my statements that the most ordinary dogs are generally "ordinary" in every other way as well ... and that THE most spirited, intelligent dogs are almost always DEFIANT ASSHOLES in some way ... they refuse to accept being in cages, they refuse to accept anything but what THEY want to do ... and that is part of an Alpha-Dog's make-up IMO

Poncho wouldn't accept being "just another dog on the yard." He would bark all-day, every-day, until I chained him up to the rafters on my PORCH and gave him a couch to lay on. Only when he was in the #1 spot, and right next to the house, would he shut up and lay there content. He could never be in a crate or a cage either: would eat his way out every time. Same thing with being loose in a bedroom. If I left, he would try to eat his way out of the room and come find me.

I couldn't even turn him loose in a backyard ... he would run to the wall and try to jump over and get the dogs on the other side. He knew walls separated properties and that there were DOGS on the other side of them. I could "punish him" a thousand times, but he could care less. He wanted to do what HE wanted to do, and that is all there was to it. It was all EGO and DRIVE and there was no way anyone was going to dominate "his" spirit.

Only when he was sick and dying did he ever mellow out at all ... and then not by much.

Jack