fault(s) you wont tolerate in a dog

#1 - Laziness “No Hunt”, is the worst in my opinion. I would rather have a dog to go out and do something wrong opposed to doing nothing at all. {not that I like dogs with faults}

#2 - Stupidity “lack of brains”, I believe the reason some dogs have more faults then others "continuously" is not because they lack the traits “or tools”, but it is because they are to ignorant to use what they have. Some dogs do lack the natural ability, but a really smart dog can compensate when he actually lacks in ability and he makes adjustments and finds a way. But a dog that is stupid…… well, stupid things is what he does, because he can’t learn from his mistakes.

I had a little female years ago. I got her at 8 months old. I put her in my pen, she would dig out. I fixed that and she than would climb out. I would fix that and she would find a weak spot in the fence and chew and pull until she could squeeze out. Meanwhile the rest of the dogs would just stand and watch. I fixed that and she found out how to jump up and to use her nose to unlatch the gate. I put her in a off the ground pen and after I opened the lid on the dog house just a couple of times to look in, she learned how to push open the lid with her head and slide out to get loose. She didn’t run away and she never left the yard. She just teased the other hounds and than came up on the porch. That dog would fetch a ball and do other things that most “beagles” just don’t do. I thought she was more trouble than she was worth, until I got her started.

When you hunted with her, she always did exactly what you thought a dog should be doing. It was like she would walk through and she was thinking to herself, “if I was a rabbit, where would I be”, and then she would go right to that spot. Some hounds are narrow minded and can only utilize 1 or 2 of their senses “at the same time”, while dogs with more brains “smarter” are alert to all their senses and in harmony can use their nose to scent, ears to listen for the rabbit or a pack member and their eyes to look right, left and ahead, and can do it “all at the same time” instinctively or “naturally”. Some even learn to anticipate and guess what the rabbit will do next and have the ability to gear-up or gear-down according to conditions. But when she did make mistakes, she learned from them and rarely made them again very many times.

My only problem with her, she was a grade dog and was about an 1/8 fox terrier. She was great for gun hunting, but I had committed myself to registered dogs only so I never bred her. That was in the mid 80’s and I have only had a few that could compare to her since. I have had a lot of “what ifs” over the years thinking back at her, but it was her brains that made the difference and some people don’t even think about “brains” or how smart a dog is “or not” when considering a stud dog or breeding.