Many many coonhound photos

[bunn]

Darwin has settled in very well. He doesn't seem too worried about being here. Most of the time apart from on walks, he is asleep! Not sure if it has really sunk in yet that his people aren't coming back for him, but with a bit of luck that will sink in gradually... He is great with the cats, pretty good with other dogs (except Az finds him a bit annoying), clean in the house. Oh yes, and kid-friendly too. He is, however, a bit of a saggedy baggedy old dog to look at...



Hounds come in some very different shapes. Mollydog makes Darwin look extra-dumpy. Poor Darwin!


If I didn't know he was a coonhound, I'd have guessed some sort of basset cross, though his foxhoundy relatives are fairly obvious as well.


Sniffin' sniffin' sniffin!


Upside down


Upside down with *particularly* ridiculous ears...



If I'm honest, Az doesn't like Darwin all that much. Darwin likes Az, except that if he gets carried away with sniffin' sniffin' sniffin at Az, Az becomes peeved and eventually scruffs him. No real damage done, so I'm hoping Darwin will learn to treat Az a little more carefully. That said, both Az and Darwin *really* like home made sardine cake, which causes all differences to be forgotten.


Darwin and his equally lumpy shadow...



Utterly ridiculous ears which flap dramatically in the breeze.

Comments

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever seen a dog quite like that before. What exactly is he?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

The coonhound is a breed of hunting dog from the southern USA. I'm not sure if they are all kind of lumpen, or if that's just him! :-D

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Yes I'd gathered the where from the name(!), he is cute though.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I've been told that the name is actually derived from the Welsh 'Cwn' meaning dog, though Darwin's owners thought it was because they were bred for hunting raccoons. But they were Canadian, so I'm not sure that they knew!

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Raccoon seems a more likely possibility but you have to wonder ;-)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

If you mean escaped slaves, it is usually said that they used bloodhounds for that. Bloodhounds are specifically developed to hunt human beings, because they are very difficult to hide a scent from, even if it is very cleverly disguised.

Coonhounds are specifically bred to hunt things that climb trees. You let them loose in a wood, where they work independently to chase whatever they can find until it goes up a tree - then they stop at the bottom of the tree and bark persistently until the hunter catches up with them. Tests of coonhound training involve the ability to go on giving voice for hours on end. (The hunter eventually turns up and blasts whatever it is up the tree with a shotgun. Sophisticated! )

Possibly you could hunt people with coonhounds, but coonhounds are not particularly large, and are not developed to grab their prey but to tree it so I'm not sure they would be particularly well adapted for the job. (Bloodhounds usually hunt on lead, rather than independently like coonhounds or foxhounds)

The modern guard dog which can be released to take down a suspect on command but also walk safely through a crowd of strangers seems to be quite a modern notion: I am really not convinced that in the American Deep South, they would have had the ability to train dogs so precisely, to bring a specific human being to bay without being a general menace.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... though no doubt it would be very scary if you *thought* you were being hunted by coonhounds, even if the dogs were actually just running round chasing random squirrels & raccoons and had no idea what they were advertised as doing.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I think it would be scary if you thought you were being hunted by a pack of almost any* dog.

*With certain exceptios: Peke, Yorkie ...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

You aren't scared of Yorkies? I'm bloody terrified of Yorkies, they yap and eat your fingers. Am always completely amazed that we get a queue for any Yorkie, no matter how savage the little monster is...

Give me a nice pit bull any day!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

...Peke, I'll give you - the poor little creatures are so overbred they can barely breathe without assistance. :-(

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

For myself, I find them annoying, but not scary.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Bloodhounds usually hunt on lead, rather than independently like coonhounds or foxhounds)

Not nowadays in the UK where there are a number of packs that hunt 'drag' off the lead. I remember looking out of the car window and wondering why the heck there were so many bloodhounds running around one day...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Very different, hunting a willing quarry that's not going to fight back and is deliberately laying scent rather than trying to obscure it, I would have thought.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, bloodhounds have never been any use in actually capturing humans - or anything else. Like the your friend the coonhound or a Saint Bernard their job is simply to find, not to capture. That's why the police use them on leads. Hunting with packs is for fun...

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

They do hunt raccoons, though. It would be a bit odd if their name was completely unrelated to that. Stranger things have happened though, I guess.

I think I love him, lumps and all. He looks like a beagle that's been overstuffed <3

[bunn.livejournal.com]

The coonhound resource I found said that raccoons tasted so horrible that no sane person would hunt them - BUT of course the same would apply to the foxhound and I don't think anyone is claiming the foxhound isn't named after the fox!

He is quite sweet. I think he looks a bit bassetty. He's a portly gentleman, but not quite as fat as he looks in the photos, he does have a bit of a barrel chest, it's not just flab.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

That's really strange. A now-deleted LJ friend of mine kulan has four of them, all failed working dogs she's taken on from family and friends who hunt. I assumed they did hunt raccoons (though for vermin control/fun rather than food) but now you mention it, I never heard that said explicitly. I'm not sure what else you'd hunt with a coonhound, though. I will ask her next time I see her in IM, maybe I made a mis-assumption.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I admit, I've not looked very hard and didn't make a note of where I saw that!

Darwin has never been anything but a pet, according to the previous owners.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

I'm having visions now of him treeing a raccoon and the raccoon can't stop laughing ;)

And in the spirit of having one of those moments where you think you've either got completely the wrong end of the stick or gone mad, I just did some googling, and there's quite a few sites out there about hunting raccoons with your coonhound. It just seems strange a coonhound resource wouldn't know that. I suppose it could be a weird kind of retrospective thing where the name came first and people invented a sport to match it!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

...eventually, the raccoon would stop laughing long enough to bop him on the nose, and he would fall over then run away, wowling tragically :-D

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Heee :D The other day, my two chased an injured seagull off some bread and then stood there scoffing the bread while the seagull flopped about pathetically about a metre in front of their noses. I think I heard their respective terrier/foxhound ancestors rolling in their graves.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

:-D Mollydog would SO do that. Get off, seagull! MY bread!

Az, alas, is less greedy and has more of the killer instinct. I'm so glad his eyesight is failing now! He definitely considered himself an everything-that-moves-hound. Only his innate gormlessness prevented him being a lethal hunter. :-/

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Didn't he bring down a deer once or something? Which is horrible but also actually really impressive.

(I've run out of beagle icons D:)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid so - only roe deer though. The book 'the Working Lurcher' is very disparaging about roe deer 'A labrador could catch them' it says. He's had a couple of squirrels too. It's amazing the number of places that turn out to have deer and/or squirrels...


(I've run out of beagle icons D:)

:-oooooooo

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... should probably make clear that Az has never *killed* a deer - or even seriously hurt one. He used to knock them over and then hold them down until I came panting up to haul him off. Once I realised that apparently *every sodding field and bush* around here has a roe deer in it, I kept him muzzled to stop him grabbing them.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

The same could also be said of otters - and I met two lovely otterhounds yesterday (though, of course, up to recently they were used to hunt mink - poor breed, having its job constantly taken away!).

Hunting has always been divided into Beasts of Venery (things you can eat) and Beasts of the Chace (vermin) so it's no surprise that the American settlers used their hunting dogs to get rid of the most readily available vermin.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

We had an otterhound on our waiting list a little while ago, but had no suitable foster homes available so could not take him. They are reputedly very droolly beasts...

I didn't read the page very carefully, I wish I'd made a note of the address now!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

"The English country gentleman chasing a fox; the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable."

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I've read a number of books where people hunted raccoons with Coon Hounds - and there are quite a large number of types, all of which are bred to hunt raccoon and/or opossum. People do eat opossum, at least they used to. Raccoons are considered a menace in various parts of the US.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia thinks that they are also used to hunt mountain lion and bears, though the idea of poor old Darwin confronting a bear - other than a teddy bear - is both horrifying and amusing!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

People absolutely do still eat raccoon (and possum, and squirrel) in parts of the US; and they may be hunted for vermin control, fur, and sport as well.

I've never eaten raccoon myself, but I did once boil clean the skull of a rather luckless juvenile 'coon that wandered into my yard and into the way of my dogs some years back and I have to say...it smelled rather appealingly similar to chicken when it was simmering! Folks I've seen talking about raccoon on cooking forums say that the age of the critter, its diet and the way it's cleaned and prepared can all make a big difference in palatability, which sounds reasonable enough. I suspect some of the absolutist horror on sites claiming that ~nobody~ would ever willingly eat that may be coming from a mix of bad experiences with older/inexpertly butchered/poorly-prepared raccoon, and possibly more than a bit of regional/classist disdain -- eating smaller and less-desirable game like raccoon or possum is often stereotyped as a sort of...backwoods, hickish, poor/uneducated sort of thing, so of course it MUST be terrible because otherwise sophisticated, smart city people would be buying it in restaurants for $50 a plate.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

There is a similar attitude here to eating grey squirrel (introduced pest species), I think. Though I always think there must be so many bones in these little animals, you'd have to be quite hungry (or very parsimonious) to pick them all out!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

What a charming old fellow, and what a surprise to see such a old-fashioned Southern sort of dog so very far from home! From his coloring and markings he looks most like a redtick "English" coonhound to me, although he's rather chunkier around the middle than you'd usually expect to see on a working hunting dog...the coonhound breeds usually have some amount of sagginess in the jowls and big ol' floppy ears, but ideally they should be somewhat more trim through the torso! ;) Perhaps he's got a bit of bloodhound somewhere back in his family tree?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

He is a very long way from home! None of the volunteers for our rescue had ever seen a coonhound before...

I wondered if he might be a cross, but I *think* that he's starting to firm up a bit around the midriff now that he's getting a lot more offlead time and general exercise. According to his previous owners he was used to spending a great deal of time crated :-/

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Awww, bless...I'm sure some nice healthful exercise and play will do the old boy wonders!

This site (http://www.coondawgs.com/breeds.html) looks to be run by active hunting-coonhound enthusiasts and has quite a few photos of the different breed types, links to breeders' sites with more photos, etc. -- the general conformation of most of those dogs is more on foxhoundish sort of lines through the body, although often a bit heavier in the skull, bigger-eared and jowlier and so on. My grandfather kept working coonhounds for much of his life, mostly blueticks, and while they were long before my time, the hounds in his old family photos definitely had waistlines!

I still wouldn't be hugely shocked if he was possibly mixed with something, as I know that a lot of the hunting enthusiasts here will tend to purpose-breed non-registered working coonhounds, pigdogs, etc. from a mix of their favored types -- and of course there are always the odd chance-bred mixes from strays and careless pet owners; coonhound mixes are sadly not at all uncommon in some Southern shelters. This dedicated rescue has pics of a few random coonhound mixes, for instance: http://www.carolinacoonhoundrescue.com/Happy_Endings.html; the shelter where I adopted my pibble and elkhound regularly brings in dogs from some more overstretched rural shelters, and those transfer pups tend to be mostly similar coonhoundy and beagly types.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

If you look at him from above, he does have a waist - it's just... sagged a bit :-D

Darwin has only ever been a pet, according to previous owner, and I'm sure they didn't select Puppy Darwin for his fine working lines, there could be a bit of anything in there! (X potato, possibly :-D)

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Hey, not a single coonhound at "Discover Dogs" though several breeds I admit I had not heard of and at least one I was overjoyed to find in the country at all. (Petit Basset Bleu de Gascogne - which I was delighted to meet as I've always adored the Grand but don't have acres of forest.)

He looks a sweetie. I hope Az will come around.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Az will come round, he's always like this with new fosters. He disapproves of their manners, and their presence in HIS house but he never takes it any further than making huffy faces.

Sometimes he gets quite fond of them in the end : he was just like this with Duke the ginormous lurcher to start with but now if he sees Duke he gets all adoring and kissy!

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

Oh, those ears! You need a sport function on your camera just for the ears... Glad to hear he's settling in, and hope he and Az come to an understanding.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

He is currently fast asleep ... the idea that the morning walk was not a quick 10-minute toddle down the road seemed to come as a nasty surprise, but I'm sure he'll get used to it. :-D

[thecatsamuel.livejournal.com]

Awww. What a cutie!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

He is quite a sweet old lump.

[gramarye1971]

I recently went to a local festival in rural western Virginia, where one of the highlights of the day was the coonhound trials. There was a swimming race where a scent was attached to a rope pulley over a small lake and the dogs were set to chase it by swimming through the lake, and another where the dogs were tested on how well they reacted to a 'treed' scent.

I have to say, most of the dogs there looked rather lumpen, so it's not just Darwin. ^_^

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It is probably good news if Darwin is *supposed* to look lumpy. Though I'm not sure how I could go about making him less lumpen anyway. :-D