COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, March 08, 2014

The Canine Corps -



By Shannon Collins

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND — As a loaded trailer pulls up with an overwhelming sound of barking, the son-in-law of a Richmond woman knows man’s best friend is about to transform from playful pooch to a military working dog on a mission.


Air Force federal employee Joshua Brock, whose wife, Lauren, is the daughter of Kelli Bigby, Millwood Pass Circle, Richmond, is a military working dog instructor in the Dog Training School here with the 341st Training Squadron, Department of Defense Military Working Dog Program. It’s the world’s largest training center for military working dogs and handlers, dating back to 1958. The DoD Military Working Dog Veterinary Service and the Lt. Col. Daniel E. Holland Military Working Dog Hospital — the largest of their kinds — are also located here.

Within the 341st Training Squadron, there are five courses with about 140 students, 107 staff members and nine teams with about 18 dogs each: the Dog Training School, Handler’s Course, Kennel Master’s Course, Specialized Search Dogs Course and Combat Trackers Dogs Course. In the Dog Training School, the dogs learn obedience, patrol techniques, drug detection and explosives detection in 120 days. The students will work with four different dogs to learn the different personalities and learn different ways to utilize the dogs. Most of what the students and dogs learn will be on the 3,000 acres of training areas during practical scenarios in mock airplanes, warehouses, dorm buildings and open fields.


The mission here is to provide trained military working dogs and handlers for the Department of Defense, other government agencies and allies through training, logistical, veterinary support and research and development for security efforts worldwide.


Brock said his favorite part about being a part of the DoD military working dog program is being around military members.


“I love still being around military members,” said the Air Force veteran. “It’s just something I’ll never lose and will always respect because I’ve been in the same situation.”

Brock said the most challenging part of the job is the different personalities of the dogs.
“Every dog is different, so your training is different,” he said.


The dogs are usually German Shepherd, Belgian Malinois, Labrador Retriever and occasionally a mixed-breed or other sporting or herding-breed dog. They range in age from one-year-old to 13 years old and include both males and females. They are spayed or neutered before being adopted into the military working dog program.

 They currently house more than 850 dogs at Lackland.

When the military working dog handler is assigned to a kennel at his duty station after completing training here, he or she is assigned to one dog and will deploy to war zones with that dog. They deploy as a pair and the bond they share is vital for them to be able to successfully accomplish the mission. Brock deployed to Afghanistan as a handler and said the bond is indescribable.


“The bond you build with a dog is indescribable,” he said. “I’ve deployed with my K-9, Kormi, and it was the best time. I’ve deployed both to Iraq and Afghanistan, one as a straight-leg cop and the other as a handler. By far my K-9 deployment was the best.”

The first Air Force sentry dog school was activated in Japan in 1952. The Army continued to train and supply sentry dogs to Air Force units in the U.S. until the Sentry Dog Training Branch of the Department of Security Police Training was established at Lackland in October 1958. By 1969, they adopted the patrol dog as the standard military working dog and added a drug detection course.
 

In 2005, they added a new type of detector dog to the Department of Defense inventory in response to the rising threat of improvised explosive devices attacks during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Aptly referred to as Specialized Search Dogs, these highly skilled counter-terrorist search assets are trained to detect arms, ammunition, and explosives — both of the conventional and homemade varieties. They differ from their standard Explosive Detector Dog counterparts in the fact that they are far more independent and work primarily off-leash via voice and directional commands issued by the handler. In 2010, the dog program here began assisting the Marine Corps in training Combat Tracker Dog Teams to recognize and follow suspected terrorists. Upon deployment, Combat Trackers assist unit commanders by tracking enemy insurgents, bomb makers and snipers. These special forces-like military working dogs are force multipliers that offer the abilities to both stop current attacks and prevent future ones. Military working dog handlers learn to work with the dogs of all specialties.

The Best Working Dog for Cattle
 

The Hangin’ Tree Cowdog breed was developed as a mix of Catahoula Leopard dog, Border Collie and Australian Kelpie. They are short or slick-haired dogs with bob tails that come in many different colors from black, reds, merles and unique blends of these colors.


The breed has the instinct to work with animals and can be trained to work cattle. 
A unique attribute is their characteristic to bite the head and heels of cattle.


The Catahoula cowdogs are known for their courage and ability to handle any kind of cattle, from weanlings to cow-calf pairs. They are also alert, loyal, and have the ability to work long hours in the field. It is their combination of stamina, trainability, and instinct to work cattle that has made the Catahoula cowdogs a prize breed for cattle ranchers.

 
The catahoula is  a medium to large sized dog.  they are well muscled yet trim, powerful but agile with great endurance.  They are independent, protective, territorial, and may show aggressive behavior.  Their head is powerfully built with well developed cheeks with short-medium length ears that are pendulous.  Their coat is short to medium length, and may come in any color imaginable.  The same goes for their eyes.

 

The most enduring dogs who will outwork and outfight all other breeds of stock dogs, especially when protecting their master, livestock, and property.  They are bred to handle wild cattle and hogs in the roughest, most remote country.  They are also used as bay dogs to hunt coon, bear, mountain lion.



Catahoula  have a wealth of herding instinct and natural drive but do require training to learn how to channel that drive and move cattle correctly.

1 - Start working with your Catahoula on simple obedience commands as soon as you bring the dog home. Teach the puppy the meaning of "sit," "lay down," "come" and "stay." Work the puppy in five-minute sessions three or four times a day. Keep a collar and leash on the dog during all training sessions to keep the dog close at hand. Catahoula are very focused and may ignore you in the field if they do not have a good obedience foundation.

2  Teach your dog specific herding commands, including "come bye," "walk on" and "away." To teach "come bye," hold the stock stick in your hand and point the tip off to the left. Tell the dog "come bye," walking your Catahoula in a wide arc to the left. Treat the dog to a small snack when it moves to the left consistently when you say "come bye."

3 - Reverse the process and move the dog to the right to teach the Catahoula "away." For the "walk on" exercise, walk forward with the dog, holding the stock stick in front of you. Loosen your grip on the leash, encouraging the dog to walk forward in front of you, telling the dog to "lay down" when it walks out approximately 20 feet in front of you. Call the dog back and praise with a treat.

4 - Move the dog to a small, enclosed yard and let a few ducks or geese loose in the yard. Drop the leash and tell the dog to "walk on," moving the ducks forward. If they stray left or right, call out "come bye" or "away" accordingly. Once the dog has pushed the ducks around the yard for five minutes, call the dog to you.

5 - Instruct the dog to lie down for a few minutes to rest, and then command the dog to "walk on" and work the ducks again. Catahoula  are very determined and will herd the ducks incessantly, so work the animals for no more than 20 minutes to prevent burnout. Repeat the duck herding exercises daily until your Catahoula is consistently moving the ducks according to your commands.

6 - Swap the ducks for cattle once the dog is confident moving smaller animals. Turn two or three cows loose in a small corral, and walk the dog into the pen, closing the gate securely behind you. Make the dog lie down in the center of the pen and walk toward the cows, calling the dog to "walk on" once you are within 10 feet of the cattle.

7 - Point the stock stick at the cattle, firmly giving the "away" and "come bye" commands to keep the cattle moving. As soon as your Catahoula is confidently moving this small herd, let the rest of the herd free to build your dog's confidence and experience herding cattle.



Of all the big game species hunted in the United States, the mountain lion is probably the least understood. These elusive carnivores are rarely seen because they travel mainly at night and are very sneaky. Even when they travel in broad daylight, few people ever see them. Since no one sees them, it is hard to know how many of the big cats roam North America. Even biologists who study the big cats aren’t sure how many cats there really are. Some experts in Colorado claim there are a few thousand cats running in the backcountry of Colorado, but they are so difficult to locate that determining how many there are is simply an educated guessing game.


One mountain hunter recently learned how elusive mountain lions can be when he headed west to chase them. His friend and him found a fresh tom mountain lion track that headed up the center of a driveway to someone’s secluded backcountry home. After talking to the homeowner and showing him the track, he was amazed. Although he knew mountain lions lived in the area, he had lived in the house for ten years and had never seen a cat strolling through the woods.


Once dogs have treed a mountain lion, they surround the tree and bark at the cat until the hunter arrives.
For many outdoorsmen who don’t know any better, mountain lion hunting appears to be an easy sport. Most people think you only need a couple good hunting dogs and a gun. After spending a week chasing the crafty wilderness cats, this mountain lion hunter can testify that chasing mountain lions is one of the toughest hunting sports out there.

 

Being a good lion hunter requires having good lion hounds. Most non-resident hunters hunt lions with a hunting outfitter because most of us don’t have a pack of well-trained lion dogs. Most serious mountain lion hunters use red bone, blue tick, or black and tan hounds. Leopard curs are also becoming quite popular. These breeds have incredible noses. Once they smell a fresh lion track they can follow it for dozens of miles if needed until they find a cat. They are also very high strung. One dog has more energy than ten people, and ten mountain lions for that matter! However, hound dogs don’t train themselves. 


Most lion hunters have at least two or three dogs and most houndsmen spend most of the offseason training dogs. They first train them to be good trackers. They do this by trapping live raccoons, dumping a healthy dose of cat urine on them, and letting them go. After they have been running for awhile, the hunter lets his dogs out and the fun begins. As soon as the dogs smell the track and catch the scent of the raccoon, the chase is on. Sometimes the dogs have raccoons running up trees in an hour; other times it takes longer to locate the unlucky raccoon. The goal is to get dogs to trust their nose and follow the track until they find the reward - the raccoon. This style of training gets the dogs ready to chase mountain lions. Houndsmen may go through this training exercise dozens of times during the summer and fall before the winter mountain lion season opens.

While they are training their dogs to tree raccoons they are also teaching them not to track other game like elk, deer, or other critter they may encounter while running a mountain lion in the winter.


Any houndsman will tell you that they pray for snow like a school kid does at Christmas. Fresh snow is the key ingredient to mountain lion hunting. When a fresh snow blankets the mountainside in the middle of the night before a hunt, hunters are given a major advantage. If a mountain lion passes through an area the night before the hunt starts, the hunter will know the track isn’t very old because the snow is fresh. A fresh track in fresh snow is easier for the dogs to track than a track on dry land or old crusty snow. 

Ideal hunting conditions are a new 3-8 inches of snow on the ground when a hunt begins first thing in the morning. When a fresh track is located, the hunter will know the track is probably less than 12 hours old, so the cat can’t be too far away.


When locating lions, it is not uncommon for hunters to travel several hundred miles over the course of a weekend. Once a fresh lion track is located in the snow, the dogs are turned loose.

 


Dave Carlson
PO BOX 606
Yarnell, AZ. 85362
928-427-0179
  

Here’s what I offer to you, I can give your dog the opportunity to see if it has any potential for lion hunting and if it already has some skills, I’ll help to develop them. I make him part of a pack of dry ground hounds that can catch a lion when it’s catchable. You owe it to your dog to give him a good start and the opportunity to learn. They learn nothing on the end of a chain in your back yard. 

     

My only promise to you is your hound will hunt a minimum of 12 days a month and if and when it’s in shape up to 20. Can you hunt 12 days from your house for $400 at today's gas prices. I hunt an average of four days a week, this is all done on horseback in dry Arizona conditions, as you can see in the videos I sell this is rough country. Speaking of the videos they are made up from the report card videos I make and send to the owner clients so they can watch the progress of their hounds. I’m very fortunate I can hunt from my yard and have had lions kill deer in the yard twice, I have a wife who gets pleasure from seeing me happy and I’m happy watching the dogs learn. I may not be any more skilled then you at lion hunting but my life allows me to give your dog the time that most others just do not have to give.



If you send your dog for 60 days or more of hunting plan on spending at least a day here when you pick him up because I would like you to hunt for at least part of a day to see how he handles and what commands he has learned. [an Arizona hunting license is required.




https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/406211








21 comments:

  1. Wonderful, Rat. Good to see that you're enjoying yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Victor Yanokovych, it is being reported, has suffered a convenient heart attack in Russia. Pootie didn't like the guy.

    rat's posts aren't bad, I'll admit.

    It also shows us the kind of reading material on which he spends his away from blogging time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was expecting threads on Hegel, and the failures of the Napoleonic Code System in South and Central America.

      But no, it's military dogs, horses, guns, drugs, violence and naked women.

      It could be a lot worse, though.

      Delete
    2. Rufus, it's your perfect time to start putting up threads about ObamaCare.

      Your time has arrived, if you'd only recognize it.

      Delete
  3. I hope WiO begins putting up threads.

    And Quirk too.

    I am worried about the nutty Biblical scholar Miss T, who is redeemed by her knowledge of Huck Finn.

    Where art thou?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He is not putting up any threads on this blog.

      Delete
    2. That's your prejudice and our loss.

      Delete
  4. It's looking like the Boeing 777 was blown up by terrorists out over the ocean.

    Two of the usual type of suspects were traveling on what are now known to be fraudulent passports.

    My money is that is wasn't the Jews, but some moslem crazies that did it.

    What about you?

    Anyone around here immediately suspect the Jews?

    Nah.


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. March 8, 2014
      Malaysia Airlines mid-air horror
      Thomas Lifson


      The specter of a modern long range jumbo jet suddenly falling from the sky with no distress call suggests horrific causes. Two hundred and thirty-nine souls have apparently lost their lives as Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 suddenly disappeared from radar and contact, and an oil slick has been spotted in the South China Sea.

      Most (153) of the passengers on board were Chinese, but there were also “five Indians, four French, three US citizens, two passengers each from New Zealand, Ukraine, and Canada, and one each from Russia, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria.”

      Relatives waiting in Beijing are understandably distraught:

      Relatives of the passengers were directed by the Chinese police to the Lido Hotel in Beijing where they waited for news in a large conference room.

      Angry relatives accused the airline of keeping them in the dark and failing to provide updates as they were received.

      About 20 people stormed out of the room at one point, enraged they had been given no information.

      "There's no one from the company here, we can't find a single person. They've just shut us in this room and told us to wait," said one middle-aged man, who declined to give his name.

      "We want someone to show their face. They haven't even given us the passenger list," he said.

      Another relative, trying to evade a throng of reporters, muttered: "They're treating us worse than dogs."

      There are only a few possible causes of the sudden disappearance of a modern airliner. None are comforting:

      Some kind of equipment malfunction that completely preoccupied the crew and led to a sudden crash. This almost never happens, but did occur in the case of Air France 447 lost in the South Atlantic on the way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, when ice crystals apparently led to the auto pilot shutting off, and crew mistakes coping with the situation caused the crash. In the early days of jet airliners, Comet aircraft were lost when the cabin blew apart under pressure, but this is highly unlikely given the advances in materials. Still, Aloha Airlines Flight 243 did suffer an explosive decompression in 1988 on Boeing 737, and was at low enough altitude to survive.
      Pilot suicide cannot be ruled out. An Egypt Air Flight 990, a Boeing 767, crashed into The Atlantic Ocean when its first officer likely deliberately crashed, according to the US NTSB. Egyptian civil air authorities disputed this conclusion, blaming mechanical malfunctions, but the NTSB countered that the flight data recorder showed aircraft movements that could not be explained by mechanical malfunctions.
      Terrorism, including hijacking, a bomb or a ground to air missile, cannot be ruled out. Malaysia Airlines (then known as Malaysian Airlines System – MAS) Flight 653 was lost in 1977 when it crashed, apparently having been hijacked after take-off, with the loss of all hundred people on board the Boeing 737. It must be noted that China sufferedd a bloody terror attack from jihadists, killing 29 people, at the Kunming Railway station last Saturday.
      None of these possibilities is comforting.

      Malaysia Airlines is regarded as having a good safety record, but has suffered large losses over the years, though it is backed up by the oil-rich Malaysian government, and is still ordering new aircraft, despite its losses.

      http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/03/malaysia_airlines_midair_horror.html

      Delete
  5. One can do a lot worse than get one of these retired military dogs. I think there may be a program for that, but not certain.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is !

      http://www.militaryworkingdogadoptions.com/

      Delete
  6. Focus Nigeria, con't -


    Fill in the blank of this headline -

    Nigeria:________ hacks daughter to death with machete for converting to Christianity

    A) Hindu
    B) Jew
    C) Atheist
    D) Muslim
    E) Other

    Ans: Tomorrow, including article concerning the event

    ReplyDelete
  7. The man puts one hell of an effort to put up an interesting first class post and the wandering AIPAC narcissist starts his usual crap on the very first comment.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I complimented his post.

    As for the effort, it's all taken from some magazine articles.

    He said the other day I have lived off of $700,000 dollars in welfare payments.

    I was going to ask you if this violates your rule of -

    " making false or malicious unsubstantiated charges against another member is not allowed"

    but what's the use?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "rat's posts aren't bad, I'll admit"

      See there?

      My very first statement.

      I've been called a lot of things here but as far as I know it's the first time I've been called a narcissist.

      I like that better than, say, "a fucking fascist farmer, misogynist, and racist".

      This has always made me a little touchy where rat is concerned.

      Delete
    2. Tsk tsk... did Mr Deuce get his panties in a wad?

      So much for the 190 thousand dead syrians and 5 million refugees...

      But Deuce can sure throw the anti-Israel comments out, but hates to see a response.

      Ah, censored once again, how dare the jew defend himself...

      Delete
    3. You see Deuce, you have drawn the red line in the sand.

      You have stood against Israel and for the "palestinian", it's your snide remarks and allowing Jack the rat to post thousands of anti-zionist and anti-jew posts and then censored me when I have some thing to say.

      Delete my post because they are off topic? Sure help yourself... but have you deleted ANYONE else for the same crime?

      Hell no...

      Speaking loudly this AM Deuce..

      You are on the wrong side of history...

      Enjoy the lifted thread that jack stole from others since he is incapable of independent thought.

      Delete
    4. meanwhile Palestinians kids still starve to DEATH in Syria and you have JACK to say about it...

      Delete
  9. i don't like miltary dog. it is terrrible. these dogs are very well trained. govt jobs

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hi...
    A dog hunting a LION...?? Impossible thing... a real dog can't do but a trained dog will surely be able to do it without hesitation.... Nice article...:) Myrtle Beach condos for sale

    ReplyDelete
  11. hi

    The Post gives me lot of information the thing you have posted was nice keep on update

    Myrtle Beach houses for sale

    ReplyDelete