I have never written to this post but something happened yesterday that made me start thinking that I should.

My wife and I live on a small ranch in Burnet County we also raise and breed Labrador Retrievers for hunting.  I have one male Lab that goes with me everywhere I go and he is also the best hunting buddy that I have.  While checking a protein feeder yesterday my male “Jake” stopped in his tracks and began to circle way around the feeder while looking directly at the bottom of it.  The feeders are only a few inches off of the ground and the grass grows up to the bottom of the feeder but there is bare ground around the feeder where the deer have eliminated all vegetation.  After seeing the strange actions of the dog there was no reason other than a snake was under the feeder.  I took Jake to a tree and tied him up and pulled out a Rattlesnake about 4’ long from under the feeder.  Perfect place for a snake, deer eat the feed, deer spill the feed, birds and small animals come to clean up the feed, snakes eat birds and small animals, great place to hunt.

When I am out with my dogs, whether we are hunting or not, I look for any signs of peculiar activity.  I know how each one responds to a snake, even though they all act differently.  The reason that I know how they act is they have all been “Snake Broke”

The way this began was a few years ago some friends and I were Dove hunting near a Stock Tank in South Texas.  It was getting late in the day and the dove began to come in.  We had several retrievers working that afternoon and suddenly one of the dogs cried out in pain.  At first we all thought that he had stepped in cactus or something until we got to him.  He had ran back to his owner without the bird, something he had never done before, and right before our eyes his face began to swell and he became very lethargic.  One of the guys hunting with us went to where the dog got hurt and killed a small Rattlesnake.  We immediately loaded the dog and drove to the Vet in Uvalde, but the dog could not be saved.  Since that time we have all of our dogs Snake Broke.

Snake Breaking is a very simple process that you could do yourself but it takes live snakes.  This is something that most of us don’t keep around the house especially if we have a spouse, however, there are several trainers that will do this for a relatively small cost.  It is done by using an E-Collar and 3 snakes.  The reason for the 3 different types of snakes is that each one smells different.  All hunting dogs have an incredible sense of smell.  So incredible that they can smell a freshly killed dove in the same field that earlier that day many doves were killed and retrieved and that scent is all over the ground as well as the freshly killed one.  They can tell the difference and go straight to the bird and bring it back.  Each type of snake has a distinct odor that sets it apart from the others.  We break our dogs on all of the poisonous snakes that are common in Texas except for the Coral Snake, there is not much of a chance that a Coral snake could kill a dog during a hunt or an outing in the woods.  The other 3 types of poisonous snakes are the Rattlesnake, Cottonmouth and the Copperhead.  It is thought by many that the Copperhead won’t be found around the Hill Country but I know of a place in Bastrop that has produced many of these snakes, so they are here among us.  The process of snake breaking takes about 20 or 30 minutes for all 3 types of snakes.  The dogs don’t get hurt and it may save their lives and possibly your own.  We spend a lot of money for our dogs as well as on our dogs so a little more is nothing to save your investment and your best friends life.  Another thing that is nice about this is, let’s say you are going to hunt around a stock tank, an old house or a grain field.  Before the hunt you can walk your dog around the area where you and your friends will be hunting and if there is a Rattlesnake, Cottonmouth or Copperhead in that area the dog will smell it and shy away from that spot.  This could keep you and your fellow hunters from accidentally stepping on it or worse, reaching to pick up a bird that might have fallen near the snake.  If you do this each time you set up to hunt your dog will smell it if one is anywhere close and he will respond the same way he responded during the breaking process.  We have 4 Labs that we hunt with and they all act differently.  Jake, the male I talked about earlier, just circles way around and stares where the smell is coming from, one of our females stops several feet away and begins to bark and another runs around the snake in very large circles and just stares where the snake is but the one thing that they all have in common is none have been bitten and none have allowed me or my hunting companions to be bitten.  If a dog has not been snake broke he will usually smell the snake and not realizing what it is, will walk up to it and stick his nose to the snake to find out what it is and this could end in disaster. 

We depend on these canine friends of ours to hunt under grueling conditions and never show signs of distress, heat, cold or exhaustion so the least we can do is protect him or her with every means possible.  Other than traffic I don’t feel that there is a greater danger to your dog than being bitten by Mr. No Shoulders, even if your dog is simply a pet that just goes outside to use the bathroom, he should be able to keep himself out of harms way.

Take care of your buddy, he would take care of you.