DOGS! Anyone own a Catahoula?

[Egg Rookie 2010]

Opinions? Will this animal jive with 3 yr old and 6 yr old boys, 5 acres, a 6 yr old Lab and a 10 yr old Aussie? (chickens, horses, goats) Do they have any typical bad habits?

 

[twentynine]

Had one for 16 years, another for about 5 years.

Mine where good with kids.

And plumb danged mean to a drunk that happened to stagger on to my carport at 0200 on a Sunday morning. It was not pretty to watch. Keep telling him to stop, he wouldn't stop. He continued towards the door waving his hands and hollering at me. I let him set his foot on the carport slab. Had my female catahoula dog by the collar, she was snarling and growling. When his foot touched the slab I gave the collar a twist, told her "get'em". She was not trained, figured at most she would nip him, maybe and bark getting his attention making him back off. She hit him at a run leaping up just as she reached him, her front paws hit him in the chest. Knocked him flat, then she began to take nice large chunks out of what ever part of the body the guy offered. He scrambled to his feet and my last sight of him was going down the driveway with his back pocket ripped nearly off. Daphne, my sweet family dog, giving him a bite and head shake every few feet. Some strange reason he was still hollering and waving his arms. To this day and it has been over 10 years ago, I do not know who the drunk was, nor have I heard from him again.

 

[CowgirlJules]

Not Catahoulas, but I have a pack of Walkers. Hounds are good dogs, and good with kids. You should be fine once you teach it not to run your livestock, but if it's got a strong prey drive and you're not strongly fenced, watch out. My hounds are cat-treeing fools, but my housecats put up with them. If they found a stray one when they were loose, forget about it. They're running until that cat is treed. Might hit on coons, possums, bobcats, deer, what have you.

 

[RaZ]

Mine is a mix with blue heeler. Boundless energy, loves to bark at squirrels. She is great with my golden which takes the burden off of my 11yo Samoyed.
No kids here but I would think that they would be great together.
Only bad habit I've noticed is sometimes digging in the yard.

 

[Joz]

Friends of mine have a Catahoula.

He's been great with their son (now 2), but he was ... 4 years old when the kid was born. As a puppy he was pretty energetic. If you've got lots of property, you'll have room to run him. Since you've got a lab and an aussie, I doubt you'll be getting into anything you can't already handle.

The most obvious quirk of Boudreaux's personality is that he does not like it when the pack splits up, and tries to herd everyone back together.

 

[KDailey]

I have a catahoula and lab mix and he's awesome with kids. He doesn't do so great with livestock. He hasn't killed or injured anything hut I wouldn't trust him with chickens or ducks. Horses and cows are fine but he likes to chase them.

 

[KingSpeck]

I have an eleven year old catahoula/border collie mix. He's wonderful with the kids (ages 3 and 6), and great with the chickens. He has ALWAYS been a great dog. He's very smart and took a bit of training when he was younger
but he loved every minute of it. He's very much a people pleaser - easy to train. However, a lot of that I attribute to the border collie part of him, not the catahoula part.

 

[Jamie_Dog_Trainer]

I don't know if I have had bad experiences with them because of the breeders in the North West or what, but every single one that I have dealt with in training have been in training for aggression. I met my first one in 2000 or about, and have done evals on about four or five after that. The last one I dealt with was a very large dog, nearly as tall as me when he was standing on his hind feet. (I know this because he came up the leash at me and found he was inches from biting my face). I can say they were mostly safe with their owners, but strangers beware. Unprovoked aggression was always an issue with all of them. I have not found them to be aggressive with children that are in the home with the dog, but again, aggression toward strangers, that includes children was seriously bad.

Training them away from their owners was pretty easy, they are not the most people pleasing of breeds, but they aren't that difficult either. Lots of strong leadership is required when owning a Catahoula, I fully believe that the Catahoulas I have known had issues stemming from complete absence of strong leadership. None of them respected their owners and two of them had bad possessive aggression. When taken out of their element at my house/training facility they did well. When turned back over to their owners after extensive owner-training they were much improved. I think it takes an owner with a lot of common sense to successfully own a Catahoula. It is not a breed I would recommend for some one without a lot of time to devote to training and socialization and someone who is used to a Lab or Golden type of temperament.

 

[zzGypsy]

had a pair of great dane catahoula cross pups - 96 and 105 lbs... we bought them from a guy who was starving them to death, saved them, fed them, and fed them and fed them.... well to the 100lb range.
happy, energetic dogs, prone to dig dens and under fences. quite respectful of the electric fence once we put it in to keep them from digging under their pen. they're off to a new home to hunt hogs for a living.

big bark, but not agressive with people as long as we were there, just physical and athletic and at a100 lbs each quite a handful.
we never had them loose with our livestock. they were ok with other dogs if introduced.
the only problem we had was occasionally they'd get into it with each other and once they started it was a bad fight, always resulting in injuries and stitches. not unusual for hounds to have rank establishing fights, but these dogs would NOT back down once they started. this is the primary reason they went off to a hunting home - 99.5% of the time no issue, and we never had an issue with people, but we decided they needed a home where they could put that physical size and drive to work.

 

[zzGypsy]

BTW, one of the two showed some aptitude for herding, we started him on sheep and he probably would have worked cattle well.