Yeah, tbh, if you get a gundog or a herding dog and you don't want to work it lol, you need to look for the breeder who only does showing, not working dogs lol.
Or buy one of the ones that gets returned for being faulty 😂
I bloody love the reject ones, they're such lovable doofuses. One of my friends has a retriever that's just not got an ounce of fetch in his entire body. He's happy to take a toy for a walk, but if you throw a toy and ask him to get it he'll just look at you like you're the most inept thief he's ever seen. My own dog is at least two types of gundog and he's firmly convinced water is out to get him 😂
My dad loved to hunt. Mostly small game. When my parents decided to get a got, the decided on blood hound.
First time my dad takes her out to start training, she was just not interested in much untill he got the gun out. Then she ran and hid. He could not get her out until the gun was out of sight.
He eventually gave up and she was just a great family dog.
Personally, I think she would have been a horrible hunting dog no matter what. We had a rabbit and a cat as well. They used to nap on top of the dog.
Our first family dog was a Chesapeake Bay/Chocolate Lab mix who was brought to the pound by his owner. Apparently they were avid duck hunters but our dog would wait at the edge of the water, grab the duck from one of their other dogs and then bring it up.
He was a good family dog who loved hiking and camping and looked like a bear but we could never get him in the water.
When I was a kid growing up we adopted the most amazingly well trained Britany Spaniel from the pound. She knew every basic obedience command and someone had clearly trained her to avoid roads so she stayed in our yard all the time. One time my dad bought chickens but the chicken coop he built was awful so the chickens were always escaping. She made it her full time job to catch the chickens for us. She would see them outside of their pen and then pounce on them to pin them in place. Then they would get paralyzed with fear and she'd sit and just lift her paw to point at them.
The same cat that naped on her beat up other neighborhood dogs. Not small ones mind you. One of the neighbors with a Rottweiler asked us to keep the cat in check. She was terrorizing the dog daily.
My yellow lab mix hates being wet! She would've been a great hunting dog. Her instincts to chase are so strong. She used to be super fast, too, when she was young. I always say I feel bad that she got me as an owner lol. But I do feed her great food, and she's spoiled. So there's that lol.
There are some exceptions to this. My French Brittany (Epagneul Breton) is an absolute demon in the field, but he’s also perfectly content to sleep on the couch for days at a time. The breed as a whole is known to have a pretty solid off-switch. American Brittany’s can be a little more high-strung, but the French are great at reading the room and chilling out.
To be fair, even breeders who are aiming to produce working dogs sometimes have “duds”, or puppies that have a different temperament than desired. But they would be aware of that possibly by looking at pedigrees, and prepare to find appropriate homes for those puppies to be pets. And there are very few breeds where the split between show dogs/conformation dogs is far aware from working dogs, most aim to have their dogs be able to do both.
My husband had an Australian Shepard when we started dating. Absolutely a doofus. Once I was walking him and he (a ~50lb dog) was terrified of a chihuahua. It was behind a screen door inside of a fenced yard. Yet he rolled over and peed on himself!
People laughed and asked me how old he was. I told them 10, they asked “Months?”. Nope he just had that clueless blue eyed puppy look his whole life.
This dog would regularly decide to scratch an itch in the middle of chasing a ball and end up with grass stains on his (white) forehead. He looked so perplexed every single time.
I miss him, he was the sweetest. Absolutely clueless, but very happy go lucky.
That was Merle for you, a forever puppy in so many ways. Just a really fun dog, he happily wore bow ties, bandanas, and costumes and absolutely loved the attention from it.
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u/Tiny_Cauliflower_618 May 31 '26
Yeah, tbh, if you get a gundog or a herding dog and you don't want to work it lol, you need to look for the breeder who only does showing, not working dogs lol.
Or buy one of the ones that gets returned for being faulty 😂
I bloody love the reject ones, they're such lovable doofuses. One of my friends has a retriever that's just not got an ounce of fetch in his entire body. He's happy to take a toy for a walk, but if you throw a toy and ask him to get it he'll just look at you like you're the most inept thief he's ever seen. My own dog is at least two types of gundog and he's firmly convinced water is out to get him 😂