Io know somebody who’s hound died while treeing, but I don’t know how. Is there an inherent risk to the dog when doing this activity?
‘treeing’ as I understand it is the act of a chasing an animal into a tree. So your question is kinda confusing to me.
Yes it would be risky to chase a dog into a tree, they aren’t the best of climbers so they could fall and get hurt.
If your asking about allowing a dog to chase another animal into a tree, I don’t think it’s any more risky than other physical activities.
Dogs are more than capable of hurting themselves in all sorts of ways. Running in general has inherent risks. Knowing nothing about how the dogs cause of death it would be impossible to say if the activity had anything to do with it.
He could have been happily chasing a racoon in the woods and someone mistook him for a deer.
I had trouble wording, but yes, a dog chasing wild animals into trees.
Odd question. There is an “inherent risk” in just about any activity. Running in the woods is obviously more risky than fetching a ball in the garden, but neither has zero risk.
That’s the problem, you have no idea how. it could have taken a coyote bait, it could have been bitten by a snake, it could have died of heat stroke, it could have been attacked by a puma, it could have staked itself, it could have fallen off a cliff.
There are literally thousands of ways that a dog could die while running around in the woods. With no idea how the dog died, you can have no idea how the dog died.
Regardless of the details of the death mentioned in the OP, yes, there is an inherent and real risk to dogs’ health if they are allowed to run free and chase wild animals.
ETA: I have the vet bills to prove it.
Yes, I realize it is hard to say. My question was is there a common issue with this kind of activity…like racing horses breaking legs.
I let my dog tree squirrels because that’s what he was originally bred to do… well, tree foxes is what he was actually bred to do but we don’t have a lot of foxes where we live. He can’t climb trees so he ends up at the bottom of the tree looking up and barking at the squirrel with no hope of catching it. I don’t see the danger in letting him do this and I regularly take him into the woods on hikes where he could hurt himself in a thousand different ways. Dogs are fairly resilient creatures and while a dog could die from any number of activities I wouldn’t think treeing animals would be high on the list.
Raccoons can be nasty creatures. Coonhounds sometimes end up being seriously injured or killed.
If allowed, some hounds will run themselves to death chasing game.