Registered: Nov 2011
Location: Freeport,TX
Posts: 2002

Epigenetics is the study of how behaviors and environment can change how your genes work—without changing the DNA itself. It’s about how genes get turned “on” or “off” based on things like diet, stress, sleep, toxins, or even emotional experiences…

Some houndsmen and women have said on this forum that their hounds never ran trash, that they didn't need breaking because they were natural coon dogs…this sounds like a good example of epigenetics...if the dam was hunted in the last 3 weeks of her pregnancy, striking, trailing, treeing and mouthing and fighting coons…all this affects the unborn pups in a positive way especially if the momma loves treeing and catching coons…

Back when I was a boy I read any dog article I could find…the three dominate magazines found most any day always had one article each on hunting dogs…these magazines published monthly and most waiting rooms had these laying around…not so today…

One day I found an interesting article…at first I thought, this guy doesn't make any sense and is off his rocker…i kept reading and he had me hook line and sinker…
He said; if I take my redbone female hunting and she strikes a coon and she gets excited and her hormones go wild and adrenaline starts pumping and she starts barking on track…she inhales the scent deeply and that travels throughout her body…and the pups will pick up on it, and also pick up on the chemical reactions taking place in her body…all this affects the pups…and when she is shaking the coon and fighting it besides all the chemical reactions they feel the vibrations of the fight…and once the pups are born they will have a better chance of becoming a coon dog or hunting dog…well I bought into it right then and there…that was 40 years before epigenetics…we just called it pre exposing the pups to their environment…

Again…Epigenetics does not change the DNA…that is fixed before we are born…but the environment can change how the genes will work…the environment turns on genes and turns other genes off…that is what happens when manipulating the environment…if we know what we are doing we can get the best out of our pups and dogs…
Even in training sessions to much can work negatively…like the kid who makes himself sick with eating too much ice cream…if done too many times he just wont crave it anymore…same principle with training pups…if done right you can actually imprint the pup to love the game…but we got to have a pup who wants to work and maybe hunting the female while carrying pups gets you those pups that want to work…

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Training dogs is not so much about quantity, it's more about timing, and the right situations...After that it's up to the dog....A hunting dog is born...

Last edited by Reuben on 09-11-2025 at 02:29 PM

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Registered: Sep 2009
Location: Monticello, Wi
Posts: 787

I've tried this in the past and don"t know if it worked or not. But many times I've seen the same mating between two dogs with different results and if you would have gotten the second litter first you wouldn't have made it the second time. That being said, I have seen the offspring from the third cross produced from the same parents to be the best of all three litters.

Did the pregnant females exposure to the environment affect the litters more than the DNA variance? Often the owner of the female doesn't hunt her and take risk of loosing her after she produced an exceptional litter. Is it possible that this is the cause of the poor quality second litter?

Environmental stress on the mother when the pups are very young will definitely affect the young puppies. Pups with the higher intelligence are affected more as they do not require repetitive stimulation to learn.

Exposing the Mother to the game that you hunt while she is pregnant could be the most cost effective investment that you could make. What have you got to loose?

The higher the intelligence, the less the handler or trainer can error. Highly intelligence animals do not always forget and forgive. Highly intelligent animals are often mistaken for being shy from mental defect when they are just cautious.

As ever, Ken Risley

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