(EP:31) Dog Vests & A Good Goose Hunt!

Full transcript for Episode 31: (EP:31) Dog Vests & A Good Goose Hunt!.

Tyce

Hey everyone, welcome to the Bird Dog Podcast. My name is Tyce. Today I want to talk about dog vests — specifically what changed my mind about them — and then give you a recap of a great goose hunt we had with my buddy Mike and his pointing lab Cobb.

I want to share an experience that made me a true believer in running a vest on your dog in cold water. I was hunting a river — water moving fast enough that it wasn't frozen, but cold. Had a young dog and we had a fast, heavy flight. I kept sending her to retrieve and she went back-to-back for close to 30 minutes. At the end of the hunt she started struggling on the return of the last bird. Not struggling like a dog learning to swim, not struggling like a tired dog — struggling like a dog whose motor skills were failing. She was going under. I waded out and got her. She was fine, but it was close. Her body temperature had dropped to the point where her muscles were just not working anymore.

I was not running a vest on her that day. After that experience, I will always run a vest when the water is cold. My general rule now: if the water is below 50 degrees and the dog is going to be swimming, put the vest on. It provides two things: buoyancy and insulation. A dog fighting motor failure from cold is losing both of those battles simultaneously. A vest helps on both. If you're just running a dog through cold water briefly — one retrieve, out of the water — you're probably fine without one. But if your dog is making repeated retrieves in cold water over any length of time, the vest is worth it.

I've also always recommended vests when there's ice or debris in the water that could cut a dog's chest. That still stands. But after that near-miss, I've expanded my recommendation: just put the vest on when it's cold. A properly fitting neoprene vest won't bother your dog, won't slow it down. If anything it helps. There are a lot of brands out there — Tangle Free makes a good one. Try a few, find one that fits your dog well, and use it. I wish I had that day.

Quick recap on the goose hunt: I met up with my buddy Mike and his black pointing lab Cobb for a morning field hunt. Mike had done his homework — he'd scouted the field, knew exactly where the birds were working, and had confirmed they were coming back. We set up on the edge of a winter wheat field where they'd been feeding. Small spread, some cover for the blinds, minimal calling. The birds came in and we shot a two-man limit in about 45 minutes. Cobb was steady, made every retrieve cleanly, and handled the whole thing like a veteran. That's the fun of having a well-trained dog — you get to actually enjoy the hunt instead of managing chaos. Find the X, set up right, and let the birds do the work. That's hunting. Thanks for listening.