Dogs and noise

[Spinner]

I was at my gun club on Saturday for some trap practice and a young guy and (I presume) his girlfriend arrived. I asked the guy about the dog (border collie) and whether he thought it was a great idea to have his dog chained to the gun rest behind the 27 yard line while they shot. He just said, "Oh he's OK ... he loves it."

The guy was coaching his girlfriend and my wife and I were watching him from behind the 27 yard line, near the dog. The dog started whining after about 10 shots and my wife asked me to take off my ear muffs. I took them off for 2 or 3 shots and thought that while the noise wasn't really really loud it was certainly a sharp sound and that I wouldn't be comfortable standing there with no ear protection for more than a few shots.

Now a dog's hearing is way more sensitive than mine, so I'm guessing that dog was whining because he was uncomfortable with the noise level (of course he may have been whining because his owner was standing 11 yards away ignoring him). My wife ended up asking the guy if she could take the dog for a walk just to get him away from the noise.

My wife and I talked about it afterwards and she was really steamed that this jerk was subjecting the dog to this sort of noise without any thought for the dogs health or well-being.

I got to thinking about gun dogs and how they handle gun shots. A working gun dog is generally somewhere in front of the gun when it goes off .... the noise out there has got to be worse than from way behind a gun. So do gun dogs lose their hearing thru noise induced damage?

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[Kingcreek]

I had a Golden Retriever that was one heck of a fine bird dog especially on pheasants and he lost most of his hearing. He hunted until he was 12 years old.

 

[Selfdfenz]

The dog could have been crying for any number of reasons. Separation or noise or both together could have been explanations.

When my Lab was about 3 months old I got permission to bring her out to the gun club and do the one thing that drove her nuts even at that age.

I threw bumbers for her.

We started well behind the gun line and she and I had a great day slowly moving a tad closer as time went on. After a few of these trips she started recognizing the driveway into the gun club and knew she was going to get worked and would whine till her feet hit the ground ....and then it was on. To the uninformed casual observer that saw her moaning and acting overexcited they may have consider her gunshy, and her owner a jerk, when just the opposite was the case.

She went on to become a great hunter but hearing gunfire she could not get to and investigate grove her nuts. Gunfire to her always was equated with bumbers (I used a launcher a lot ) or ducks and she was driven to investigate those things bigtime. Drag a rifle out of the closet and she would not move, could not have cared less. The second she saw the shotgun she would spin in circles on her back legs and whine, dying to get going.

In her elder years she would let me shoot clays with guns booming away while she slept under a bench. She was pretty old by then and retired but could hear fine if crinkling a Dorito bag was any indication.

S-

 

[Wiley]

My guess is that a gun dog will loose the majority of hearing at the frequency of the gun shots, other frequencies will be ok. The same thing happens to combat vets (ask one of 'em).

A friend of mine was in VietNam in mech infantry and then transfered to the Air Force flying C130's and C141's. His low frequency and high frequency is pretty bad but mid range is ok.

 

[Ginger]

I'd say that it depends on the dog, the exposure, and the type of hunting. One of my English Setters was stone deaf by age 11 but my other setter still has surprising good hearing at 19 (yes, that's not a typo)! Both were used in upland hunts but the eventually deaf setter was also kind of a "loaner" dog, you know, he got loaned to other family members.

Now my Uncle's Springers all seem to have perfect hearing but he has about a million of them (it seems like, anyway) and he seems to rotate them a lot.