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Vizslas with young children and chickens?

21531 Views 12 Replies 11 Participants Last post by  Scrappy
My wife and I are planning to get a dog and we've been researching breeds for the past several weeks. Vizslas are high on our list, but we've read in some places that they aren't a good choice if you have very young children or pet birds. We have no kids now but we just started trying, so we might have a baby coming into our lives in the next year or two. Also, we have nine chickens in our backyard. They live in a well-reinforced coop and run, but we do let them out into the backyard/garden for a few hours every day.

Should we forget about a Vizsla because of this? We are very responsible dog owners and are committed to training, socialization and management no matter what breed we get.

One more question: so many websites make such a big deal about the exercise requirements of Vizslas. Yet Dogtime.com lists Labs and Golden Retrievers as "5 out of 5" for exercise requirement, whereas Vizslas get only a "4 out of 5". Even on that site, though, in the description of the dogs they make a point of saying how much exercise Vizslas need, whereas they don't mention that with Labs or Golden Retrievers.

How much exercise do you find your Vizsla needs?

Thanks for your help!
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Don't forget that Vizslas are bird hunters. I let my boy run with my sister's chickens when he was ~14 weeks. He had a blast but was not able to catch them.

Scout is now 7 months and I am training him to hunt. He will point the quail and not try to catch it. However, if I flush the bird and it lands nearby, he has jumped on them and killed them.

My recommendation is to keep them separate. Scout ignores the quail when they are in the pen.
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