Spinning technique

jan3t

"[The] fighting technique of spinning in the air and coming down behind a charging wild boar. Those are typical Kai Ken features. They are never exhausted or killed at big game hunts. This tells of their intelligence and brightness in addition to their physical excellence (by Takuro Yanagisawa of Kai Ken Society Tokyo Branch
as translated by Nobuko Hasegawa Weeks)."

Is it common to see this technique when the kai ken play? I know there is at least one hunter on the list, if you have a kai ken, have your seen this in your dog? Any videos?

TheWalrus

Yanagisawa-san is extremely famous in the breed as he was instrumental in writing articles promoting the Kaiken. He was very involved in showing, breeding and hunting in the early days of the breed. That being said, there's a lot of flowery anecdotal stuff in there, and of course for better or worse the dogs today are not exactly what they used to be.

As far as the hunting skills mentioned in the above article, I've seen skilled dogs do this on boar, it's not a skill limited to the Kaiken. That being said, in my experience the Kai are the lightest on their feet of the NK, and their climbing/jumping ability is pretty impressive. Many hunters that have seen Haru (now with Brad at Yamabushi kennel) were shocked at the terrain she'd scamper up, places where their dogs, and even my Kishu were unable to climb.

Heidi

I'm having a hard time picturing what this spinning is supposed to look like exactly. Just jumping over the boar and landing behind the boar, facing it? Sounds pretty cool - maybe there's a video somewhere.

I'll have to second that kai are very agile. Sosuke's still just a pup, but I've already seen him scrambling over places that seem impossible for him to get through. Specifically, he's climbed up cliffs where I was sure I was going to have to rescue him, but he just runs up them no problem. It's really amazing.

tjbart17

The first Kai I met, Akiko, would do this. She was amazing! She would spin straight up in the air and come down while playing with my Rott. She liked to show off her agile self with the big dog that couldn't match her. I fell in love right away.

My parent's female is extremely agile, but more like how Brad and Shigeru describe Haru. She is impressive, but does not do the spinning.

dlroberts

Tyson does this all the time while playing with other dogs. It's the behavior that has me pretty sure he'd be a terrific hog dog if I gave him the opportunity to be one. I'll try to get it on video at some point.

BradA1878

Tyson was produced by a hunter in Japan, so I guess it would make sense that he have some of these instinctual hunting moves in him

jan3t

dlroberts, please, please get a video!!

tjbart17

@dlroberts does he jump in the air and spin? I'd love to see a vid too.

Mei will spin but not while jumping up. She looks like a prarie dog a lot.

dlroberts

I'm trying! Turns out with the bigger yard and more space, the dogs play together less. :-( It seems that spin move is partly a function of the amount of space available, because it happened multiple times a day at my old house, and has only happened once here at my new house.

tjbart17

Ha ha ha. Koda and Mei NEVER play in my parent's big yard.

Then they get here and chase eachother all around and wrestle.