EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

Years of line breeding and selecting dogs that perform a certain task or tasks well and also have a certain look about them takes many years of selecting for those traits...no deviation and no excuses...sometimes we as consumers might not appreciate the time and money it took to produce these type of dogs consistently...even then we might not like that style of dog due to folks not liking the same thing in a dog...but if they are exactly what you like you are one lucky person...

genetic variability...we can breed a tight line bred cur dog that lacks stopping power to one that does and this dog comes from a long line of dogs that does...hopefully most other traits are the same for the sire and dam...we keep as many pups as we can so verify and select those that exhibit the traits we want...it is possible that none inherit or that all inherit the desirable traits and somewhere in between as well...it depends on whether it is a dominant or recessive trait...

many years ago a friend of mine bred his Plott hound to a fit bull that was probably a pound pitbull...the Plott was from top bear and hog dogs and he was a good one...he sold a pup to a friend of mine and the pup grew up to be a cull...no hunt, no bay and no catch...

another young man bought one of those pups out of the same litter and he was an outstanding hog dog...he looked like a plott hound on steroids...just a good looking dog that could get it done...track, find, stop, bay and catch hogs...

I think compensation breeding is the worst thing you can do if you are trying to maintain a line of dogs. Compensation breeding is breeding a dog with a major fault to a dog that is strong in that fault, with hopes of correcting said fault. You may correct it in some of the pups but it will come back to bite you sooner or later. A person should strive to breed dogs that are balanced, in other words, no major faults.

BigO...I agree

Breeding a sway backed dog to a roach back dog in hopes of getting a correct back is wrong...now we have introduced 2 faults to the offspring...

Linebreeding;

Quite a few of us agree that linebreeding is a good way to produce good dogs whether they are cow dogs or hunting dogs...but linebreeding can take your dogs to a higher level or even towards a lower level of performance in our breeding program dependent on our standards...

One of the first things to know is how should the dog be physically built to perform well?

We must know what a good hunting dog is as well...probably the most important thing...the reason I say this is...how could we breed better dogs if it isn’t absolutely clear in our minds eye as to what a good to great hunting dog is?

We need to know how the pups progress...at what age do they Bay, trail, wind and want to hunt?  We need to know these things so keeping a log, a mental or written log as to which pup did what at what age etc...one day this information will be the deciding factor as to which pups stay and which will be sold or given away...

We need to understand the pups progression curve and cull those that aren’t on that curve...culling pups from the breeding program because they aren’t on the curve just means the pup should be sold or given away...the pup is culled from the breeding program because he is not on the curve or ahead...we want to produce pups that meet those requirements so one day as breeders they can produce more of the same and preferably a higher percentage of pups per litter that inherit these traits...the other pups that aren’t on this curve are removed but still have the potential to be great dogs...
A lot of times just knowing how the pups do on that curve will tell us that more than likely they will make good dogs when grown...

The curve can last for a year or a little longer and we should know by then for sure...sometimes we can know with a 4 month old pup...

I like to look for naturals that naturally find, wind, trail and Bay...yes we can expose over and over and train to get one to do what we want if they have it in them...but we need to know that more than likely we will raise them up and they will produce more of the same...so we need to stay away from that as much as possible...we should breed dogs to a higher standard...
I believe in feeding tracks to make a good dog better...but I also believe in not feeding a bunch of tracks in trying to make a cull into a hunting dog...I don’t have much patience for this type of dog...this dog is taking up valuable space...

If we keep them related and breed this way we will produce better dogs consistently...

linebreeiding...many folks assume that the pups are well bred because they are line bred...it depends on the breeder...if he or she keep and follow a high standard for a good all around hunting dog then I would agree...

we can breed a wiener dog to a long line of greyhounds and these dogs could be considered line bred...I used that as an example just so we can look a little harder into a line bred line of dogs...

Puppy selection...lots of times if we pay attention to the pups we can learn quite a bit about them...some will wind naturally and find easily and they can be consistently the best every time they are tested...simple, simple tests...let your imagination be your guide...at 4 months take them to the woods and one or two pups just might surprise you and roll out and make a loop...an internal genetic yearning to make that loop was calling and the pup adhered to the calling...look for natural instincts in a pup...most of the time if not all the time these pups will grow up to do what they were doing as little pups only better and usually better than their siblings...so why not breed these types...natural ability begets more natural ability...

some folks will say line breeding doesn't work and some even say that the breeding was a failure...most of the time when breeding to a high standard we will get a higher average of good dogs per litter and at the minimum a decent average...I believe that with each generation we are cleaning up the gene pool through proper selection...

I would call the Weiner dog to the long line of greyhound breeding an outcross breeding and no longer line bred unless and until you had bred that litter back into the same grey hounds a couple of generations. Then I would describe them as being line bred except for one outcross so many gens ago.

Thanks for the info Reuben, I always enjoy reading the discussions on breeding.


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Some good reading here, but here’s a little spin off, almost every breeding discussion is about line breeding and starting with good dogs to begin with, but hardly ever any talk about a person having to start from absolute scratch, not having the means, opportunity to own, or access to a family of dogs that someone else has already done the hard part, I whole heartedly agree that line breeding for what you want is the best way to consistently produce dogs of the caliber you desire in future generations but at some point in time said family of dogs was made from scratch like granny’s biscuits and was the result of best to best or best of what you own to as good as you could get your hands on or access to, I prefer line breeding but am not scared to breed to something I see that adds what I feel like is needed in my pack as long as both sides are for the most part very similar in style but one side lacks in dept that the other is above average in, I guess this would be considered corrective or compensation breeding to an extent, I won’t make the cross unless I have access to other family members on both sides and the parent families on top and bottom are prepotent in passing on the traits that I desire, to give an example of my personal situation, I took a running walker female that is of the type that runs a piece of game with the intentions of sinking her teeth into it and bays just as hard as any cur dog and is from a family of dominant speed and drive dogs who finish at or near the top in just about every trial they’re entered in but aren’t known for their trailing abilities and bred her to Cajuns Jack dog who  was known for his nose and scenting abilities, I know I’m not mixing paint here and looking for some to have her speed and nose and some to have his nose and speed and hopefully if hybrid vigor takes over there’ll be a few who are
Good combination of both, this is a complete outcross of two different breeds from two families who aren’t heavily line bred themselves but are good reproducers with a good deal of prepotency behind them, I have access to enough of the dams close kin,( full sibs, nieces and nephews) and hopefully offspring of jack to cross back into one another to be able to line out what it is I’m wanting, and that being blazing track speed with the nose to back it up, on the other side of my yard I have some cur dogs that I was lucky enough to get my hands on before they died out and have made enough crosses within them to the point I have enough here and strategically placed with others to be able to breed around a few certain individuals behind them and have already started lining them out and have predicted what should be expected out of a few litters so far based off of their inbreeding coefficients and knowledge of their ancestors with pretty good accuracy, I’ve gotten them to a point an outcross is needed bc I’ve seen some inbreeding depression taking place based on the overall size of some of them, I’ve noticed the tighter crosses I’ve made seemed to throw smaller framed dogs compared to the parents and ancestors, these dogs are above the average as far as cur dogs but lacked in a few areas of importance to me and one being the ability to pick up a loss with the quickness and overall line control of the track, they are pretty fast on track but are known for overshooting a track then bobbling at times to get it lined back out,  the more time a
dog spends trying to line a track out after a sharp turn or over run the more distance and hog is able to put in between himself and the dogs, I found a family of running walkers bred solely for running bobcats with about 50 years of EXTREME critique selecting and culling for those individuals who were “cat savvy”  and are a bobcats worst night mare once his scent fills their nostrils that are heavily line bred themselves, and have and reproduce the track running style that I love and prefer  and are tightly bred enough that the male I’ve bred to twice out of that family goes back to one individual male nearly 190 times in 11-12 generations and he himself was the result of some line breeding, my plans are to keep crossing the cur family and cat family back into each other until I get the consistency I’m looking for and then if the good lord is willing and the creek don’t rise later on take the results of the walker/plott and cur/walker crosses and continue on with my breedings around them, I know it seems like a long shot and it maybe to some but I’ve always liked a challenge, i know some my say what I’m looking for already exist and that it can be found in such and such breed and yes that’s true but I’ve always enjoyed making something myself and watching it manifest before me, I have put a tremendous amount of thought into this project and didn’t just dream this up in my head one day as the ultimate dog or something, instead this is the result of a lot of observations over the years about traits that I feel, in my personal situations and experiences are needed and my preference, I didn’t just go out and breed  just any random individuals either, I’ve done my homework and waited until I found what I was looking for before I ever started adding anything into my cur dogs that I had been working on, I also selected individuals that performed and excelled and were from my region and areas that I mainly hunt, the walker/plott cross is a complete shot in the dark but one that I feel is going to produce, so far the pups all seem to be game crazy fools, just how fast and what kinda nose is yet to be determined, the cur/walker crosses seem to be working, before making the first cross I already knew what I was going to get out of my curs but wasn’t sure what the cat dogs were going to bring to the table, as of now that first cross is a little over two and there are 3 females and one male that a man could take anyone of them by themselves and start decent tracks and tie hogs any day of the week, the female cur I used this time is a good reproducer and her offspring have made some nice dogs and is one of the dogs I’m planning on building around as a cornerstone, I got a little long winded on this but find it difficult to try to translate my thoughts into words that might be understood, without giving a description about my situation and what I got going on so it doesn’t seem as if I just took some random dogs and began churning out pups without any forethought, if any of y’all have any input, questions, or criticism don’t be afraid to send it my way, I don’t mind input that makes me scratch my noggin....


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Another thing a person must ask themselves, is what are they expecting to get out of the mating, are they breeding for reproduction and performance to be able to continue a family strain or
Line out certain traits or are
they looking to get performance without any worries of breeding for the future ( ex. a battle cross), line breeding isn’t the only way to get good dogs, it’s just the most functional way to maintain consistency, predictability, and type, hybrid vigor more times than not produces the perfect combination of the parents in a pup but is usually only seen in one or two out of a litter and the only way to know which one it is, is to keep the entire litter or keep them close to find those individuals especially when mating two completely unrelated individuals, at some point though if a person kept culling through enough litters of outcrosses and only crossed those individuals who displayed hybrid vigor amongst one another, even being unrelated, hybrid vigor will eventually start becoming hybrid dominant as the traits that are desired, selected, and kept ate becoming compounded and are essentially being lined out in a way, and eventually those traits, which are the dominant ones that are phenotypically expressed, start pairing up on the chromosomal and molecular levels, it takes a great deal of litters of these types of
dogs produced (hybrid vigor to hybrid vigor) and strict culling but can be achieved, study a good bit of the pedigrees of the running walker breed as a whole and you will notice that there is more breedings based around hybrid vigor than line breeding but it has been done for so long and kept within a certain format ( within a breed standard) that there’s a consistency in type and look but not always performance, you’ll see that mostly with the field trial hunters who a lot of times want to breed to what ever is winning, and most of the times it’s those barn burning super stars that were the only ones of their litters that performed at that level, then the process repeats itself, same situation within the competitive coon hunting world, ever wonder why there hasn’t been a dominant family of dogs win a higher percentage of the big money hunts, sure there has been a prepotent stud dog come around every so often, if certain traits are desired and only the individuals who display such traits are the only ones who are contributing to the gene pool over time most of the undesirable variables (recessive traits) start becoming phased out as a result of only the ones displaying hybrid vigor ( dominate traits) being kept and bred, look into the way John Wick helped out the treeing walker breed a great deal, he experimented a little with line breeding, but never pursued it very far and bred great dogs to great dogs and eliminated the rest from the gene pool and produced some of the best dogs in the country year in and year out and made a dang good living selling coon hounds and his breeding strategy was basically a result of hybrid vigor to hybrid vigor, however he did stay with certain stud dogs who produced dogs to his standard and would breed the cream of his crop from one mating to the same from a completely unrelated mating and overtime eliminated the majority of the traits he considered undesirable and was able to breed high caliber and quality dogs consistently over time and did it without any heavy line breeding, in my opinion had he pursued his line breeding project deeper and practiced it more than his other strategy, there ain’t a bit of telling what he would have been able to do for the breed, during his time, the vast majority of the hunting dog public considered any type of line/in breeding as a major taboo and sure fire way to get dogs with defects and as a result it was rarely practiced openly, and take a look at a good deal of the APBT pedigrees from the good ole days of the sport and you’ll see quite a bit of hybrid vigor dogs who were big money winners but weren’t worth a flip in the brood box and the higher percentage of those dogs were the result of two different families or types being crossed to each other...

Another factor that isn’t an essential but is a contributing factor is the bitches diet and nutrition during pregnancy and overall well being and welfare, don’t get me wrong a good dog is a good dog no matter the circumstances but the mothers diet during whelping has a big influence on helping a pup reach their genetic potential, a poor quality diet isnt going to provide a pups developing body the necessary nutrients required to achieve the most out of its genetic package, there’s been numerous scientifically backed studies that determined that females fed a diet high in DHA during pregnancy and whelping raised pups that had a much higher cognitive development and function than those who weren’t, this also applied to feeding pups after weaning as well, another factor that has been proven time and again is the Bio-sensor stimulation performed on pups during their first 2 weeks of life, I know this doesn’t actually pertain to the breeding of dogs but is a major factor when trying to get as much juice out of the lemon as possible and is one of the most often overlooked determining factors for the simple reason that most of us haven’t ever given it any thought and have never looked that deep into it, I’ve been contemplating on if I should’ve opened my mouth on this subject or not and finally said the heck with it, I’ll add more later that will really have y’all thinking that ole Goose has fell off his rocker and hit his head, lol...


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Definitely wanting to hear more of what you have to say pertaining to this "bio-sensor stimulation"




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Goose...thanks for the awesome posts...and your second post last paragraph...I was going there next...taking it to a new level...I haven't seen posted anywhere other than what I have...I will see about copying and pasting to save me some typing...

I once read that the pups can only be as good as the parents...from my experience that is not true. Closer to the truth is, the pups can only be as good as what is in the parents...

 I also believe in how the pregnant gyp is handled can actually change the pups during the gestation period, especially after the 6th week of gestation...if you hunt hog let her bay a hog in a bay pen...take her hunting...feed her wild hog etc...

 Let us hear your thought process on the "outside the box breeding better dogs"...thanks

A short story:

 My grandson was having a birthday party at my house about 12 years ago...one of the kids that showed up was a relative on the other side of the family and he was about 4 years old...all the little kids got to playing outside when my grandson and a few others came running in all excited...they said, Caden is eating peppers from the plant...and I said no way... Caden said Uh huh (yes) like it wasn't a big deal...so I said to go pick a small handful and show me...he goes out and picks green and red Birdseye peppers and comes in and pops them in his mouth and eats them just a crunching away...I said show me, open your mouth and his mouth was red pigmented from the peppers...of course I said no more peppers for you Caden...I couldn't wait for his mama to show up so I could tell her what we saw...

 She shows up and I tell her what happened...she smiled and said they found out about him eating peppers when he was around 2 years old...he just reached from his baby chair and grabbed a jalapeño pepper and started munching...so I asked her if there was an explanation...she said that when she got pregnant with Caden she craved and ate many a jalapeño and it was something she normally wouldn't eat otherwise...but she at the for the duration of her pregnancy...

I started believing back in the early 1980's when a man put out an article...at first I thought the man had lost it...but when he explained it I was a believer...

smoking a cigarette...when we light up and inhale...the smoke and nicotine enter into the lungs where the blood stream picks up the nicotine and then the blood carries the nicotine through your body and into your cells...there are all types of chemical reactions taking place...this can be addictive and that is why some babies are born crack addicts...now lets go to the pregnant gyp...

the momma dog...she is pregnant and running a hog track...she is excited and she is inhaling the hog scent and her blood stream is picking up the hog cells and transporting them...her adrenaline is up and she gets to the bay and is hammering...it is a sow and she catches with the cur dogs and she has hog blood in her mouth and she is fired up...the puppies feel what is happening and they are tied in to he gyp and get their nutrition through her...

you can visualize what could happen with the pups...

at five weeks before feeding throw a fresh hog head in the yard and watch the pups go crazy eating up the neck meat...do this about three times...it is the little details that can make a big difference...

Years ago I went to see a man about something I do not remember about what. What I do remember is that he had a dog in his back yard that looked like one bad to the bone pitbull with a lab type head...I asked him what breed and he said half lab and half English bulldog...he also said she raised ten pups and all looked mostly like lab types except this one...

 This was puzzling to me at first, and my final theory that made since me was this...The English bulldog gene pool deviates so much away from normal that it can not reproduce itself consistently when bred outside the English bulldog breed. We all know that the dog can barely breathe and needs air conditioning to survive the summer heat and most always the females deliver by C-section...it seems to me that quite a bit of the English bulldog exaggerated traits must be recessives...
 It seems to me that some of that theory applies to the once in a lifetime dog because the deviate so much from the norm...we can use one of the greatest racehorses of all time as an example...Secretariet never reproduced himself...

 "Thinking Outside the Box"...

Over Time...


One day it will be common practice to feed, hunt the gyp on purpose to produce better pups...there will be a science for doing these thing to change/modify the genetic make-up to include the in our hunting dogs...

 I recorded a Nova Show (documentary) about lead in water “POISONED WATER”, it was about water issues in the city of Flint, Michigan…
They were discussing how lead poisoning affected children to include babies in the womb…the scientists say that lead goes where calcium goes in our bodies and they also said an unborn child will be born with the lead in their system because it was transported from mom to fetus…lead will replace some of the calcium where calcium is supposed to be concentrated and one of these places is between neurons which are involved with the communications system of the nervous system and this includes the brain…the lead disrupts this function especially in young children with developing brains…Calcium is also vital in brain cell health and is needed in maintaining healthy cells and for cells to produce more cells for growth…
The average IQ in children of Flint, Michigan was tested to be 86 and the average should be 100…
As already mentioned the science research indicates that the pregnant moms fetus when needing calcium for fetus development will furnish the fetus with the needed calcium and since the lead tends to congregate where the calcium is located, then the fetus can get lead poisoning through this process as well…the brain that has been exposed to high levels of lead in a child will have a smaller brain than that of a child who has not been exposed to high levels of lead…there are many different studies about the mother and her unborn child about other conditions good and bad, and if we are to learn more about these things…then it is possible to breed better dogs and raise children with a head start in life…

see you tube video below and you can visualize more of what is coming one day...breeding to a higher level...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqG5TagD0uU

To save myself from writing half of another novel I’m going to cheat...

http://breedingbetterdogs.com/article/early-neurological-stimulation

I’ve practiced this on the last 4 or 5 litters I’ve raised and don’t have the means or resources to give a complete and accurate answer based on actual scientific data but can also say that I don’t see where it’s is harming or negatively impacting anything by doing it either, for what it’s worth it does seem like the ones who received the stimulations seem to be a little more, for lack of better words, smarter in some ways to me, such as taking to chain breaking a little easier and not fighting the chain like a wild banshee, picking up and responding quicker and handling discipline better, having the common sense not to number 2 all over their living area and box but instead use the same spots time after time away from their house and on the outside of their chain area( don’t know if that has a damn thing in the world to do with the stimulation’s or I just have some dogs with good house manners lol) seem to be less shell shocked when being hauled the first few times, again these are just a few observations I’ve made or could all just be one big coincidence...


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I too once thought this exact same thing but the read about this topic a little more and found out that the umbilical cord houses two arteries and a single large vein, the cord has no nerves so the only way that communication takes place between the mother and the fetus is through the placenta, so anything that may affect the nutrition of the mother will have a direct affect on the fetus, hence the reason baby’s of addicts are born addicts is because of the stimulants entered into the blood stream which is connected to the fetus via the placenta, the example of the kid eating the peppers would fall into this reasoning being it has an affect on the nutrition and not the fetus reacting to a chemical reaction in its developing brain...


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Goose, I think it is going to take you a looong time to achieve any degree of consistency with your 3 breed  4 strain crosses due to the genetic diversity. You are basically breeding for traits, some breeds breed really strong or dominant for "some traits", for example bulldogs are known for "bite" if you cross bulldog in another breed you will typically but not 100% of the time get rougher dogs with more bite, or say if you crossed bloodhound in them those offspring would typically respond to less or colder scent, BUT when you made one of those crosses even those that did display the traits you were trying to achieve they will also have recessives for the traits not displayed. You mentioned what John Wick did it was similar to what you are proposing, lets call it trait breeding, but he did it within one breed with dogs exhibiting like traits and even at that you said it would take a long time to achieve consistency. To go the trait breeding route with a mix of very different levels of the traits you are after will require keeping most all offspring for evaluation then only mating those that seem to have acquired the desired traits, and over the generations weeding out ALLLLL the recessives you incorporated in the original crosses. I believe you will raise some good F1's and if you cross them back to one of the original pure strains you will do okay but if you attempt to cross the F1's to each other your consistency's will probably go down. No schooling or technical training in this opinion, it is just that an opinion based on watching dogs and livestock through the years.

I have read the placenta thing...I am one of those guys that does not believe everything I read...however, I read and then think on it and my conclusion can be the same or different from what the research is telling those that have done the research...I have worked with many high powered engineers and I see how many operate and the mistakes they make...an example...they see a problem and they get together and decide what data they need to collect...I see what is to be collected for analysis and quickly realize that it can never be accurately analyzed because there is more data that needs collecting to come up with the right answer or better answer...I see this as normal day in and day out operations...not saying it happens al the time but often enough...

Sometimes I wonder about our average school system....I think our school system is set up for average kids and when we have children that are different they can’t make the grade...

I’ll give an example of a so called “best and brightest”...I think he knew the meaning to every word in the dictionary...he graduated #1 from his chemical engineering class...of course the big company went after him and got him...one day the big company was building a new plant and they recruited many folks to build and run it...they wanted the best mixed in with the most experienced...so he was in charge of the most sofisticated area of the plant and I had to work for him...it was miserable working for the man because he didn’t give the time of day to the uneducated...no people skills and for 4 or 5 years it was a pain to work for him...upper management finally saw he wasn’t working out...he would identify one problem...write code or whatever...implement the change and create other problems...always chasing his tail...
They finally got rid of him and got a new engineer with plenty of common sense and with good people skills and he listened to and respected the workers in that area...and within a few years the plant was running smooth breaking records...learning what is tested is great but many times there are many more answers that can be identified through data for what it was not intended for...

maybe its a good thing...I typed quite a bit of information/thoughts/theories and lost it...sometimes I hate my phone... :-\

on unborn pups...no matter how we explain it the bottom line is that they are attached to the mother and they cannot live without her support and it is through the blood the majority of nutrition and other components are carried to the pups through the gestation period...chemicals and components that science has not discovered...

it is the same in the big chemical plants...everyone looks at the major components and sometimes it is the small components that no one is looking at that can make the biggest difference and many dismiss them even when talking about it until they actually see it...I call it the things that are not in the books...same for unborn pups...

we are not talking about things that have to be done to have good dogs...these are the smaller details that can help in having better dogs...

one of the things I do is put an old sweaty t-shirt in the puppy house at a few days old and continue for a 3 weeks or so with fresh sweaty ones...I want them to smell me 24/7 and to sleep on top of my shirt...handle them quite a bit and blow my breath in their face etc...maybe it doesn't matter but it matters to me...lol

in my opinion the two hardest things to do in a good breeding program is to find the right dogs to start with as number one issue
number two issue is once we have what we like in our dogs and we think it is time to outcross, what do we outcross with? It is hard because we know there will be things that we might not like but it is very doable...sometime we say now and try again...if it is right then we must introduce this carefully to the bloodline...but you will be good for a while just doing this once...

there is so much to breeding better dogs that we don't know about...so we do what we know what to do...and because we don't know all there is to know...then I live by this on what I don't know...the best defense is a good offense...

breed best to best from a related line of dogs...

the pups...test them and select for natural ability...set up the situations where you see winding finding and trailing and baying style...look for those that take to it like a baby duck takes to water...breeding this way begets more of the same...

do we want to breed dogs that has to be fed many tracks to make a dog? I know I won't...

Thanks for your input Mr. Clue, I’ve put a lot of thought into it already about what you mentioned, like I stated earlier the plott/walker cross is a complete shot in the dark, so far it seems to have produced some really gamey pups, now this could change as this experiment progresses but as of now I planning on taking the ones that meet the standards I’m looking for and going back into the pure side on top and bottom,now this is just merely a thought and idea, but in a perfect world I’d like to take the ones that got the stronger noses back to the dames side and the ones that got the mothers speed on track back into more blood from the sires side and maybe keep crossing back and forth within the resulting offspring, like you mentioned there’s plenty of genetic variability there to not have to worry about getting to tight to soon, I don’t have any plans on crossing the f1’s out of the plott/walker and cur/walker anytime in the near future, when I mentioned about crossing the offsprings of the two different original crosses I guess I left out that if that happened it would be in the distant future and that itself is just a speculation at best...

I plan on doing the same types of crossing on the progeny of the cur/walker crosses but the difference here is I know the cur side deep enough to know what recessives to look for that may pop up, this family of curs by no means is perfect in any way but has had hard eyes kept on them for long enough that  most of what was undesirable has been weeded out over the years, way before I got my hands on them, there’s definitely more pros than cons with them, my main and really only issue with them is the line control issue and that itself isn’t that bad of a problem but something id like to improve upon, the walker blood that I crossed over them is the result of many years of hard line breeding and severe culling initially and have resulted in an extremely strong family line of dogs, like I stated above my plans are to keep taking the offspring of these crosses (just the cur/walker)and keep them within each other, I have way more knowledge about what I can expect to see pop up with these particular crosses being as they have more line breeding on top and bottom and I have first hand knowledge of the one side and the gentleman that owns the walker line has had them for quite a while to know what to expect, again this experiment is a just a thought and idea as of now until more litters are made and I will be able to see where it’s going, I’m fortunate enough to have a network of close and like minded hunting buddies that I’m able to send pups to too have them properly tested, so only time will tell, again thanks for your input...


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Old man...you have lots of experience and knowledge...you should share more for us to learn...especially for the younger generation...no since in them reinventing the wheel starting down towards the bottom where most of us started...but those that really want to learn can just get on the net and read and use what they want or need...I like it when the young guys can tell me how it is done...it just means they are the new up and coming generation of dog men and women...

Here is a fact on inbreeding that I found interesting, if you take two tree dogs from different breeds and cross them and the pups inherent the treeing gene from each parent, you have in effect inbred for treeing. I just used that as an example but anytime you match a gene from each parent for a particular trait, you have inbred for that trait. That's how John Wick did what he did with the coon dogs and why cross's of solid families within the same breed used for the same purpose are successful.

its all opinions til you get this far......(https://scontent-dfw5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/26233611_418341038585715_7743977074970997030_o.jpg?_nc_cat=0&_nc_eui2=v1%3AAeHS0Oo5p8RXO7OC1w0w1h9Uh1DaZYWphCcOAUitpy814UPA7Q27bHk5BsILMkm830EF01oH81qNFseSYQIM4X0qfZAw2y4vYG4KUbtsY-hRFg&oh=3591ddffd76313b524bc417c2b69ad5a&oe=5B707DCF)

Reuben, to each his own, I’m certainly no scientist or geneticist, just an ole country boy with an open mind and a love of learning and deep passion for dogs,I do agree that we can’t believe everything we read in books, but also leave most of the scientific and biological speculations and theory’s to those who have the education and background in those respective subjects, it’s easy for us to sit back and theorize about what we “think” about a particular topic based on our own conclusions without doing any of the experimentation or research that others have done already and let our own thoughts and emotions over rule reality and practicality, I do agree that pre-natal nutrition plays a pivotal role in helping a pup reach its full genetic potential, but on the subject of epigenetics, that’s a whole new spectrum of biology that is still in its infancy stages, I could be wrong about this and don’t mean any disrespect to you but I think your looking way to deep into this EG thing, I believe in it and have studied up on it and currently follow it myself and as of now can’t seem to see how it will affect the way we breed dogs on the level that your thinking it will, yes I believe environmental factors influence our lives to an extent that science is just now beginning to uncover but can’t yet grasp the fact that it’s going to influence the outcome of a dogs offspring to the points which you’ve mentioned, such as letting a female bay hogs late in her pregnancy to fire up the pups later in life, or feeding her hog blood during pregnancy to entice the unborn pups to be hog crazy later in life, it’s easy to get ourselves caught up in the thoughts and ideas of the what if’s but at some point we have to use common sense and knowledge, again no disrespect and the reason I stated what I did above was because folks have been doing those exact same things for years now and there has been no factual data to prove it to be nothing more than wives tales, another reason I say that is because what you stated about feeding a pregnant female hog blood and then throwing a hog head to her pups later for the first time and watching how they immediately take to it, that’s just natural born instinct in any canines, I’ve seen it first hand numerous times with the litters I’ve raised and the pups attack it like they’ve eaten meat all their life and the majority were nursing on a mother that had been eating kibble all during her pregnancy and whelping of the pups, I have no scientific data to stand on here but do believe in my opinion that dogs fed a carnivore type diet daily do experience physical changes and mostly have better overall health and longevity of life than those that are fed kibble and seem to have a bit more of a prey drive, maybe the more they’re fed this type of diet the more they start reverting back to their primal instincts on a small scale but not to the point that it makes them viscous killing machines, I can see where your thoughts are in this but factors such as diet influencing genetic make up on the level that your describing based on EG, it seems as if it would take several generations of domesticated dogs being on strictly that type of raw primal diet for their bodies to respond , adapt, and then “change” on the chromosomal and molecular level before there’s any significant real changes in genetic make up in the future offspring and not just sporadically during the course of gestation, and my reasoning behind saying that is because if your theory is true based off EGs and diet playing a big role in this change then we must reverse what we have done already to dogs over the course of many many years by feeding them kibble and changing their diet from what they were biologically designed to process, and by going off of that theory it would seem as if by feeding our dogs kibble we’ve been hindering their performance and production for quite a while now, and judging by the quality and caliber of performance dogs we have today it seems as if some of these speculations based off what we’re taking from the study of EGs contradicts one another , theres way more to it than just feeding a pregnant gyp some hog blood, another reason I’ve said that about your blood theory is the fact that I feed a great deal of deer scraps during the winter time and have fed it to pregnant and nursing females, the pups from those litters weren’t absolutely deer crazy as your suggesting they might be with the hog blood, I believe that there’s still a lot more to be unlocked and uncovered about K9 genetics and do believe that the more that EGs are studied, especially involving it’s affects on dogs the more insight we will have to base our breedings and practices on, as of now there seems to be a whole realm of possibilities that could come from EGs but until the scientific community uncovers more on how it directly affects dogs on broad spectrum, because that topic has only been skimmed over, and no in depth studying done yet, the only things we can do is to keep striving for greatness in our dogs, and as you’ve stated before, keep doing our own unique ways of testing and keeping notes as to what observations were seeing and if there’s any type of patterns, I mean no disrespect to anyone but I feel like the main reason this isn’t a more talked about subject is either a lack of understanding or being afraid of ridicule for stepping outside the box of conventional ways of thinking, either way it’s the ones who sit back and give thought into topics that interest them that drives innovation...


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You’ve just said it all in a few words Mr. Larry, until the time has been put in and litters produced all a person can do is really speculate as to what maybe...


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Goose...here is the thing...you criticize me for my theories and beliefs and it seems you downplay what I am saying and you write as if your way is the right way...I am a student of breeding better dogs myself...working dogs...what you talk about I have already been there and basically I agree with what you write about...just because I have moved to a different level does not mean it is not worthy of discussion...perhaps one day when it is better understood you will be the expert to be discussing this new level of understanding...

I have bred dogs at one time when I really thought I knew what I was doing...then in my upper 20's I realized that I needed to develop a better plan and then bred dogs for 7 generations and I can tell you this...I left no stone unturned in trying to create the best hog dog possible...while the dogs were not as good as I wanted I knew they would look good in any company...good dogs don't have bad days...

This thread has been a good read so far.
 
But this post and the assumptions made in it I respectfully disagree with....


The English bulldog and it’s genetic mutations are extremely proponent when bred on.
Esp when and if line crossed back to the original EB mix...
I could cite examples or many, many breeds that have been developed or transformed by EB blood being added. Some breeds fight the EB gene malfunctions line bred upon 10, 20 30 genes down the road after the cross. The casual observance of one F-1 litter (lab xEb) is no way to judge the genetic proponence of the two breeds crossed.
Esp, when words like ‘mostly’ are used in describing actual phenotypical variance. And , I’m such a casual way...
Did the litter on average have smaller teeth?
We’re they undershot, wry or even bit?
Shape of head? Was it rounder?
Eye shape?
Length of back? Was it shorter? Was it roached?
Breadth of chest?
Temperament?
Hips?
The EB is extremely proponent precisely because of a lot of things touched on in this thread...
It was tightly inbred for many generations for the abnormalities the breed possess.
Therefore it is proponent to throw Those same abnormalities when crossed on.

https://pethelpful.com/dogs/How-New-Genetic-Research-May-Help-You-Pick-Your-Next-Performance-Pup

Not criticizing you at all Reuben just being a realist, your flipping over imaginary stones my friend and convincing yourself that something is one thing when in the real world of things it’s something totally different...


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Semmes glad to see you are posting...you bring up some good questions and information...I do not have any proof of any kind on what I saw just an observation...actually there was no way to get close to that dog in that short period I was there on account he was very aggressive...my observation was that and me being a shade tree theorist by nature I had to reason out what I observed...

my questions theories went like this...if the other nine pups looked like a lab and only one looked somewhat like a bull dog then how could that be?

the genetics for the bulldog to be so under short...can hardly breath...can't take the heat and needs assistance to have a litter (C-section) then why is it that none of the pups favor the bulldog except one which really looked like a pitbull? My answer to this is because...I" finish later on account I have to leave for a while...

I don’t think a dog in spirt is to far removed from the wild just as we aren’t from the warriors code. Many people fight join the service play sports to meet that inside our selfs. A dog can be like a wolf very easy it’s called hunger don’t need generations of raw meat back in its diet lol. I agree with Goose most of that stuff is hog wash. I just don’t believe must of that makes any difference on a scale that you can see. Just my opinion


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I don't think it is hogwash at all judge...but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't make much difference...but having a better understanding as to how things work is very interesting to me...

The 2 greatest tools for breeding are selection, and culling that's the only way to develop or enhance inherent traits. Far and above what you feed them, if you tickle their feet as baby puppies, let them find weeneys, do mock hunts or whatever. Give them a place to sleep, something to eat, select BALANCED dogs to breed, provide them transportation to the job at an APPROPRIATE age and opportunity to do their job, HONESTLY assess their skills, CULL "not trade, give away, or sell" those that do not have the skills to do the job with consistency by THEMSELVES.
 When I think or read about breeding dogs I always think of coyotes, with the exception of the rare dog or wolf cross they are always bred within the breed and very likely related family, they are ruthlessly culled by mother nature, removed from the gene pool if found lacking, and they breed extremely strong and consistent for their job. I only wish I could breed dogs as consistently as nature does coyotes because  I am a very poor trainer in fact the only thing I ever teach one is what not to do, they have to be born with the instincts of what to do, if I was able to teach one to do something with any efficiency I would not expect the dog to be able to reproduce that trait.
I have had the good fortune to have known and been affiliated with a couple or three top breeders of much notoriety in a couple of different breeds and the thing they all had in common were-seeing the truth about their dog, never begged one to function or made excuses for it, didn't wait long on the decision and would without hesitation dispose of one that wasn't making the cut. Those guys raised dogs that a high percentage of pups made good dogs that started reasonably early, in fact the biggest problem with that kind of pup is keeping them from doing something rather than getting them to do something.
  A very famous breeder once told me bear dogs were the easiest working dogs to breed, I asked what do you mean, his response was that those with more guts than brains the bears kill, those that quit or don't finish races I kill that only leaves me the good ones to breed. That really simplified things in my mind and rings very true much like the coyotes hahaha.

so why did the pups not favor the English bulldog phenotypically? Like I already mentioned before...the majority of the genes/traits that make up an English bulldog phenotypically have to be recessive...so when bred to the lab the dominant traits of the lab are displayed simply because they are dominant...recessive traits have to pair up one from the sire and one from the dam...if two recessives fair up for the color yellow then the pup will be yellow...if a black pairs up with yellow the pup will be yellow and so on...I am quick to develop a theory based on my past experience and what I see before my eyes...but I am quick to revise or change directions once I have been corrected and that does happen from time to time...

Semmes...if you don't mind explain and correct where I am wrong and explain the prepotency...as you can see I have my opinion and based on what you said I could be way off base...thanks

in my mind the bulldog is a breed that is desirable for fixing certain traits in other breeds...is it prepotency...my thoughts are no...instead the opposite is true...yes I am sure that they do carry many dominant traits...but I do know that know one in there right mind would like to breed undershot dogs that cant take the heat and worse yet not able to have pups without a C-section...

Semmes...

many years ago the racing greyhound became too timid to even race...a geneticist was hired to see what could be done to fix the problem...after some research he discovered that the English bulldog was the answer to the timid issue...as a youngster that sure didn't sound right to me at the time I was reading the article...the geneticist said that by the 4th generation the dogs should be almost pure greyhounds...he was wrong in that the f1 cross was almost pure greyhound phenotypically and the dogs were inheriting the fearless traits...

old man...10-4 on everything you said including the coyote...the coyote is in my plan to be my next controversial thread...I strongly believe that the reason for so many culls is not having the ability to see the real truth...

Well there is worse was to spend your time


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The only truth is the truth you believe


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The bit about recessive traits pairing up Reuben....don’t you see it...I said it earlier.
When those traits pair up the recessive traits become fixed and can dominate.
Your F1 cross example is anecdotal at best as preponents is concerned on English bulldog crosses.
Abs when I typed about the things that could have been introduced I failed to mention the cork screw or kinked tail. Of those traits I was referencing what the other littermates with the ‘lab type’ exhibited.
You did not see them, you went by the word of the guy in your example. You did not look at the neuainces of how the lab type was changed. Instead you go on the word of that particular Breeder. Of that I can only imagine the breeding was an accident or a these are my two favorite dogs per type cross. After all it couldn’t be a working dog cross...
what could the eb add to the lab for retrieveing? What could the lab add to the eb for bulldoggedness?
The eb tho a physical shell of it former self retains exception protection instincts and pain tolerance and steadfast fighting will...it was just ruined by human conformational breeders.
Your example of the dog you did see holds true to my assertion.
You could not approach the dog.
This is not a real pit bulldog trait. ....maybe a ‘pet bulldog’ trait. But pit bulldogs were bred to be handled by man in the capacity of their working duties. English stafffs were called the nanny dog.
Now maybe against fur it would be a dif story whether it be other dogs rodents cattle or hogs.
But the real protection instincts come from the bulldog. In the AB the best suited dogs for protection are the he more EB influenced dogs...
I’ll leave you with this to ponder...
DDB
BM
AB
OEB
BM
EBT
Bully pit
Etc....etc...
I could go on and add links for proof if you choose but work comes early.
I could show you in peds how legitimate admitted EB crosses effect the gene pool of breeds for 10’s of generations once line bred upon. I have experienced it personally.
If that ain’t more proof of proponence  than your observation of on dog from a litter of eight that you did not personally examine then I don’t know what I can tell ya  ;)

The racing greyhound had Pitbull added...the fighting style Pitbull
The Malinois is a shepherd Pitbull cross..
Both these things are varifiable on old pedigrees
These were game bred, dog fighting dog, type dogs...
Which are themselves derived from the original EB before they were bred into physical ruin.
...that EB was crossed into greyhounds is disenginuene...

Terrier influenced bulldogs are pit bulls. Pug influenced bulldogs are the modern EB
The origin is  elsewhere...
Boxers
Danes
Mastif
I could go on and on
All created by bulldog influence

The one dog you ‘saw’ you could not touch. It was mean...
The other 7 dogs you were ‘told’ looked like labs..
...could they be touched?
Were they man voters that looked like labs?
You don’t know...
If 4 of the 8 grew up to be those type of dogs and temperament is based on genetics then how can you say the EB is not preponent when we all understand the temperament of the lab?

Biters not voters lol

thanks there Semmes...I do understand recessive dominance as I spoke it earlier without placing the name to it...and I do realize what the EB brings to the table as you explained it...

The EB & lab cross was accidental...the pup he kept was very powerful and unique looking as to why I inquired about him...

And Reuben before you step on your own soap box again and want to strereotype the “younger generation” which I’m “theorizing” is in reference to myself being as I’m 30 and the youngest one to take part in this discussion, make sure your not standing up there holding a pot while calling a kettle black, based off your “observations”, just because someone is younger than you doesn’t mean they don’t or can’t understand a particular topic better than you, not at all saying that in this case that I’m in any way smarter or have a better understanding of anything than you contrary to what you assume, and I can assure you most of what I know about dogs and genetics in general didn’t come from the net, I have no need or desire to brag on myself or list my credentials, but will give you a little background on it and I promise they didn’t come from telling engineers at a chemical plant how ignorant they are, or a buddy of mine bragging on me in a bar room, or running wild through the woods as a youngster whooping with my dogs to become one of them, instead most of it comes from life experiences of actually living around breeding performance bred animals since birth, mainly from
growing up on chicken farm around game fowl and dogs, successfully raising and breeding my own cattle, a little from college, some from my personal collection of books and even some from the net, most of it from getting things wrong the first time around, and being as I’m younger than you, you have no worries of me “telling you how to do it” I’m not that type of individual, there’s two types of people in life when it comes to learning something, those that can sit there and tell you how to do something and those that can show you how to do something, you and I have a lot in common when it comes to unconventional ways of thinking but where our differences are, you fall into the category of those that can tell someone how to do it or what they once did and I’m of the sort to show someone how I’m doing it, don’t take this personal but for nearly 8 years you’ve posted time after time about
How to breed better dogs but yet where are the “better dogs” you’ve bred, not talking about the 7 generations of Mt. Cur you claimed to have bred years ago, we can all talk about what once was and that’s the easy part but we’re talking about what is in the here and now, actually having the hide in your hand, 8 years is plenty enough time to already be a generation or 3 deep even if starting from scratch, and as far as “reinventing the wheel” that’s as far off as it could be and being enthused about history almost as much as I am science, I’m pretty sure the first wheel man kind developed was made of stone, then someone realized a wooden wheel worked better for them, then along comes someone else who believed that a wooden wheel surrounded by a steel ring  better suited their needs, pretty sure you get the gist, so in actuality there’s no one reinventing a wheel at all, of course all of the above is based off of “theory” as well, I’ve seen you tell folks on here that they don’t know how to breed dogs but yet those same individuals you’ve said that to actually frequently make post and share with us the litters and dogs THEY have raised and the game those dogs catch, evidently they didn’t listen to your assumptions about them judging on them actually having their own hides in their own hands, I enjoy reading your post and what you contribute but find it hard to take someone serious who is only talking about it and not actually producing anything, I mean no ill intent with this or criticizing you in any way and have some respect for you and your knowledge of dogs but am just being honest with what I’m “observing and theorizing”...


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I agree JP and my reference to feeding dogs raw meat was only a scenario based off of Reubens theory of feeding certain things during females gestation and was a statement that if there was any truth to it that would more than likely be the only way it would be able to work realistically...


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Mr. Clue you summarized in the fewest words as I’ve seen what most people spend a great amount of time researching or writing books and articles about, and if there’s anyone wanting to undertake the task of breeding their own dogs then they should print your post and hang it on their fridge, it’s pretty fool proof and I agree with 99.9 % BUT there’s that 1/100th of a percent I’ll have to respectfully disagree with. Do those things make a significant difference in the dogs we produce, nope, but it does make enough of a difference that can be seen if your looking for it but a person has to know the history and special quirks about their family of dogs to be able to know if there was any type of difference, however I do believe it doesn’t make a big enough difference to fool ourselves into thinking it’s really going change the outcome of what’s already in a dogs genes...


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Goose I didn't say anywhere that those things didn't make "any" difference, just that the selection and culling were "far and above" better tools than  all the other stuff. And let me clarify about my earlier post where I mentioned your proposed 3 breed 4 strain crosses-I did not mean they would be culls just that the even mix you hoped for by combining them would be hard to get consistently, many of them would lean more to one of the 4 strains or one of the 2 crosses. Most likely whichever one was the more prepotent genetically. And though I appreciate the respect intended there is no need for a Mr. in front of my name just plain OL'Clue will do.

When we line breed we generally breed towards one dog "or" one cross that we consider to have been exceptional. A couple of crosses that have worked better for me are if it is one dog I want to line up on is a half brother sister cross with the common parent being the one you are lining up on, then if you can breed one from that litter to an aunt or uncle by the same individual originally intended of course the other half of each one used should be of good quality and even in the same family.
 If breeding towards a specific cross I have had luck with uncles and aunts bred to nieces or nephews then breed one of those pups back to one of the original littermates making a grand uncle or aunt to grand nephew or niece, getting as many of the original littermates in the ped as possible. If you make an outcross that pleased you "whether it was another breed or another strain within the breed" breed those pups back into their respective strains and evaluate the 3/4 blood pups that will give you an idea which side of the outcross was actually doing you the most good.
I'm not telling anyone how to do things at their house but it has helped me at mine.

I believe I have been posting on here more than is necessary lately I think I'll just troll and read for a while haha.

Keep posting Clue... I’m one of those breeding towards one dog. Five generations down with pretty good results so far... but I like to read and learn as much as possible.


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Goose...l never insinuated or talked down to you...however...I can’t say you haven’t tried to “respectfully tell me how wrong I am or that I am delusional...I am entitled to my opinion as you are with yours...and yes the mt curs I bred and raised I do talk about because it was a learning experience and a few mistakes were made but not many...it was hard work and was expensive but I am glad I did it...

The dogs I have now are not bad...they cast or rig...I don’t road them on account I can rig them...they cast and strike quickly or go as far as needed to find one and they can stick for hours if needed...I don’t use catch dogs at this time...yes I lose boars at times because I don’t use catch dogs...I have said I wasn’t in it to have a great breeding program where my priorities were to breed a top line in a few short years as I have done with the mt curs in the past...I don’t speak much about the dogs I have now because while they are pretty good dogs the breeding isn’t where I need it to be at this time...but there is a plan in place...I know what my next  two breedings are for sure and I have an idea what I will be breeding in the future...

A great dog to me has to be great in the woods and in the breeding pen...I can’t really say that about my dogs at this time...when I look at my dogs I want to be able to see a dog I like and a dog useful for breeding if needed however just because they can be used for breeding it is very possible they won’t on account there is another that I see is a slightly better dog...I don’t need to experiment much on account I have already done it before...

And goose...you don’t let up...you like to reference what I say and then say how wrong I am or as I mentioned insinuate...I knew when you started posting on here I knew where you were headed and I was right...but I am ok with it...I didn’t know you were thirty...you are wiser beyond your years and I do respect your knowledge...my goal is to help the younger guys that need help in breeding better dogs...it really is very simple once we get it...

If I am irritating you in any way please call me at+19792398513 and we can resolve our differences in a mature and grown up manner...

Nothing more than a misinterpretation of the way I read it, I didn’t take it like your were saying anything would be culls in any way, I completely understand what you mean by the many mixed variables, Its hard for me to translates thoughts into text  but I anticipate on there being a mixed bag of the two sides in each of the two crosses and understand the fact that some are going to lean more to one side than the other in the f1 litters and the ones after that, the parents for the f1s can or could each catch game right by themselves and look good doing it but some each have their strengths in certain traits, I don’t have a picture in my head of this ideal dog or certain type of individual I’m breeding for but am trying to build a family of dogs that can consistently catch game and consistently reproduce more dogs that can consistently catch game, and just chose to step back a little further to do it than most, I understand that there’s going to be differences in type of litter maters , I don’t plan on deviating outside of either of the two crosses anytime soon if at all if I have or want to, the dogs contributing to the biggest majority of the gene pool are and were dogs of good caliber both in the bushes and brood box for generations my plans are to do just as your bear hunting friend said to do it, let Mother Nature take it’s course on the ones with more Braun than brain and I’ll take care of the ones that ain’t got the gumption or go, I’ll have to keep an eye on which side is the most prepotent and if there’s a certain side they’re pulling to, I’ve already done a test to see how prepotent the cat strain walker blood is, I took my male of my first f1 cross that is a little over two and is a really nice dog in the woods and can hold his own with different company and bred him to a female of a good friends that is as scatterbred as it
can get, and is 9 generations of nothing
but hogs dogs to hog dogs, all the pups  went to guys that will hunt them hard and do what is necessary if they don’t meet the grade, I’ll know in about a year if the blood is strong in this f2 cross...


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Amen, I trolled on this post for a week hoping someone such as yourself would contribute...


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Reuben none of what I have posted has been in any way a personal attack toward you or meant in any type of spiteful manner whatsoever, I don’t have a spiteful bone in my body, the way I’m come across may be brash because I’m blunt and upfront in my approach and I just get straight to the point when asking a question or calling things as I see it, to get an understanding of things, its not to be smart ass or poke at you, I always enjoy what you read and post and take you to be a man of good character although we may not agree on 100% of things 100% of the time, it doesn’t mean I think any less of you and as a matter of fact have great deal more respect for you as a dog man after your last reply, it takes an honest man to give an answer to a question like that the way you answered and your reasons, you will no doubt get there, I know exactly where your at in regards to your pack, I’ve had to rebuild a pack from scratch 3 different times on account of losing everything to old age or killed, the first two times I just rounded up and culled dogs that catch hogs the third time that s when I decided to just start breeding my own, you have an eye for it there’s no doubt, don’t let my blunt ways of communication come off as being an as$ hole, you’re in no way irritating me, I learned along time ago to stop letting things get under my skin and dang sure not going to get riled up over something said on an Internet forum...


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thanks for your reply and explanation...

ther are some on here that have forgot more than the rest of us will ever know .....




    i wish they would keep posting  ;)

I wish it were as easy as mixing paint.  Black and white make gray.  Dogs don't always come out gray ;)

I would just like to comment that it is good to see that 2 men can have strong differences of opinion and still remain civil. My hat is off to all involved in this discussion. There are no set in stone one way to do it rules. We all have to make our way thru the dogman world learning as we go. Thank you to all who take the time to post your observations and knowledge. Just my 2 cents.  

As one of the young guys (I’m only 21) I appreciate what you experienced men post. I have been blessed to been taken under the wing of a man with 30+ years of hunting experience, and have gotten several dogs from him that have had a lot of time/thought put in to them and I eventually want to breed them to tweak them a little bit. So all of the knowledge you guys post is really appreciated.


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 ain't nobody got it figured out and probably wont .......  culling  doesn't further a  line  of dogs ......its  knowing the dogs  you have  inside  and out with several years  of  breeding and raising the same  dogs  you will get a feel  for  what  you need  to do  to further  what you want ...

I agree with you Larry...line breeding and inbreeding does not produce great dogs...it is the person or persons making the breeding's and decisions that ultimately make the difference one way or the other...
having an eye and feel for the dogs and knowing what a great dog is produces good to great dogs...

see the truth and not make excuses for the dogs...great dogs don't have bad days...some days better than others...yes...

a name for not seeing the truth is called kennel blindness...there are two extremes...one is that the dogs are perfect and don't need improvement...and those that are never satisfied even with great dogs and will even get rid of great dogs in pursuit of better and they could just as easily wind up with less...

I prefer to breed and raise curs that can stop and hold a boar hog...that has been a big challenge...mother nature tends to help me now and then as you mentioned about that bear hunter...
hunting to hard in the hot summer can cull a dog...to gritty of a dog can cull the dog...fighting a hog and trying to kill it can over heat the dog and that dog can die because of it...I now cheat mother nature a little with running vest and the alpha 100...I will breed dogs that stop hog as best as possible...at times these dogs can be bay busters but gritty dogs are the type I prefer...

well good line breeding and inbreeding should result  in more consistancy of what  you got .....but culling and breeding is different ...you cull as a hunter  you select as a breeder .....there's a difference ..... as a hunter or user  of working dogs you cull to keep only the working animals to use ... thats not a sure fire way to select the best  to breed with ....how  many culls have  changed hands  to become later  a  top  dog so cullings not bad  but not necessarly the best breeding practice ....now  this is just  my  opinion ......i select from years  of  having the same  dogs and breeding and watching what the litters  do and  what so called culls i have  bought back have  done ....my 2  boys  will probably never  be able  to breed my dogs  like i have just because i created them and  i know em ......

the video...in reality this is nothing new...it is a pert of evolution that has probably been here since the beginning of time...the only difference is that some scientist are discovering a better understanding as to how things can change in living things...as the public (people) begins to understand then individuals or companies can use this knowledge to their advantage once they understand...does it make a difference? maybe yes and maybe no...I choose to believe yes...

a short story that is an example of raising the level of understanding in things...

at work in our safety meeting, especially in the hot months the safety folks talk about heat stress and to stay hydrated...after I developed a few theories on dehydration I asked the safety man why I should stay hydrated and he said because you don't want to over heat...

I felt like my interest and the unborn pup/child went hand in hand with dehydration so I did some research and it made sense to me on what I rad and connected the two as I read...

The brain, major organs including the heart, lungs and blood are made up of over 80 percent water...even our bones are made up of 30 percent water...we are made up roughly of 65 percent water...digesting our food to extract the nutrients takes water for the digestion system to work optimally...our blood circulation works best when hydrated properly...our blood carries the oxygen and nutrients to our
cells throughout our bodies including the brain...this keeps us alert and focused to better do our jobs...this focus and alertness will in itself help us to minimize accidents to ourselves or to our coworkers...

so when the blood circulation slows down our blood pressure goes up, our cells receive less nutrients and we can lose our alertness...of course there are many other things that happen because of it...

after the meeting a few guys came and said they never thought of this before but it made perfect sense as to why we really should stay hydrated...

I said all this just to try and make my point...most of the time we have one common level of understanding for many many years without really understanding the higher level even though it has always been there...

Kennel blindness good stuff


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who sets the standard for a person to have  kennel blindness ?  the person buying the feed is all that matters ...... the only way a person could have  kennel blindness  is for  instance they are breeding rat terriers  too try and produce saint benards ......talk is talk ..... instead of talking about kennel blindness it should be  don't tell me how to do it show me  what you've done ..... hahaaha  hey i mean no harm but  i get fuzzed sometimes ..... 

Preach brother Parker preach...


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Rueben again don’t take this wrong way or in a negative context, this is the angle that  I’m seeing things based upon your analogies and I’m having a difficult time seeing any correlation between what most folks learn in middle school health and physical education classes pertaining to the importance of water and hydration and our bodies and your theory on epigenetics and how outside influences have an impact on a fetus inside a pregnant females womb, be it a human or K9, the only discoveries made by scientist about EGs is that stress and nutritional deficiencies are the two reasons why there is any effect on on an animals DNA structure based off of what we know about EGs, and stress and nutritional deficiencies go hand in hand, when an animal is deprived of essential nourishment then its body easily succumbs to stress and when an animal is severely stressed it doesn’t eat as it should and when it doesnt eat the body has a hard time digesting and metabolizing what it has ingested, even then if there is an actual change in the DNA structure those changes aren’t permanent and more than likely be fixed back to normal in a few generations based on what scientist know and understand about EGs, when I first discovered EGs and how they work I was actually in the same school of thought your currently in and was thinking to myself, “ man we’re about to be able to change the game up” and had the EXACT same theories you do, almost word for word to be honest, I was dating a lady who has a bachelors in genetics  and at the time was working towards a masters and was doing her thesis on EGs, I was quickly shot down and made to realize I was looking at these possibilities through rose tinted glasses and misunderstood the concepts of what scientist are discovering about this by her professor with whom I was corresponding with on this subject, I believe EGs and adaptation and evolution are a lot closer linked than what is understood at the moment and, at least in my opinion are keys to answers to a lot of questions of life outside the world of dog genetics, like I’ve stated before I believe more will come out of it than what we currently know the more research is done.
              Now correct me if I’m wrong but going off of what im gathering on your theory on how EGs work, then a man would be able to
go purchase a female coonhound that has won the world hunt, buy a male that has won the world hunt, (same breeds of course), mate the two dogs mentioned above with each other and feed the pregnant female coon meat and coon blood and let her tree a coon every night during the duration of her pregnancy and have extremely greater odds of producing an entire litter of world champion caliber dogs than Mr. A.L Nighthunter who has good quality dogs that are competitive whenever, where ever, and against whoever, and only feeds his dogs kibble and keeps a pregnant female isolated to her whelping   pen during her gestation, this going solely off what you’ve mentioned about like dogs producing like dogs and from what I’m
Gathering of your EGs theory, like I said don’t take this as poking at you, I’m just trying to get a better understanding from where your coming from with this...


Here’s something else to wonder about if you haven’t already, that could, in reality, actually have a greater lasting impact on the way we breed dogs and that is neurogenetics or behavioral genetics, it’s already scientific fact that different parts of the brain control different functions such as the frontal lobe controlling the interpretation of the 5 senses, motor skills, processing of the 5 senses, reflexes, agility, higher learning
and the temporal lobe controlling the action of finer muscle control and skills, regulation of blood flow and pulse rate, the brains reward center, endurance and stamina, and memory just to name a few. Now it has been speculated and not yet proven that only the male contributes the DNA for the formation of the cerebrum (frontal lobe)  and the female only contributes the DNA for the cerebellum( temporal lobe), if this is in fact proven to be true then it will give us the ability to take our breedings to a higher level by being able to understand the heritability and expression of what traits we’re looking for, and how to selectively line our breedings out to make the most of this knowledge, now I know this is pretty deep and in no way a complete substitute for what we already know about basic genetics but to give those who like to have a better understanding of how things work something to ponder over...


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one thing we don't look at is ...does it have  to be born in ? or can a dog inherit learned traits ? and instinct's ?

That’s something I’ve give a great deal of thought to, breed specific traits such as herding, circle baying, pointing, flushing, treeing. etc. that are well known and established in different breeds all had to come from somewhere, natural pointing dogs didn’t just appear, somewhere at some point in time a dog figured out (maybe with the help of a trainer) how to successfully point birds which I would say was a learned behavior, same way with cur dogs who naturally circle bay, a dog at some point in time had to have the intelligence to figure out that was the most successful way to get the job done, look up on the wild dogs of India, they all look nearly identical and function in packs with precision of a skilled military unit, they are 100% a product of their environment, this is where I think epigenetics could or would would begin. Why do ducks naturally migrate south or certain species of salmon find their way back to their spawning grounds, neither are taught by their parents? where did those traits come ?


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We’ve done the same thing Mother Nature has with coyotes and wolves but only faster through artificial selection...


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goose...you sound very impressive...I do appreciate your mind...I haven't seen my dogs ever wanting to eat coon but they will kill one on the ground pretty quick...and yes I agree with you in quite a few of the things you are saying...but you must know that our scientist have been wrong many times and the general public will grasp the idea and run with it...but those are normal things that happen and over a period of years others improve on the ideas...that is normal...I do read and observe things that happen and then I develop my own theories as to why some things happen...sometimes learning about one subject will answer questions about others...many times we theorize because there isn't any data available to us but one thing we can do is use our common sense and common sense solves problems...

learned behaviors...there are many times that breeders of great pointers have taken a bird wing with a string and stick and jiggled it in front of a well bred pointer pup of six weeks and that pup goes to a steady point...do that with a hound or cur pup and it will more than likely not point it...is it a learned behavior? maybe but more than anything it is a bred in trait...

same thing with a well bred racing greyhound...over generations the best dogs will win...to the breeder with an eye and feel for the racing greyhound he will select puppies according to those traits which he selects...and then when the dog wins consistently then it is proven that he has what it takes to win so he is bred to females of the same type...we will leave out prepotency just to stick with what we are talking about...this breeder selected through what he saw and felt and he was right...but just like in many things there are many other things happening behind the scenes that he doesn't have any idea of what is happening but it really doesn't matter...these other things that he doesn't see are things that go hand in hand with what he sees...

why are some babies born addicted to crack? why are some babies born with defects because of lack of certain nutrients.

that little boy I talked about who could eat extremely hot peppers like they we candy and which they didn't bother him in any way that I could see...I don't think he will gravitate back to how a normal preteen would react to eating these peppers...he should of been red faced and sweating, possibly blisters on his tongue and severe pain from the hot spicy peppers...he should of developed a severe stomach ache but none of these symptoms appeared to be bothering this kid...something must of happened in his formation for him to have adapted so well to eating birds eye peppers...many will say this is not science...it is only an observation and I agree...

I like tweaking...

I throw a sweaty t-shirt in the puppy house and switch it every few days with another sweaty shirt...I do that for about three weeks...I want them to see me as one of them...at four weeks or so I throw a meaty hog head in the yard and let them tear it up...I use hunger to my advantage...I want them to love it...I test them for winding and finding and finding which pup or pups are the best at it...I test for ranging out...I test for baying style...I look for natural first...training doesn't impress me...natural ability does...what we have discussed is nothing more than what has been happening since the beginning of the time when living organisms were created...I didn't read that anywhere just common sense based on what I now know...it's just a higher level of understanding...because we understand more we can decide if we want to add to what we know and do...I know I will put the pregnant gyp in the bay pen two or three times before she whelps...maybe it won't matter much but I am about tweaking and thinking outside the box...

i just feed'em for about 10 months , then turn'em loose about 10 or 12 times and then kill'em or keep'em  ;D ;D ;D



that's my training program  lol

Not to be ugly but this is some of the dumbest stuff I have read in a while. If you actually think that stuff works my friend you don’t put much rubber to the road. Not knocking your following of the science or methods of thinking. If your silly enough to risk your gyp and her pups baying and hunting then you might not be smarter than a 5th grader. Bottom line these are living breathing animals some we love some we don’t some are great off the bat some take time and work.


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Being as you like to use analogies to get your point across that are outside of the discussion, that is the reason I used the coon dogs as an example, using a scenario with what I’m gathering of your theory, I never mentioned anything about your dogs messing with coon and can’t decipher if it was a misinterpretation of a scenario or an attempt at a hint of sarcasm, I’m well aware that scientist and Dr.s aren’t right all of the time, and have seen it on more than one occasion, that’s why it’s referred to as studying and practicing in those professions, because no one has it all figured out, I’m an unconventional outside the box thinker  myself with enough common sense to have made it this far in life but won’t convince myself that my assumptions hold more merit than what has been scientifically discovered and that modern science has not yet caught up with my way of thinking...

Again I think you missed my whole point in learned behaviors and instincts becoming inherited traits, no, we can not tease a cur dog with a bird wing and watch him instinctively point, and your not going to take bird dog pup and send it towards yearlings in a pasture and watch them instinctively start wadding them up and circle baying either, being as all dogs share the same  ancestry but yet are extremely diverse in type and function then somewhere along the way dogs learned the ways to figure different task and all man did was enhance those behaviors to the point they became inherited traits through artificial selection, I find it hard to believe that way back when, bird hunters would get down on all fours and show the dogs the proper way to point a covey of birds, when the type of dog and breed itself was first being developed, same thing with stock minded dogs, before they were “traits” as you put they had to start somewhere, they didn’t just appear one day, look at the treeing walker breed, they are a well known and established breed with established breed specific “traits” but yet their origins are primarily from running walker stock, certain individual dogs within the running walker breed instinctively figured out or learned that some of their game goes up a tree, some hunters realized the potential and started breeding those individuals that would instinctively tree, which was not a trait bred for in the running walker breed, and through artificial selection turned unborn environmentally  learned instincts into established inherited traits...

We know why babies are born crack addicts and why some children are born with defects due to pre natal nutrient deficiencies, that’s nothing new and something that has been well known and documented, and can and
a lot of times are fixed, but those problems stay with that individual and are not passed onto its offspring...

Let’s say the example of the little boy with peppers did in fact create a pre natal TOLERANCE to capsaicin, the heat compound in peppers that makes them hot, does that mean that his kids will have the same tolerance, he will not be able to eat peppers during gestation...


Words on the street is that tweaking is bad for your health...


Not discrediting what you do with your gyps and pups, at the end of the day you pay for the feed and as long as you like them then that’s all that matters as long as the welfare of the dog comes first which I know isn’t an issue at all in this discussion, I just can bring myself to see where it helps out a great deal, being as mankind has been breeding dogs for specific purposes for hundreds of years and you better believe those methods have been tried before and if they worked then they would’ve become common practice, breeding and developing dogs is not rocket science and what has been discovered so far can’t really be improved upon a great deal, yes there’s no ceiling on it and always room for improvements and new techniques and I believe we’ll learn more as we gain the technology, but what is there that can be greatly improved upon that our forefathers have already built with a pair of worn out boots and a hammer, I  can’t argue with your sweaty t shirt method, because I do the same but later than 3 weeks, does it enhance what a pup is genetically loaded for, nope, but I have my reasons...




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Judge...I never said I would hunt my pregnant gyp...I said I would put her in a Bay pen 3 or 4 times...big difference...and it wouldn’t be with a big boar Hog...i did hunt a pregnant gyp almost 40 years ago but she was a fairly loose Bay dog and I was pretty young at the time...

But at 10-14 years of age I hunted them almost daily until they dropped the pups...but we didn’t have hogs back then and there wasn’t anything dangerous out there that could harm the gyp...

judge...I went back and reviewed what had been said  and I did throw it out there judge I included “take her hunting”...so yes I did say it...

It’s all good my friend you have your thoughts and I have mine. Everyone says silly stuff every once in awhile.


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Goose...I was going back and reviewing what has been said and I just stopped...we have about exhausted prenatal, diet and  genetic modifications...

Gene modification and purification is alive and well...it is called evolution

here is what I do believe on the kid that could eat those peppers...some sort of cell modifications took place that have permanently changed him...this can happen in other scenarios for the better or for the worse...I know a man that is on disability because of mental impairment and it is permanent and it is because his mom was an alcoholic...so if these folks are to have children one day will they be affected by it? I would say yes through learned behavior...by being around the parents...

When breeding better I will have to say these are minor details when looking at the big picture....I brought this up. because in my opinion it can play a part in breeding better dogs...taking it to a higher level and I strongly believe in it...not that it makes a big difference but when we want the very best these are other things that we can do...

Hybrid Vigor within a breed...it will be hard breeding consistently good to great dogs on account there are too many variables we don't readily see...that is one reason why there are so many culls out there...when done right there should be very few...

below is something to think about...

to keep it very simple I will use red and black because it is visual and anyone knows what black and red are at a glance...

if you are wanting all reds and you have to breed this red dog to a black dog to get reds then this is what will happen...

1. you could fail right of the bat and have all black puppies...
2. you could have both reds and blacks...cull all the blacks and you are in business...

same dogs but blacks are the desired hunting dogs...it is a little more complicated but very doable...

1.you could have all black pups but...
2.the black pups you keep and breed could throw a few reds now and then...

hunting traits are even more complicated...one wrong breeding and we can have a slight to major setback...

goose...you have a gift for writing and retaining what you read... 8)

the only way I could do it is to have the internet open and copy and paste...lol
there is no doubt in my mind you will breed what you want...

who knows ?

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, some start at the head and others at the ass...

What’s the point in reading something if you can’t or don’t retain  it to be able to put it to use in the real world away from the keyboard...


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Good question, all I know is how to fake it until I make it...


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oh , and i forgot to add  that in my non training program i let pups run loose and trash on everything until they start leaving the place and baying the neighbors stock . ;D ;D

I don't know much and I don't know anyone here but I hunt my gyps till about 21 days or so too birth. And I am also breeding or making my owndogs. I have taken 2 dogs of mixed breeds and created what I want . The stud to my "mess" is dead now and I'm using brothers and 1 sister and mom  to continue. But instead of calling someone's thoughts and beliefs junk ,share your knowledge of breeding your own dogs.... everybody on this forum has dogs that where created by somebody mixing or tweaking something.

who knows ? i was funn'n  ;D......everyone is entitled to there opinion ...... and each to his own doing what they feel benefits  them best ..... 

I figured that, that’s it, as long as we’re the ones that feed them and take care of them that’s all that matters at the end of the day...


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Out of curiosity, have you ever entered that pedigree you posted earlier into a program to see what the inbreeding coefficient is on your blackie dog just for the sh!ts and giggles...


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this is a very good way...I would love to have this option again...

goose  i wouldn't know how ...

Oftentimes when we think outside the box there will be many nay sayers to include those with other opinions until it becomes common knowledge one way or another...

Time to get back to the normal as most of us see it day in and day out...



Staying away from gestational imprinting/conditioning or even epigenetics...I have been in discussions where coondoggers swear that there pups were straight coon dogs...never ran trash...so why is that?

I'm surprised you guys haven't discussed genetic mutation yet. 

Oh and what about the bracket theory?

epigenetics involves genetic mutations...that is one of many reasons why it is so interesting to me...as more scientist get on board it will make for some interesting reading amongst other things...possibly breeding better animals and finding cures to diseases...

one of the most famous mutations I read about was when the flu virus that infected birds (avian flu)to be more specific geese and ducks...and the swine flu mutated...back in 1918 or so, neither of these would cause illness in humans...but over many years when feeding the hogs the geese and ducks would feed together and over many years of the avian flu and swine flu co-existing that one day they finally mutated and the new strain was able to infect many people...millions died all over the world with this new strain of flu virus...I am going way back before the internet on this one...

you got me on that one? ???

 i just had some mutations til i researched it ..blue pups ...man i just couldn't figured where it come from ....til i read where  some db gene will make a black dog blue ....hahahaha i got rid of 5 perty good dogs because i thought it was a throw back from breeding to an older female of this line a friend had ......(https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=453605108392641&set=gm.1315620925206041&type=3&theater&ifg=1)

(https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=453605108392641&set=gm.1315620925206041&type=3&theater&ifg=1)

maybe this will work ....(https://scontent-dfw5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/29571453_453605108392641_4671669365563821330_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=05b2941008f636d3f9e15c6113fdd8bc&oe=5B5F27F5)

You had me on that one too...I’d never heard of it.

Had to read up because it sounded interesting.

Brackett, was a Breeder iof German shepherds.

He primarily focused on breeding around stud dogs.

Lots of interesting stuff...

So one of his main formulas was:

‘Let the sire of the sire, be the grandsire of the dam” in gen after gen....

Seems a lot of folks in all dif breeds follow that formula successfully without even knowing that it is what they are doing

* scratch that*

I’m sure they know, they just didn’t know there was already a theory written down about it by a guy that took maticulus notes on breeding outcomes and successes and failures thereof on so many gens of dogs he bred

When I get a chance I got a pedigree software program downloaded on my laptop that I keep track of all my dogs with, I’ll enter your pedigree just to see what the coefficients are...


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I’ve studied and read up on the bracket theory a few years ago, it seems to work well but is just another form of linebreeding,...


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When I was 15 I made a breeding of two bulldogs that I had, I knew a good bit about their backgrounds to know what was behind them, these were black and white bulldogs off of black and white dogs, with a good bit of Eli breeding on them, one of the pups came out blue, this was before blue bulldogs were a fad and at the time still semi “ rare”, I was puzzled for several years until I found out what caused it...


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A really good friend of mine is one of the top greyhound people in the country. One day while picking his brain, I asked how he chose to pair his markings. What strategy did he use. He replied, well I have studied the winningest breeders over time. I studied them and the peds that tbey produced. No one approach is fail proof or right or wrong per say. Some of them definately ha e had better results though. One man in particular had the highest winning percentage by a good bit. He line bred for 3 generations and every 4th made an outcross. This was his approach to the line breeding theory. Of course then all the personal preferences and observations come into effect in breed worthy selections. As stated earlier, to each their own method and there's more than one way to skin a cat. I try to line breed and use the best to best theory along with it. I sure don't know it all and don't have the "best" families of dogs walking. What I do have are a family of curr type dogs and a family of catch dogs that "I" like, my flavor. Until it doesn't work I'm gonna keep on keeping on with what has been working. 

There is big money in greyhounds and you can bet they have some smart people working on how to breed them. They don't have to worry about some ones definition of good because they have to beat the competition and the clock. They also have the best nutrition and care money can buy and yet only about 30% make it on the track. They don't tolerate the bad ole gooduns or the good ole baduns because they run just fast enough to lose your money and the track will send them home.

I want to switch gears a little...

I want to ask a question of you older, and younger, dog breeders the have a line of dogs you work with and line breed on...

While pondering the ‘let the sire, of the sire, be the grandsire of the dam’  that was Brackett’s formula. I switched it in my head to ‘let the dam of the dam, be the grand dam of the sire, or let the dam of the sire be the grand dam of the dam.

This in itself is no big revelation as a line breeding scheme. I’ve seen it in thousands of pedigrees. And I’m sure Brackett wasn’t the first. Mendel, from what I read was one of the guys that Brackett studied. And I’m sure Mendel wasn’t the progenitor. This stuff prob goes back to domestication of canines before folks even had written language.

Brackett always based his line around stud dogs.
Many of the peds in the breed I am a student of do as well. As well as a lot of the cur breeds and other breeds I have cursory knowledge about the pedigrees of.

Larry, I know you breed on blackie, you breed on males down from blackie. I’ve seen you write about it before.
I know you like to hunt males and breed the b!tches. That is your preference. And it’s working for you...

This is my pondering

Does anyone have a line they have based on a female???

I know in line breeding the females will also show up quite often. And this are being line bred on as well.

It seems the Brackett and others from conformation dogs or breeds to working dogs always have a stud heavy focus. This, I get it...Because a stud I one year can be bred to dogs in its family and outcrosses, and more distant relations and even to dif breeds. This would far surpass the pups one b!tch could throw in a whole lifetime. Even if double sired and all pups dna tested.

This would quickly show the propensity of a particular stud to be a a Breeder or a cull in conformational nature and with just a little more time in dogs of a working nature.

But it seems with what has been touched on in this discussion regarding epigenetics, and from what I have heard from breeders as well for years about the dam contribution to the final makeup of the pups outweighing the sire’s. Esp in working dogs as pups learn behaviors from their mother first which affects temperament certain drives in ways yet to be understood or at least scientifically.

So I wonder if the breeding focus on studs is somewhat of a handicap. I know it’s a faster lane. And the time literally does tick on what you can learn about a dams contribution. Esp in working dogs... say you breed a dam of a working breed and don’t regard the conformation of the pups so much, but more their performance.
The you have to wait a year and a half to see what the end results in performance were. That’s about a two year window that you could have chased down a rabbit hole. Only to start again. When in the same time one could literally have hundreds of pups from a particular sire to sort thru and cull of keep and each would weigh percentage wise on whether the dog was a good stud or to move another direction.

So question is...

Do any of you have a linebreeding based directly and purposefully on a b!tch dog?

Some more good stuff right here, one of my neighbors Charles Fasola  breeds kemmer stock curs and has a pretty good track record in the competition squirrel hunts and maintains a line/family of dogs and once told me that he does the same as your greyhound friend, he breeds within his family 3 times and the outcrosses on the 4th, his dogs cross over to big game pretty successful as well, I 100% agree that no one has it completely figured out or ever will, we can only manipulate Mother Nature to certain extents, we share similar breeding practices also, Ive been and am trying to keep and maintain a line going as best as I can that suits ME, I’m not scared to add some outside blood that matches what I got already but brings what I’m looking to improve to the table...


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Semmes... all my dogs are based off a female. I breed everything back to my old Tweety gyp. All of her pups were basically clones of her... no resemblance whatsoever to the sire. They looked, acted, hunted and handled just like her. I’m 5 generations down now and still getting consistent dogs very similar to her.


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Thanks Mike, I almost mentioned you and asked...

I knew it was tweety/ Winchester but forgot if one was bred to a dif cross and then stacked in or not...

Only reason it interests me so much is because I have a small scale thing I’m doing based off a female. It’s a bit complicated and kinda by seat of my pants. Def not an accelerated thing...I got all time in world and it just for me. But anyway....

I’m the same way... small scale. I breed when I need pups, place the ones I don’t want with people I know. I do have a daughter to Tweety’s sister and Winchester’s brother that I’ll breed back to one of their great grandpups when she comes in... we’ll see how that works out.


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I have always believed if you don't have a good brood bitch, you are out of business in the dog world.

good males can bring you down the road  quite a bit faster .....  once  your down the road  it don't matter either male  or female  ......but  the male gives way more options .... we have  2  good breeder males  we  take females off each and breed them to females from each male crossed on the other ...last  litter is back on her daddy ......i'm done its  maintinace  now ....what else  can i do ?  i have a good solid  working line that is perty much trash free and hog minded .....now if i am  lucky enuff to keep that once in awhile super dog i'll breed around him a while ...... i like a good gyp i used to hunt  some good gyps .... but we are training young dogs  most every trip or finishing one  so i don't want his nose  up another dogs rear  or trying to trail one up ... i want him split trailing his own ..... so i do  hunt  one from tme to time but not much .....

Some good stuff here as well, centering my breedings around females is exactly what I’m doing, I used to keep and hunt mostly male dogs but when I decided to start breeding and raising my own stock I gradually gravitated to keeping mostly females, my main purpose was I looked at it like this, there are plenty of good quality studs out there to breed to but how many people are going to let you breed your top stud that you feel is breed worthy to a female of the same caliber that they own, not very many, not only that but if a man has a stringer of good females then if he plays his cards right will keep himself in good dogs for years to come, at least that’s the way I look at it, another one of my neighbors whom introduced me to the man I mentioned in my last post has always had a kennel full of top notch English pointers and has for the duration of his entire dog career centralized his breedings around one particular female he owned many years ago, his philosophy is he doesn’t keep females that aren’t reproducers of themselves or better, he chooses a stud that is already a proven reproducer to breed to, if the pups don’t meet his criteria then the female is disposed of or spayed and is sold after her competition career is over and is pleasure hunted the rest of her days, I’m trying to get my breedings centralized around a particular motherline within this family of curs I’m working on, they are strong reproducers of themselves and throw quality offspring, and aside from all of that, I’ve never seen a successful cattleman keep a pasture full of bulls to continue his herd in the future...


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The last paragraph, I think it has more to do with being born with natural intelligence than gestational imprinting, i have a few on my yard now that I’m not scared to say are just about 100% trash free, there was no trash breaking or shocking involved, all I did was pair them up with a proven dog and give them a ride to the woods, they figured out what game we were after, a few of my younger cur walker crosses will bump a coyote and red fox every now and then but that’s because they started themselves on them running loose at my house, they’ve bumped deer that have gotten up in front of them but realized quick that’s not what their supposed to be running, now with me saying this I’ll have one hell of a deer race next time I dump the box...


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i have a question ? and i' m not tying to be  smart or anything ....i but  see where some think the female is the way to go in breeding and i'm wondering where the thinking comes from ? is there facts  to back it up or  just opinion ?  i don't know ....myself i think it may be something when you start but after several generations  of tight  line breeding to me  on is  as  good as the other i just choose males cause  i hunt them more .....

good males can bring you down the road  quite a bit faster ..... once  your down the road  it don't matter either male  or female

I agree with your thought process...once you have a few generations you can breed around a female or male...

I see it a little different and many don't agree but there are others that have done it this way as well...

I called it purifying the gene pool...once I decided on my male after several generations of quality dogs before him. I bred him to females as soon as they were proven and then bred to a granddaughter who was also his daughter, nieces and grand nieces...every pup I ever kept made good dogs...the very best dog I ever owned I only bred one time because he was a crossbred...I realized even back then that I wouldn't get what I wanted consistently because of that outcross...to purify a gene pool we move forward...once we think we are in a good place just repeat breeding and then outcross as has already been mentioned...preferably a not to distant relative that compliments the bloodline and if the pups are satisfactory then slowly breed one back in to the bloodline and it is good for a few generations...there will be testing and evaluations...how early do they start, is it natural and easy (genetically inclined to react a certain way) for the pup, or does it take more exposure for it to click? These are all good questions that we should answer to ourselves when producing better dogs...you can get better dogs over time from the same bloodline...there are many things we can learn about a pup through observations..."reading the puppy scene" can oftentimes tell us what a pup will be one day...we want to do all we can to select the right pups for hunting and breeding...

One day one of my brothers asked me if one of my dogs would make a good blood trailing deer dog...I said probably as good as any good ones out there...so once the pups were about 10 weeks old I had him come over to pick up his pup...he was on track for me to keep but I wanted my brother to have a good pup so he took him home...long story short he never took him out of his yard...and my brother shoot his 7 mag, 270 and 30-06 in the back yard and that dog was gun shy and hated thunder and lightning...the dog was around 2 years old when he asked me if I wanted the dog back...I said sure and so I went to pick him up...I put him in the bay pen and he looked like a pro...the next day or so we went hunting and right of the bat the dogs struck and this dog takes his own hog and swims the brazos river about three quarters of a mile away...I get a call that someone has the dog so I have to drive around and get him...the next hunt he takes his own hog again and bays them about a mile from where he struck and my brother shoots to good hogs over this dog...the dog ran off for a bit and then came back to finish off the hogs so he thought...I didn't like the fact that he liked running alone...over a short time he started hunting with the pack more often than not...we can pick pups that will more than likely hunt one day...or we can put a little more effort in selecting those that are born with a bigger dose of the right genetic makeup...

there are two thought processes that I know about but there are probably more...some say the dam because they are connected to her during gestation and/or because they are nurtured by here and this imprinting can be helpful...

I believe it takes both the exception being if either the male or female would be one of those rare blue hen reproducers even then you would be better off to not breed junk since you would be adding a big dose of recessives that can come out. Except for cloning one is no good without the other it takes two, one of each sex.

Larry how did you breed females to females?

I refer back to my mentoring and raising a lot because it's what molded my approach to most things I do in life. The other variable being experience. I had a family friend that was as much a grandfather to me as he was anything. The biggest part of his early years all he did was cowboy, even after he married. He was intelligent and knowledgeable about anything that he persued. I never knew him to do anything that he wasn't successful at. Dogs were a passion he and I shared, coon dogs to cow dogs to squirrel and hog dogs. He always said to find that special female. Everybody hunts males, their a dime a dozen so to speak. He told me that you could breed a great male to an average female and you were most likely going to get a litter of average pups and a dud or two. Breed an average male to an exceptional female though and you will likely get an average litter and an exceptional pup or two. There are always exceptions to the rule. Heck, you can breed exceptional to exceptional and get nothing if the genes aren't a niche. Over the years though, I personally have found this to be sound advice for me.

To me none of this matters one way or the other. What does matter is a mans time money and effort. So no matter what way is your claim to fame if you believe it and put your time money and effort in it you will have been watching and learning with a close eye. And if you do that with any thing you will be better at what your doing. I think that is the main difference in successful people and mediocre people.


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bignasty  did  i say i bred females  to females hahahaha  well it wasn't easy takes years  of experince  hahahaha ....no telling what i type  sometimes hahaha

So Judge are yoou saying you can take any dog and make hog dog out of it with time money and effort?

Good stuff

Lol rough curs. If you want to hunt coons  get a coon dog. But there are many dogs that will get after a coon. But any way no I am saying that a fella gets a decent dog puts his time money and effort into them he will learn what he done good vs bad. Might not be the same for the next guy. But you can make any dog a hog dog if it has the want to and the skill.


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We talk about genetics, pedigrees, breeding coefficients, linebreeding etc...etc...all this is only as good as our dog selection process and standard of excellence...in our minds eye we need to clearly see what a great hunting dog is and breed towards that goal...we have to be totally honest with ourselves...

well all i can say is time and  money and effort want get blood from a  turnip ..... if you don't have good breeding in the dogs  your  training you may end  up with  one here  and there that is real nice  but  you will go through a  bunch  you will have  to bullet and a bunch that at there best  is half ass ...... just the way it is .....i been there done that ..

Back when I first got into Plotts, I was to busy hunting them to worry about breeding them & did not want to lay a female up. I lost some very good blood due to not breeding them. I got a Weems bred gyp named Lucy & she had everything I was looking for. Had it all but she died at 2 without me breeding her. I went back & got a sister to her.(same cross different litter) She made the same kind of dog. I was living in MN. at the time & bearhunting in Wisc. Altho I hunted with some good Plotts there, they were not equal to that Blackie gyp in the nose, speed or grit department & I felt like I would be breeding down. Called Steve Fielder up as he had a littermate to her with the full intention of breeding her to her full brother. He talked me into breeding her to her 1/2 brother Roper. They had the same sire Soloman. I made this cross with extremely good results so I started looking at the family of dogs that created the Soloman dog. When I moved back to La. I was going over to Fla. to bear hunt & a friend of mine had a dog (Dummy)that could run with Blackie & was very cold nose. Come to find out, his Grandmother was a littermate to the Soloman dog & the rest was Leroy Haug breeding. (swampland) Made that cross twice with very good results. I also had another female named Bell with Swampland breeding & bred to the Dummy dog & got some nice dogs. Then I was crossing Bell offspring to the Blackie offspring & that is what I have been doing for years. The Soloman dog was Weems bred. Leroy Haug started his line of dogs based off of Weems bred dogs. I guess what I am saying is I thought I started with breeding around my female Blackie but then concentrated more on her sire Soloman. Bottom line it was a family of dogs that I was breeding around that kept producing. Yes, there were a few culls but the majority made very usable dogs & they got very consistent when we were stacking Soloman in the pedegree.

I think the bitch matters more imho the reason I say that is when we would breed horses we would breed more to the mare or “marelines” yes we picked a stallion that would make up the “weakness” of the mare but the foal would always pull to the mares side. Mikes foundation bitch seams to be what his dogs pull to jase look almost exactly like that bitch. From what he tells me he breeds back to the traits of that foundation bitch. So I think the bitch or mare is a little more important then the stud. I think a lot of people put attention on the stud is because the stud can breed as much as you want him to. A bitch on the other hand has to come in heat then get bred carry pups whelp them and so on mean while the stud has bred 10 bitches.


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 i worked for a man feeding his  race  horses when i was a kid and always heard that on the mares ....but  i think it changes  when you go to  multiple offspring and the way the dogs produce multiple eggs  ........ in race horses  they do not like more then one  offspring ata time i was told it devides the domainate genes from the mare .....maybe  not  maybe so i don't  know  just what i was told .....but  i do believe  alot  of what holds true  on some  animals breeding doesn't  on other's ......

Some of this comes down to how many dogs you are willing to feed. If you keep a yardfull of dogs you can breed things just to try it. If you are feeding less than a dozen hog dogs you can't afford to make a breeding unless you are pretty darn sure it will work. It helps to have good folks you can put them with  but that has its own downside too. Mr Parker has a very different situation than say Rueben or some others. I know most of us like to do our own breeding but it takes a whole bunch of time and dedication get where you want to be. Those who do it with a small number of dogs have my respect cause I have done it with bulldogs. One wrong breeding is a heck of a setback.

WOW, that is exactly right. Unless you are hunting with the people you place the dogs with on a regular basis, it's hard even then to just take someone else's word for what a dog is doing. For me its first hand observations only for the most part. Very few people make the same observations when watching the same thing. Its kinda like watching boxing. One judge says this guy won the round this judge says the other did. So i like to judge for myself. I wasted a breeding to a real good gyp because I took the word of a friend that I thought knew what he was talking about. I needed an outcross and bred to a male on his word. Then hunted with him later. It made me sick at my stomack to watch the way he preformed. The pups turned out but I never bred to any of them because of that male dog. I say all this to show that you have to be your own critic of your own product. You have to have a standard and know that every pup or every litter isn't going to meet your standards and you alone have to be big enough to know when to pull the plug on a litter. If i dont have a very high turn out percentage, then more than likely it doesn't matter how special that one dog out of the litter was, I won't breed it. Consistency is a major factor for me and what i do because I cant afford to feed a ton of dogs.

yes indeed...that is how it is...

some of the top dogs  i have  had  and  bred with  is dogs  other  people had  from pups  and  i bought em back cause they didn't think they would make  good dogs  hahahahaha ...can't get them to hardly sell me any back anymore

Not everyone has an eye for a dog or the ability to steer the dog in the right direction. A lot of dogs have what it takes but don't get the opportunity to succeed.

i hate  to say this but  it  is what it is  most people can't train one  if it has  any problems . most call training a dog taking it to the woods.. took me some years  before i figured out i killed some good dogs ..you still can,t get blood from a turnip .. but i can take a just decent dog and  when i finish my handle he's a good one ...i can send him out wind  off the buggy or if he comes in where he can hear  me i can holler suey  you better get ahead  and  they will turn and get deep by themselves  no help ....now  that didn't come natural thats me as a trainer ..... most dogs have  to be natural to survive especially these ugly black ones i raise hahaha  they gotta do something to get a  spot .......

Ran across this tid bit...seems it was layed out in human terms as well...

Take it for what you may...

Not a judgement either way here on this end. Just ran across it and found it rather poinient to this thread.

https://www.bible.com/bible/114/NUM.36.nkjv (https://www.bible.com/bible/114/NUM.36.nkjv)

Seems the term inheritance is interpreted as more than a property or monetary thing in most versions of this passage