Message #438705

[b.b.b kennels]

Nowhere near the experiance from dog breeding as most you, and definatley nowhere close to putting down the amount of hogs as most of you,
 But......have made about a thousand mistakes when it comes to my dogs and have been fortunate enough to learn from them, as well as seeing some of the old timers who have put together Awesome lines of dogs.  Successful dogmen all seem to have three major things in common.

1. Breed the Best dogs you Have acess to. This does not mean your two best dogs that occasionally bump a pig.  If I have ONE dog worth breeding, which in all honesty, 50% of us do not, then Im going to breed it to the absolute best dog I can find, NOT my 2nd place potlicker. They dont breed every horse who wins a race or Every rodeo bull who bucks someone off. Why breed every dog that can find a hog. Look at what the coon hunters did for decades. They used World Champions and bloodlines that had been proven Over and Over again to produce Athletic, Instictive power hounds that were steadily better than the previous generations in most cases.  We are regressing in a lot of cases. Read up on the old lines of curs from the late 1800s to the 1970s and tell me we have hounds like that nowadays.  The ones who would of been able to make it on those guys' yards are few and far between.  Alot of dogs nowadays would meet the click click boom if given to those who established these lines of dogs we use today.

 2. CULL your litters. The great ones would rather bury an inferior dog 50 feet down a well than let someone else buy it for Any amount of money. Who on this board has never sold a dog to someone because that dog had flaws that were obvious to you? That dog then enters the system, going from yard to yard teaching their bad habbits to generations of younger dogs and maybe even eventually ending up on some young man's yard who then breeds it to a gyp because she got 4th at some bay pen.  Then you get a litter of idiots and rejects who also enter the system. Selling a bum dog to someone is the Greatest Sin of Dog Men.

3.  Push your dogs harder than the generation before.  Every man deserves one great dog and one great woman.  but after Ol'__________ (insert name) has past on, you cant become content with breeding his offspring over and over again and getting pups that are as good or a hair under him/her.  Everyone loses dogs in this game, some before we can pass on their genetics. but if you think that your program peaked and now you are just maintaining what you have, then whats the point of raising dogs then? The men that established the lines of dogs that we pulled from never settled with just a "good pack of dogs".

Im aware how preachy and concided this comes off but Read it and tell me Im lieing.
I've made alot of mistakes starting out, just trying to keep someone from making the same.