All genetic traits are passed on in exactly the same manner, be it color or nose or speed or ear length. What makes certain utility traits so difficult, such as how a dog uses his nose for trailing . . is that they are controlled by gene clusters and not just a single gene. I always picture the lottery ball drawings where a numbered ball drops into each slot. Each of those slots represents or determines a different aspect of trailing. But one slot may be more important than others. Say you have 9 slots and they all line up exactly as you want . . you get the perfect dog. Or maybe they all line up ideally except for the 3rd slot . . and you're dog is pretty close to perfect. But if the 7th slot is off by even a hair . . that slot may affect all of the other slots or be a multiplier of other slots . . and your dog refuses to trail at all or just stands on his head and bawls. Then factor in our almost complete inability to see the slots or know which one affects which others . . and it's a crap shoot, only with approximately 230,000 dice.
Also . . there is no breed of hunting dog on the planet that wasn't created by mixing other breeds or types. So they're all carrying a bunch of excess baggage that is just lying back there waiting to pop up. One family of dogs may produce speed demons due to a specific combination of genes that has been bred until it is almost pure for that trait, while another family produces super fast members for an entirely different reason or combination of traits. Breeding best to best from one family to the other may not produce anything of even average speed.
And even in traits as seemingly simple as color there's more than meets the eye. There are a number of different types of brindle and several different genetically heritable whites. For instance, in many lines of dogs you'll see white feet or white points or ringnecks etc. that are a holdover from cross breeding to dogs with excessive white on them, most often Walkers. But in other dogs or lines of dogs, you may get white points on feet and neck and nose that are actually not genetically white. Those appear white because the birth cycle is out of whack and the feet, neck, chest and nose are the last places on the pup's body to receive color and they were born before it happened. They look white and in a sense . . they are white . . but what you really see is an absence of color.
For all of those reasons I don't believe there is or ever has been a "master breeder" of working animals. There are gentlemen who were lucky enough to receive some good stock and struggle to maintain it for a period of time. There have been some intelligent, hard working hunters who produced a number of top dogs. But until we have genetic maps and the ability to program what our dogs or milk cows or racehorses inherit . . . the best way to produce the most GREAT dogs is to produce the most dogs. And the best way to do that is to have a large number of hunters breeding and evaluating multiple examples within a controlled or semi-controlled population of an established family of dogs.
Or, maybe I'm completely wrong about all of it.
Barlow...you are a genius...
when we don't know what to do we do what we know what to do...and that is test the pups for natural ability and breed the best to the best within a family and after a few generations breed more to the one that produces...
