It seems to be the thing most experienced dog men regret. I have only spoke with a couple that do not regret breeding this dog or that bitch more. It is very rare for someone to say they have the best dog they have ever owned number 2ting on the yard now. I too wish I had bred my terrier Gizmo more. the difference for me is I wish I would have made him more available for stud.
I will share that some of the old dog men I respect a great deal told me when I asked him why he doesn't collect on his dogs. He said "if you need to use frozen semen then your breeding program is going in the wrong direction." I still wish I collected of a couple of my terriers. (Sorry Ronni)
I will raise another question do we think our older dogs were better because we seen more hunts out of them and we happened to be newer to the sport?
A good friend of mine and I had this conversation a while back, we were talking about the lack of grit we were both experiencing at the time, seemed like the hogs were just blowing away at bays and the dogs weren't putting any teeth on them, and neither one of us had that problem before and he mentioned that back when we were both young in this sport we fooled with our dogs dang near everyday, baying in a field or a pen or stomping out briar patches and kicking hogs up for them, we were a lot younger and put WAY more time into making them what they were, as both of us bred for hunt and focused on that we slowly bred away from the dogs that were on the grittier side, he took a male off this blood we have now a days and fooled with him just like we used to the older dogs, baying him everyday, in a practice pen and and thick thick wooded pen that's about 4 acres of briars, and in my opinion he ruined the dog, he will go find a hog like it's nobody's business but as soon as you get there or the bay breaks it's like the hunts over for him and he's bred off a family of dogs known for their get out there and go type of hunting, the difference between the dogs today and then is today our dogs are heavy stock bred and have a fare amount of line breeding behind them, and our older dogs were just best of what someone's had to what they thought was the best they could find and were hunted in a completely different style to what we hunt today...
I say not breeding my old male was a big regret but the more thought I put into it, it couldn't have happened any more perfect, I'm afraid had I had a yard full of dogs off of him I may never have found the family of dogs I have today and on average they are just as good and better than him and they reproduce themselves well...
