As a matter of fact . Noah I been sitting here thinking back threw a lot of years in the bulldogs and of the 100's of Father x Daughter and Son x Mother breedings that I know were made not only by us but by many friends threw out the country. I cannot even think of one that made a mind breaking impact as a high performace type of dog.
That dont mean it cant happen but that will give you some true odds to go by if high performace in your sport is what you are seeking . Many a avarage performace dogs yes , elite performace dogs No . Some good brood dogs yes .
I believe that linebreeding and inbreeding will clean up the gene pool pretty quickly...but we must be sure to pick the very best offspring to make it work or to just keep improving...the very best dog I ever had was an out cross...1/2 bmc and 1/2 mt. cur. I only bred this dog once because I knew he would not produce consistancy...but I bred one of his sons that was a very good hunting dog by 1 year old and I used him to breed to his daughter and grand daughters who were also his nieces etc. etc...and when I outcrossed I did that once in 20 years...I actually was going to do it twice with a very nice red florida cur but I didn't like the pups so I scratched that one. But I bred that outcross pup who had 50 percent of my bloodline in him, bred him back to another one of my dogs and that gave me 3/4 of my dogs line right away. I kept several of those because I wanted to freshen up the blood but with very little chances of changing the type of dogs I liked and kept...just a little outside blood...but I will say that the dogs I kept got better to the point that some were hunting too independently and some hunted too hard and actually would heat stroke because of no quit...
TexasHogDogs is probably right...The ultimate dog might be an outcross and this great dog would be sought after for breeding for many years...but I bet his averages on his pups that would perform at a high level will be lower than that of a dog that is bred tight from a long line of above average dogs...
to breed better dogs...one must truly know what a good to great dog really is...
and then you have the different opinions as to what a good dog is...
someone once said that breeding is like having a can of marbles with half of them one color, representing good traits and the other half a different color for the bad traits...once you remove the majority of the bad marbles then you can consistantly pull the marbles of the right color whether you take them out one at a time or 2 at a time...
only one of the right color needs to be present if the other is a recessive... but 2 of the right color need to be drawn if dealing with recessive traits...
so when the marbles start concentrating the right color then the chances of getting what you want will go way up... and that is basicly what happens when we line breed and inbreed...
outcrossing, we can still get good dogs because of the law of averages...but the percentages will be a lot lower with equal amounts of each color of marbles in the can....and even lower percentages of good dogs if the can has a higher number of the wrong color of marbles...
the bottom line for me is this...breed the best dogs available and keep them related...then we must select the best pups from them for breeding...otherwise it will lead to failure...
this is how I see it and have done it this way...and yes...you can have a whole litter of good hunting dogs...just some better than others...but it won't happen until the 3rd or 4th generation and it won't always be 100 percent all the time but a high average of good dogs...outcross one time and those numbers will drop like a rock in a well...outcross on the sideline and purify it a little and slowly bring some of this blood in to the pack...
I did it once this way but will not spend the money or time doing it again...I'll leave that to the youngsters with that burning desire...
but will breed a few every now and then...
