From what I've read on him Ben never really had a breeding program, then again I could've read wrong, yea he did have several dogs that he really liked and bred them but nothing along the lines of breeding a family of dogs, his lifestyle wouldn't allow it, in one book there's a quote where he sends a young man into town to gather up some dogs, anything that looks like it will run something, I've read where he and the Lee brothers swapped a few dogs back and fourth between one another and that Steve Mathes, the man who developed the Mathes lion hounds first started with a gyp that came off a dog that Lilly hunted, I'm sure if a man wanted to look hard enough he could dig up some extremely distant relatives of his dogs in some of the old western big game hunters packs.
That is what I've have read also. I have read that he was extremely hard on them also,I read somewhere that when one of the dogs acted a fool he gathered them all up in a circle and put the dog in trouble in the middle and whipped it with a bull whip mercilessly with the others looking on.
