The Hunting Trait...

[Reuben]

but first...breeding for color can be easy most of the time...

breeding 2 black dogs can produce all black if one dog inherited both genes for black...but if both black dogs have one parent as a red dog then they both carry a red color gene but because the black gene is dominant the pup will be black...if the pup comes out red then he/she had to inherit a red gene from each parent...so this is easy enough...

this is my personal theory about hunting traits...I believe that hunting traits are a basket of genes that are passed on as one...or maybe a multiple of genes...but a dog can have lots of hunt and not much nose or even not having the ability to find game...that is why there are so many variables like...hunting too close and some dogs ranging too far...it gets  complicated because we are trying to breed for better nose, bay style, range style, ability to find/stop, the willingness to go at it alone etc...etc...then there are issues with too cold a nose or not cold enough, too open, does not bark enough at the bay etc...etc...I also believe that one can keep breeding for certain traits and after a while they can become too extreme like too much hunt and too much grit...and the dog can stroke out or will need a vest to keep him alive... 

[Cajun]

Rueben, you are pretty much right on, on the color with black being dominant over all other colors & yes both parents must carry a recessive gene for a particular color other then black.
  What makes breeding so diversified is the fact that everybody likes different traits & breeds for different characteristics.
  For me, a dog cannot have to cold a nose or be to fast. Anytime I get outrun I think, have to have more speed, but a dog can only run as fast as his nose & terrain will let him. As for color, I dont care what color a dog is, as long as it is brindle.

[buddylee]

Lotta folks breed dogs that run a lot. I like dogs that find hogs a lot.

[Peachcreek]

Lotta folks breed dogs that run a lot. I like dogs that find hogs a lot.

Heck yeah

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[warrent423]

They can find and run 50 in a day, but if they can't stop and then catch them, they ain't worth a piss, at least in my opinion

[reatj81]

  For me, a dog cannot have to cold a nose or be to fast. Anytime I get outrun I think, have to have more speed, but a dog can only run as fast as his nose & terrain will let him. As for color, I dont care what color they are. 

[/quote]

I agree with must have the nose to use the speed.  Nose in winding, or running a track. The ability to run the track with head out extended like a sprinter, not down in the dirt.  Speed stops more hogs than bite, in my opinion.  Sure wish I could pick and choose which genes I wanted to pass forward, and which genes I wanted to leave behind.  If this was possible I would breed some brindle ring neck, Long legged, flop eared, deep chested, 45lb dogs that could fly, and had the best stock dog baying instincts known. 


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[barlow]

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.

[booney]

Reatj  you might wanna a little of my July blood in your dogs lol

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[Reuben]

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...

[reatj81]

Barlow you sure are easier to understand on paper, than when hunting & your sucking air trying to keep up!   Very we'll worded Barlow, I don't have such a way with words.


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[barlow]

No argument here. Easier for an old smoker to type a marathon than run one. Or maybe I just wasn't bred for speed. 

[reatj81]

Lol
I spit my tea out laughing

[Reuben]

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.

Or, maybe I'm completely wrong about all of it.

Barlow...on the Kemmer dogs I once bred a yellow dog of another breed to a yellow kemmer and all 9 or 10 pups were a brindle color...Robert Kemmer himself told be that was what I was going to produce and he was right...J. Richard McDuffie was breeding a new line of dogs and he called the colors before the pups were born and because of the Kemmer I believed he was going to be wrong...The thing about color is that some pups might be born with very light brindling and then turn a solid color as they age and folks think the dog is red but in reality the dog is brindle...same with the leopard color and others including sable...and then we have the fawn colored dogs that are called yellow in the bmc dog and the same color in the great dane and there it is fawn and the same exact color in the mastiff it is called apricot and so on...

in breeding I believe that we can keep improving the hunt in a good line of dogs including grit, nose, speed, ability to find game and stick or as some call it bottom...I saw that in my own back yard...

I believed that and still do and one day I read something that caught my minds eye and I thought on it a while and then I developed a theory based on that knowledge...what I read was the talk of a well known fact of one of the herding breeds...that the hair keeps getting longer every generation and that after a time they have to breed a short coated dog to bring the coat back to a desirable length...and so I see hunting traits as the same...the difference between me and the next breeder might be his standard as to what a hunting do should be and that might be totally different than my idea of a top hunting dog...I used to spend months and months and a year or two trying to decide who should be bred because I was that picky and there was lots of testing on my part to see what kind of heart a dog had as well as speed, swimming, natural ability to range out, winding, trailing, slashing and cutting to find the exit tracks etc...etc...to me that is way more fun than just a good hunt...I already bred this type of dog now I am thinking of a different style of dog that can basically do the same but a little more stopping power...that might hurt some on hunting sense including nose...baby steps in that direction because have to plan better for retirement...breeding good dogs to me means keeping the mistakes to a minimum and only the very best should produce once the line is started...BREEDING FOR NATURAL ABILITY...and that means just that...natural ability begets more natural ability...if a person is serious about breeding great dogs that is how it should be done...

long ago this breeder of thorough bred horses wrote a letter and gave me a copy and he mentioned that predicting color in horses wasn't that hard but in a nutshell he said it was not the same with dogs...He actually got me started with a pretty good pack of mt curs...first time in the woods the spent the night because I couldn't catch them in a cut over running a hog...he had some pretty good dogs and I was lucky to have them...I give him the credit for having pretty good dogs...

I do appreciate you on this site because you are knowledgeable in all aspects of hunting dogs...

like you said but in different words...hunting traits are a basket of different genes and some show stronger for whatever reason than others so one must interpret that accurately to breed better dogs...just like a leopard colored dog it could be almost solid black with very little leoparding and it's sibling could be almost totally leopard colored and so it is with hunting traits...strictly my opinion... 

[barlow]

"only the very best should produce once the line is started...BREEDING FOR NATURAL ABILITY...and that means just that...natural ability begets more natural ability"

Have you ever seen a great hunting dog that was a sorry reproducer? Do you ask yourself why? Or wonder why so few NBA or NFL Hall of Famers have children who are as good as the parent?

[Reuben]

"only the very best should produce once the line is started...BREEDING FOR NATURAL ABILITY...and that means just that...natural ability begets more natural ability"

Have you ever seen a great hunting dog that was a sorry reproducer? Do you ask yourself why? Or wonder why so few NBA or NFL Hall of Famers have children who are as good as the parent?

I really don't have that much experience other than what I have read on great dogs that don't reproduce and I am sure there are lots of reasons...using common sense one can rationalize and in my mind when we have scatter bred dogs one will get scatterbred pups and it can also mean getting all culls when bred to the wrong female...

and an average dog from a long line of great hunting dogs should be able to produce a higher percentage of good dogs as that once in a lifetime dog that does not have good breeding behind it...

we then have to consider if certain desirable traits are dominant or recessive because that should play an important roll in the outcome...but because I don't know the answers to this then the only thing left to do is use what knowledge we have...and for me it is best to the best within a family...there needs to be a certain amount of turn over before we can decide that the line is purified enough that one can actually consider a dominant male or female that we can focus on in concentrating the line off of...once that happens then we should slow the generation turn over down so that we do not breed oneself into a corner right away...or getting to the point when one has to introduce new blood which in my mind will open a can of worms...one can not make mistakes when it comes to selecting pups...otherwise that generation will have to be repeated...just my thoughts on the subject and what I believe is the right way for me...

[reatj81]

Barlow---Reuben   When/how does one decide enough, of certain traits is enough?  Are we always trying to improve traits, or just maintain them?  By improving traits I am saying within the family, not going outside.  By staying within the family, we are multiplying the good, and the bad.  One may not be able to see the bad or much of it, but at some time they will show up and having multiplied, just like the good traits.   I guess I'm wanting a secrete recipe that doesn't exist, multiplying the only good and loosing the bad.   


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[Bryant]

By staying within the family, we are multiplying the good, and the bad.

I don't think this is the case at all.  By "staying within the family" or "breeding closely" or "linebreeding" whatever someone chooses to call it, the goal is narrowing the gene pool so that the progeny expresses more of the desirable traits (that are already present).  In my opinion, traits cannot be ADDED without an outcross....you CAN however breed away from certain undesirables essentially eliminating them from the pool.

I've said it many times, but the goal of close breeding practices should be consistency and the attempt at reproducing a certain dog within the ped.

[barlow]

I'm with Bryant on the consistency thing. I don't think inbreeding or line breeding multiply or magnify traits. They just multiply the frequency of occurrence of a given trait (how often it shows up). And they're enhanced by good selection . . . keeping the desired and culling the undesired. You limit the genetic variance and then there are fewer possibilities. Keep your breeding pool at the higher end of the performance spectrum and you will produce more usable dogs. Produce good numbers of usable dogs and occasionally a freakishly good one will appear.

With color or ear length we not only see the result we are getting, but we see how even in a tightly bred family it may vary in shade, etc from one dog to the next.

With utility traits like trailing ability you only ever get to view the overall product and not the blueprint. Terms like "cold-nosed" are not helpful because it gives the impression that one dog is smelling things the others are not . . in an attempt to make an enormously complex system seem simpler. For the most part . . any dog can smell what any other dog can smell. What differs is their reaction to scent. This reaction is what we are trying to manage in a controlled breeding program and it is determined by things like length of the nasal passages, density of the nearly microscopic membranes that pick up scent particles, dopamine and endorphin transmitters in the brain, etc. If my family of dogs produce more adrenalin at the first hint of hog scent they may be willing to work harder to line out an old track whereas your dogs smell the same scent but aren't excited by it. It takes more scent and much fresher scent to get yours interested so the 12 hour old track doesn't even phase them. Unfortunately . . while my dogs are excited by and willing to try and line out an old track . . they have shorter nasal passages and fewer membranes with which to pick up the scent . . therefore they have to walk along taking in great, big whiffs of the target scent in order to follow it. The perfect dog has all of these factors I mentioned (and maybe as many as 200 others) in exactly the right dosage. But once in a great while perfect dogs are born . . or nearly perfect, anyway. And most often . . just when someone thru hard work, patience and an iron will gets the trailing thing all worked out . . either they or someone else decides to add grit by crossing in some pitbull or add speed by adding some greyhound . . or he decides an outcross is needed to another family from the same breed because good old uncle Zebediah told him not to breed too close.

And here's the real X-factor. A dog's performance in the woods is an absolutely horrible indicator of his potential for performance in the breeding shed. Performance and reproductive quality are NOT directly connected. Good dogs can produce worthless pups and worthless hunters can produce world class pups. More often than not . . the best reproducer from a given litter is not the dog who is the best performer. If for a dog to be perfect in the woods it is equal to lightning striking twice in the same spot, the same is true for what it takes for a dog to be a prepotent reproducer. So . . for a dog to be a great hunter and a great breeder it would require the equivalent of lightning striking the same spot four or five times. For practical purposes nobody wants to keep and breed poor performers and breed multiple litters from them to evaluate their reproductive worth. So we're all killing off our best chances at reproducing the best litters. And for as long as hunters are wowed by seeing greats like "Old Never Lie" and "John Doe's Champion" in a pedigree . . we are working parallel to our goal rather than making strides toward it.

I don't think we're ever gonna be able to mass produce outstanding dogs . . and I don't know any shortcuts to get there, but I will say that 'the 5 steps forward and 1.3 million steps back program' that random crossbreeding represents . . is definitely not the answer for engineering consistency.

And I will be happy to accept 2 cents for these thoughts via paypal.

[Reuben]

Barlow you are an excellent writer and really know your dogs...I do agree with most of what you said as well as what Bryant said...I agree that the dogs sense of smell is about the same in all dogs and that the biggest difference in how they use it has more to do with genetics...some dogs prefer to wind while other want to follow every track while others use a combination of both...

line breeding or family breeding will produce consistency as well as uniformity if that is what we choose to do as it should be...we just prioritize in what order we will choose...like I said before...having many culls in a litter has more to do with peoples lack of knowledge and experience as well as the level of perfection we expect from ourselves as breeders among other things...

I also believe that when a line of dogs has been produced and they all look the same and hunt about the same then it is harder to improve on that line of dogs simply because the genetic make up is similar in the bloodline...but I also believe that it can be improved but at a slower rate for that reason...like you said in an earlier post certain traits are a cluster of genes and I say those can be purified and "purified" meaning better selection from observation and testing which equals to improvement...the cream rises to the top...take 2 dogs from a tight bred litter that hunt almost equally to each other in performance and both are considered to be top dogs and then take them for a long run and see who has the heart to dig deep from within and outruns his almost identical twin brother and the same said dog is a stronger swimmer as well...so which dog do you breed???and lets say on the gyps one starts several months earlier than her sister and she was baying tight in the thick palmettoes and you hear her yelp and you see her going flying through the air and 15 seconds later she is right back in the hogs face baying her heart out...if we are breeding for gritty tight baying dogs that want a hog bad then we start looking at these finer details so that we can continue to improve on the line of dogs...so yes...linebred dogs can be improved upon we just have to look harder to find what we want in our dogs...and we should get better dogs with each generation and when we reach that point of tired blood then introduction of another line of dogs should be brought in very carefully to improve hybrid vigor and nothing else unless we are looking for an improvement of a certain trait...

the more that the dogs are scatter bred the bigger the opportunity for improvement and not as much for a well bred line of dogs...we just have to look harder...purifying simply means to better select for improvement and at the very least not lose what has already been gained...

a dog that hunts pretty hard and hunts and ranges 2-3 hundred yards and circles to the left and comes back and does the same to the right and takes a track from that radius or winds from there is a good dog in my eyes and we keep 2 pups from that dog one of the pups does exactly the same as the sire when hunting and that pup is a good young hunting dog...but his brother ranges from 3 to 4 hundred yards and hunts at a faster pace and seems to strike first...he has the knack for knowing where to find a hog...so which pup would we use for the next breeding??? I reckon if we want a close ranging dog then you pick the first one mentioned...the gene pool is almost the same but one has improved if we like the second pup better...or stayed the same if we like  the first pup...some people want one style and others the other...generation after generation one can improve on a line of dogs if we do our homework...at some point in time we reach a plateau just like anything else like the 4 minute mile for example...once it was broken it dropped on down and records are meant to be broken but we reach a point when we are splitting hairs...the top 5 miles of today are slightly faster than the milers of 30 years ago...just saying without looking at stats...but all ten milers just mentioned are way faster than the average miler athlete of today...so it is with the dogs...

a long line of good dogs that has taken many years to produce can be brought down with one outcross just because quite a few of the hunting traits are recessive and because they are paired up similarly one from each parent through selection and close family relations these traits appear to be dominant and they are...dominant recessive...but when that outcross was introduced the new dog might be carrying dominant genes for the opposite traits...traits that are paired as double dominant or possibly dominant recessive which will then be displayed because of their dominance...and because they are the opposite of the good traits then these traits we do not want...and because the well bred dogs genes are dominant recessive that means that only one can be passed from each parent...when that happens then the dominant genes will be displayed simply because they are dominant...that opens a can of worms...getting 80 to 100 percent good dogs from the well bred line of dogs just dropped to less than 50 percent and some pups might not look like either dog when grown...that is just about the way I see it...not saying I am right but this is definitely what I believe...



 

[Judge peel]

Good thing you can breath while typing lol