That Doc x Rachel cross that produced Hank was pretty dang good but it threw a little of the wierdness back out there because of Doc. He was a Jug x Magnum Maggie pup and those had quite a bit more spook in them than the Jug x Sparklin Susie dogs (Rachel & Sadie).
Either of those lines of Leopards had loads of brains that worked really well for bobcats. For the few people that crossed them up with running hounds, it seems they've had really good luck. It's pretty much the same recipe as Turner, Walton, Kemp and the many others that have had great success with that cross.
When I found a man name Bruce over in MN that had much of the same blood as Kemp (running dogs) but also had a couple of important additions to that blood, I thought it would be a great way to possibly make some needed improvements to the Jug x Sparklin Susie line of Leopards. If I can do this correctly, I should be able to kick the cow-hocked legs and the flat feet out of the Jug x Sparklin Susie line.
I have a Leopard stud right now that is doing that on his own, but as good as he is, it's still not as good as bringing the improvements in from both sides. Besides, I like the locate and toughness of the line of running hound that I'm using. I have a feeling there will be a few out of the two litters I have coming that may make this whole ultimate bobcat dog journey seem foolish. It's really hard to beat one of the better examples of the Leopard brain on bobcats. Quite frankly, if the line of Leopards that I hunt has one fault above the others, it's that they are not as hard hunting, on the average, that I would like to see. I have to sift through a few to get one that really slams in there and finds a track on it's own when the tracks are few. Much of the time I just drop on a found track but I know this country well enough to know where the cats are hanging out even if there isn't a track on the road. Plus, I've always complained that there weren't enough of them that rigged. I think that the running dog will help that also.
I'm only going to keep a few of them so I hope I pick right and end up with at least one exceptional dog out of it all. If the majority of these make really good dogs, I'll no longer be a registered Leopard man because I think there's a good chance this cross could move me on to something better.
I've been neck deep in Leopards for closing in on twenty years and while I've made a few cross breedings with them, I've never done it with the mind to breed any of them back into the Leopards I have. This will be the first time for that.
I should mention that, while I was able to continue this line of Leopards and keep producing good dogs, I don't feel that I had the knowlege to outcross and end up where I wanted to be until about two years ago. That information about what parts of the brain are donated by which sex was the final lesson that I needed to keep from shooting in the dark, so to speak.
I'd like to throw another thing out there that has been helpful. It's a tip that I got from David Rogers, one of the co-founders of the Canadian Cur breed, who also happens to be a master pigeon racer. He told me about a method of selection that works on pigeons and puppies alike. In order to select the pup that has the fastest muscle reaction time, there is a simple method that nearly anyone can use.
To figure out which of your pups (or anyone's) has the naturally fastest muscle reaction time, you take a litter of pups into a dark room (or dimmly lit) and bring a light into their eyes, one at a time. When you do this, it's your job to compare the speed at which their pupils contract and, through a little repetition, determine which pup's pupils contract the fastest. This allows you to find out right away, which pup has a physical advantage over the others in the litter.
While I use this method of selecting pups, there are some other similar tricks that have similarly rational foundations that I use also. I wouldn't base my pick on the eye test alone, though it is one of the major factors in my picks.
All of that being said, Nick has made a few that I really wish I had in my yard. I don't have as much bobcat hunting land as Nick and he seems to have the whole family hooked on it. Pretty nice setup in my book.
Hopefully, around Christmas 2019, I'll be hunting a split pack of Lep x Running Hound and Lep x Lurcher crosses.
Over the course of this thread, it has not escaped my attention, how well the treehound x running hound crosses were already doing. In light of that, I thought it might be worth raising a few of each cross along side each other. That should make for a good comparison and also get work done on my two main projects at the same time. It should also make a few people that have been following this UBD project a little more familiar with how the dogs are performing ecause they will be able to compare them with a cross that is more familiar to them. It will be very interesting to me also. The tree hound x running hound lines seem to be the ones to beat.
The silver lining to all of this extra work will be that if my UBD doesn't whip the best things going...I'll still have the best things going.
