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The line of dogs that I grew up hunting with and still hunt today have sheppard blood in them from Lloyd Bessie's breeding more than 20 years ago. J.C. and I have inhereted this line from Lloyd and J.C.'s dad Brad Padgett. We are very fortunate, but we could also screw it up putting a heavy weight on our shoulders. From this line the dogs that I kept and made into dogs all carried the same trait, they spent less time worrying about the scent the cat made and focused more on the cat itself. They were natural catch dogs. The intelligence showed while closing the distance on a cat, putting a clean jump on him and working together producing some very quick tree's at times. A pop-up is luck but 20 pop-ups a season is something other than luck. I know their are other great lines out there but this is the line I use as a yard stick when comparing other one's. Enough of my B.S. John.

There are other angles/ways to go about this. The breeding discission already covered here is top notch but there are other angles that are not even being concidered. I would consider reading Rogues and Running Dogs -or- The Complete Lurcher...both by Brian Plummer. Those war-era european boys knew how to cross dogs to get what they wanted...do or die. I'm not going to go into it all but if your serious at all about breeding better dogs they are a must read.

You'll have a new outlook on how to make the dog you want. Don't be affraid to cross a little something else in but do be affraid of not knowing what to cross. As a bonus, Rogues and Running Dogs is a very hard book to put down.

You'll have to forgive me for not laying out all of the theories in these two books but heck, the serious people are the ones who would read them anyway. The others...it don't matter.

pegleg wrote:I had one line for a few years that if you punished or scolded them they would chop mouth you til you wanted to shoot them. My you it wasn't aggressive just a complaint and the more you got after them the more vocal they got damn. Annoying

Pegleg, this is a gentic problem and a simple fix. JTG

Dan, I notice your dog in the picture. I would guess that he has the color tan under his tail if not others in his litter do. Maybe some brown on the front legs too.
Nice looking dog.

JTG

It's a brownish-bronze type of thing but your very right. How'd you know?

Dan,

Genetics and I am glad you wrote “theories” because that is exactly what most books are. When a scientist writes he will tell you if it’s a theory or a fact. If it’s a fact it’s proven using the scientific method and they will say so. I respectfully disagree with outcrosses except on very rare occasions. By breeding the best to the best it will take more than twenty generations for improvement corrections if you breed outside of the existing family.

JTG

Lots of good discussion here. Are we making some assumptions though with line breeding a total of five dogs down for 20 generations or more? I think you might be...
- Do the original 5 dogs have all the traits you desire?
- How long can you go on WITHOUT an outcross? I think there are some genetic studies that say you can’t go on forever but this probably depends on the breed. Some diversity is needed.
- With complete line breeding, you are also accepting the bad with the good. If one dog (especially if you are using a single male as mentioned earlier), has a negative trait, maybe even one that is not manifested, you will be passing that trait along with the good ones.
- There are lots of things going on with genetics that we may never see manifested in a dog, just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there and could pop up years later in potentially ALL of the offspring.
- Are we assuming that the same culling/breeding principles are the same between a seeing eye dog or other service dogs as they are with hounds? Or cattle dogs? Or hearing ear dogs? Maybe they are but I think you are making an assumption.
- In general, I think it is probably harder to make these types of decisions with a hound. So much of a hounds trailing and treeing ability happens when a person is NOT there. I think this is a major difference between hounds and most other breeds of dogs mentioned here. It can be easily seen if a bird dog will make a dog in under a year. I think most hounds, it takes 2-3 to see especially on bear.
- What if you get twenty generations into line breeding and breed out a trait in a hound they need? How do you get it back?
I think a lot of people forget when we are talking about dogs just how short their history is and just how little most people breeding dogs know about there genetics. Humans domesticated dogs fairly recently. We all think that it would take a lifetime to reproduce some of the great lines of dogs we have now. This probably isn’t the case. There are some cases where people can develop a completely new type of dog (a good example out of Russia is a Jackal crossed with a couple types of domestic dogs) for a new purpose in a relatively short period of time.
Just my opinions and thoughts guys. Good discussion.

Quote: How long can you go on WITHOUT an outcross?

im,

I certainly am no expert. But I do believe that wildlife is as close to genetic perfection as you can get. Reason being, mother nature takes care of culling process that we as humans tend to fall way short on doing what is necessary. JTG we sure do agree on an awful lot when it comes to breeding. You too Cary and I know you are paying attention And I hope to get that opportunity to practice some of it within the next couple of years.

Take care, Willie

imchestnut,

If you start at the beginning of this post you will find that my posts answered the things you mention. Service dogs are unique in that someone’s life depends on the dog being trained and bred to perfection. I am familiar with Mr. Klim Sukinov work . The dogs you mention are the product of a Russian scientific research project, The scientists have crossed Turkmen Jackals with a Siberian Husky to create what they "claim" is a superior bomb detection dog. After 30 years of selective breeding, the dogs have now started duty at a Russian airport, with promising results.
One thing I do know is that very few could have told Dan about the brown under his dogs tail. If they knew, I most likely know of them. The problem is most of us do not have 30 years and during those 30 years he mostly did inbreeding and linebreeding. Notice" product of a Russian scientific project".
JTG

JTG,

I'm not disagreeing with anything anyone has said. Most of the dogs we have today were line bred at some point to get the traits we desire. I think we have gotten away from the techniques that got us dogs we like in alot of cases and thats probably a mistake.

The dogs I referenced were Sulimov dogs. If I remember, the project started in the mid 1970's but the specific experiment involving Jackals was later. From the reports (and who knows about the accuracy) they are the "best" bomb detection dogs in the world and are probably (I don't think anyone outside of Russia really knows) that they are the product of line/inbreeding heavily for 15 years or more.

I agree with everything on here. I did read the entire post. Line breeding/inbreeding can result in an unexpected outcome with the inability to "go backwards" (aside from frozen semen) because we are increasing the likelyhood of bringing out recessive traits (both the good and the bad). That's why you have to be careful and having access to several generations is usually needed in these studies so they can essentially not repeat the mistakes of the past few generations. There is almost never a perfect hound, and if you line breed/inbreed, you better be damn willing to not breed dogs that don't have ALL the traits you want and NONE of the ones you don't. Remember, everything you pass down, good and bad, will probably be repeated for generations to come.

Ian

Quote: you better be damn willing to not breed dogs that don't have ALL the traits you want and NONE of the ones you don't. Remember, everything you pass down, good and bad, will probably be repeated for generations to come.

Ian,

I guess the only thing that I would add to that is. Traits that you want, and some that you can live with. Because I think we all know there are no perfect ones. That's why the ones that are close demand such a high price. But for the most part when it comes to hound breeding, I believe people screw it up.

But no matter what it's been a good topic. And I just can't help but wonder, how good it would be to have a pile of money and nothing but time. To see just what kind of hounds could really be produced. But after much reading on this site, I believe that there are some that wouldn't know what to do with that situation if they had it. Anyway time to catch some shuteye.

Take care, Willie

Gentlemen, this has been some good reading, thank you.
Here is what I have found with hounds and dogs from a different discipline.

DRIVE and TRAINABILITY

You can't have one without the other (you can, but you need to have both, without both you have an unbalanced dog). The drives are genetic and you get what you get when the sperm hits the egg. The important thing to remember, is you can enhance or diminish drives through training or experience. But, you cant add drives or subtract them, they are there or not at conception.

A dog that is all drive, but not trainable? How do you trash break them? How do they handle?

Where does intelegence fit into this? If the dog is high in the drives that you want, that will overcome the unpleasant or uncomfortable aspects of hunting, the dog has to run naked through the desert and the mountains, in the heat and the cold, pursuing the game of choice, how smart is that? The dog has to be smart enough to be trainable and that intelligence can help the dog catch, but without the two, drive and trainabilty, you have nothing.

Think about all of the different drives out there.
Prey drive
Tracking drive
Trailing drive
Wind or airborne scenting drive
Fight drive
Herding drive
Guardian or protection drive
Retrieval drive
Treeing drive
Etc.
These drives are the road map to your dog. Look at. Guardian or protection drive for example, we all have seen dogs that will protect the house, the yard or your pickup. Some dogs don't have that drive and will lick a stranger to death while other dogs are overboard in this drive. The dog that wants to lick strangers, you could not make into a watch dog no matter how hard you try. The dog that is over the top protective, you can't take that away. You can diminish it, fluffy can learn that he will get shocked for barking at cars that pull into the driveway, but he will still want to bark at them, you can't take that drive away.

Intelligence? I think will help a dog manage its drives. For example, my wife had a wiener dog that I think was seriously lacking intelligence. That dog would bark at everything. It would bark at me when I came home, when I entered the room, I could sit in the living room for hours with it, and when I got up to go to the bathroom, it would bark when i re entered the room. That dog was high in guardian/ protection drive, but lacked the intelligence to realize I was the same person and it had just sat on my lap for an hour.

Anyone ever take the herding drive out of a border collie? With their intelligence they are trainable. Sure, with too heavy of a handler they might quit you, but the drive is still there.

Dan V.

DRIVE and TRAINABILITY

Dan V Quote: You can't have one without the other. The drives are genetic and you get what you get when the sperm hits the egg. The important thing to remember, is you can enhance or diminish drives through training or experience. But, you cant add drives or subtract them, they are there or not at conception.

Of course you can have both as well you can add and take away most of those items you mention. Could I ask where did those traits come from to begin with?
One thing I will agree with you about is training has little to do with how any dog will perform. Try teaching a hound to point like a bird dog.
JTG

JTG,
How do you add any of those drives to an existing dog? Sure you can breed them into a line of dogs, but how do you make an existing golden retriever have the herding drive of a border collie?

Take a great locating tree dog for example, is that not genetic? Did that pup get that at conception? Or can you add that to a dog that does not naturally want to tree?

Can you make a poor cold trailer better than a genetically strong cold trailer?

Drive and trainabilty, my point is you need to have both. If you are capable of adding all of those drives to a dog that does not have them, you are a better dog trainer than I am. I believe we can enhance or diminish those drives, but not add or subtract them.

Thanks for the good discussion, Dan