!!! The Ultimate Bobcat Dog...Part 1.5 !!!

[The red baron]

[Goose]

[Dan McDonough]

Goose- Just to clarify, I don't have any plans to dive into the world of registration. Maybe, if I'm good enough, someone else will like what I've done well enough to go down that path. I'm closing in on 50 and I don't see that as a high enough priority to spend my time on it.

Red Baron- I've seen dogs with reaction times and take off speeds that would make even a good hound look like he was in the Special Olymipics. I've also seen dogs that have an awareness of their surroundings that make most good hounds look mediocre. Not all but most. The hound that closely approximates what I am going for is a very rare thing. I intend to make a dog that is repeatable and make it not so rare.

Here are the breeds (all pretty extreme by anyone's standards) outside of the known good hound breeds:

Greyhound, Staghound, Whippet- These dogs lend a great boost in speed and clean up most deficiencies of structure in most crosses. If bred down correctly, their influence on form can be isolated and the other unwanted influences can be minimized. They add alertness and presence of mind in a way that is difficult to find else ware in the canine world.

Jagdterrier- This one is likely to fall on deaf ears in most cases. There are only a handful of people that have taken Jagdterriers to the top of their potential. Most people view Jagdterriers as crazy and just a kill dog. I know different.

Border Collie- This has been gone over and over. BC crosses catch cats. The first place I read about this was in one of Obe Corey's books. It was the Locating Tree dog if I remember right. I have a friend that got injured recently and all of my books are with him right now so I can't check.

This project isn't any more complicated than the above breeds crossed with very good hounds. There are two ways to go about it. First is to make a complimentary dog that helps a good hound. I've already got that done. The second is to blend the first type (ex. stag x BC) with a good hound and start making the "all in one" type that is specifically bred for catching bobcats and fox. The Ultimate Bobcat Dog Part 2.0 will be starting soon. maybe within the next 6 months. Stay tuned.

[Dan McDonough]

Not that it's really necessary but I'd like to add again, that a stag x BC or a greyhound x BC or a whippet x BC is very easy to train to go along on your bobcat hunts. If it's the only one of that type you have, you should train it alongside a young hound of the same age, the same way you would train the hound. You'll have to give it a lot of small game in the same way you would start a bird dog. Keep the critters coming until your satisfied that the dog is well on it's way. If your lurcher is not much for cold trailing (and some are), you can just hold the dog back until your older hounds get a cat jumped. When that happens just slip your lurcher to the hunt. They can be cut in from a good long ways away (not so far the first couple of times) and they will go in, access the situation and commence the catching of the cat. They will likely do it a hell of a lot faster than your hound, most of the time. It's pretty fun, kindof like holding the string on a bird trap when you were a kid. When the bird is under the cage WHOOP! you pull the string (slip the lurcher) and the game is caught. It's not going to go like that every time when you start out, but it's going to go like that more and more as the dog gets a couple of catches under it's belt. You can't make it a second priority when the time comes, it has to be THE priority. If you have a decent lurcher, it should be fun enough that you won't have to try and remember to pay attention to the funny looking dog, so there's that.

If people don't go any farther than the first big step in this process, there should still be a lot of success to realize. It may be that this is all the farther anyone needs to go...myself included. That's not the case for me though. I've just got to see how far this can be taken. I do know that if I stopped here and just had some lurchers for the rest of my life, I would be very happy with them. The fun doesn't stop with bobcats. I keep most of the talk centered on chasing cats but there is SO MUCH more that can be done with the lurchers. I've taken them duck hunting, grouse hunting, turkey hunting, coon hunting, squirrel hunting, and even let them come in the house once in a while. They make excellent family dogs to boot.

[al baldwin]

Red Baron- I've seen dogs with reaction times and take off speeds that would make even a good hound look like he was in the Special Olymipics. I've also seen dogs that have an awareness of their surroundings that make most good hounds look mediocre. Not all but most. The hound that closely approximates what I am going for is a very rare thing. I intend to make a dog that is repeatable and make it not so rare.


Wow! Good luck. Al

[Dan McDonough]

Al- Have you never seen a whippet, greyhound or stag run? If you haven't seen a whippet run in heavy cover you've missed out on something that is truly magnificent. They are to thin skinned to be hunting them the way I have. The whippets wouldn't hold up to running in cover day after day but that's easy enough to remedy. I've got a whippet x Jagdterrier that has no problem running track and he can out perform big dog in cover any day of the week. His problem is that he's not a great tree dog. If I can put another one together that trees, and is like him in all of the other ways, I won't even need a hound. I'll have come up with a dog that is way handier, eats half the food, takes up half the space and the average guy can fit two or three of them in the front seat of their car. I doubt most people factor dog food into their finances at the end of the fur season but if they did, they would see that a dog like my Diesel (with treeing added) would be leagues beyond a standard sized hound when all of the adding and subtracting was finished for the season.

I know that the type of dog I'm proposing is not going to attract the man that is just in love with hounds and the music they make going through the countryside. All of that being said, there are a ton of people that would enjoy that type of dog. Horses for courses but, I've hunted cats for long enough to know that this whippet x Jagdterrier type is more than up to the task...I just have to get the tree in there.

I have a Jagd male named Turk that is a great tree dog. It may only be one litter away.

While my main focus is still on the hound x lurcher, I just can't cast a blind eye to what is staring me in the face when I take Diesel (whippet x jagd) out hunting. It's just really another avenue that may just take me where I wanted to go with this project. It may not all work out the way I invisioned it, but I'm going to find out how it works reguardless. Watch out because you just never know which way I'll be coming from.

Of course, neither do I...YET.

[al baldwin]

Go for it Dan & enjoy life. Being an old houndsman, I have trouble understanding how anyone would consider the ultimate bobcat dog be anything other than a cold nosed dog that strikes, jumps & trees it/s own cats, while giving enough mouth that makes the hunt enjoyable. I once owned a quarter cur & three quarter hound that sure did a good job on bobcats. However hunting her alone was not something I enjoyed, good nose on older tracks, but, dang near silent until jumped. To each his own. Good luck Al

[Dan McDonough]

It's a big world out there Al. You don't have to leave the farm I you don't want to.

[Dan McDonough]

I've decided to streamline and quite spending so much time with the speed dogs, unless it serves some purpose central to developing the Ultimate Bobcat Dog. I'll be keeping my original collie lurchers, Tommy & Vicki, for now. I'll also keep my Duce (Stag). That being said, it's nearly time for UBC 2.0 as Vicki is in heat. I like winter born dogs, I've had 4 years with her to see what she is and isn't and it's time to put her to a hound. It's time to assemble the first, final product! I'm pretty excited.

I have to say this. Something I did not expect when I started this project happened and I've talked about it some in this thread. I learned more about breeding dogs in the last four years than I have in the last 20. There is a lot of wisdom to be gotten out of the lurcher community in the UK. As soon as I prove several of the theories that I have out, I will post a separate thread, assuming I'm right. If I am, that thread will go down in history as one of the biggest leaps in the breeding of dogs. Either that or I'll find out there were already a bunch of people that already knew what I was getting all worked up about. We'll see.

[al baldwin]

Dan, good luck with your breeding program. Just have to say it has been my experience speed alone goes not always catch bobcats that are experienced at eluding dogs. Steady track speed fast enough to break a cats pace has caught more bobcat for me. Al

[Dan McDonough]

Al, I don't think you understand what I'm doing.

[Dan McDonough]

So here's where my brain is at today on this stuff. I have a this theory in my mind that the BC has to come into a cross from the female side of things. In my case, where I'm breeding a BC x Stag female (Vikci) to a Lep (Kuby) male, I'm going to fail to produce what I want because the BC blood came in through the sire to Vicki and not the dame. I'm going to make the cross anyhow and spend two years starting and hunting the two pups I'll keep. If I'm right, they won't be what I'm after, but I won't know for sure unless I put in the work.

The cross that I think will work would reqire offspring from Stag (Duce) x BC (Polly), bred to a good Leopard Hound male (you can substitute any good hound here but it has to be a good bobcat dog).

It's hard to explain the reason behind this. I've tried in earlier posts but I haven't found a great way to relate it in laymen's terms. I'll try again, if for no other reason than someday I will come up with a good way to relate what is in my mind by trying over and over.

The male contributes the only DNA for the Cerebrum and more specifically, the frontal lobe of the brain. That is the seat of intelligence, character and emotion. The female contributes the only DNA for the cerebellum and more specifically, the temporal lobe of the brain. That is where your ability to remember and recall what you remember comes from.

So if the male donates the smarts and the character and the female donates the ability to remember and learn, I'm wanting to put the treedog in from the top and the super smart dog in from the bottom. Make more sense? I hope so because until I can think of a good way to say this, no on is learning except me and all of my altruistic intentions for writing this will be for nothing.

So far, it's taken 4 years to get to this point. Hang with me for a few more as I nail down some of these theories because, if I'm right, it's gong to revolutionize dog breeding as we know it. I hope there are others that can see the possibilities here.

Please chime in if you get what I'm saying...and especially if you have anything to add to this.

[rockytrails]

Without the cerebrum there is no memory according to Leon Whitney. They still have bodily functions but are in a vegetative state. He was old days. Crude, removed parts etc.. You said it was a theory. Like what you're trying to do, but do disagree here. You know more than I do for sure.

[Dan McDonough]

rockytrails- Good point. I don't think it's as direct as Leon Whitney would suggest though. In the situation he described where the frontal lobe was taken out and the patient had no memory, the result was from taking out the part that thinks and processes. The memory was still there but not able to be accessed. It would be similar to taking away the screen of your computer and assuming that the hard drive had crashed.

This is assuming that I am correct in my thinking of course. I don't have all the answers yet, or at least proof of them anyway. That's what I'm working on with Kuby (Lep) and Vicki (BC x Stag). If I'm right about this stuff, this cross shouldn't work the way I want it to. Vicki shouldn't be able to transfer the smarts she got from her father and should only be able to transfer the memory from her stag mother, which doesn't hold a candle to the memory and learning ability of a BC. It should be like breeding a Lep male to a Stag female, where the brain is concerned. The body may be a different story but I'm not concerned with that aspect of breeding right now. I want to know about the inheritance of the brain. The body is the easy part.

It's really getting interesting to me now, more so than before even. If this theory of mine holds true, it will mean a huge leap in the ability to get what we want out of a cross. Purebreds and outcrosses alike.

I'm just waiting for some hillbilly to call me one day and say how his family has known about this for generations. It'll take the adventure out of it but will be no less exciting. Should that happen, I'll sing that family's praises all over the internet. I WANT this theory to prove true but that doesn't mean it will. I keep that in mind and don't try to get to far ahead of myself.

[rockytrails]

I'm going to go back and read your posts. Maybe you mentioned this already. Do you think pairs of chromasones are accurate or the DNA passes other ways? Seems to me the DNA of brain would be entire brain. Interesting though. I would think with only 20 to 40 pair of chromasones (don't remember the number) that entire brain would be in 1. Interests me but only to learn from. Keep posts going.