Hardest trait to get consistently

[lawdawgharris]

A buddy and I were talking about one of his dogs. He’s young but a nice dog. His color is throw back though to something way back. The gyp throws one in each litter. I asked if he was different in any other ways and he replied that he thought he was a colder nosed dog than most but if he was going to dock him for anything, it would be that he is rougher than he likes. Rough to me is the hardest gene to get right and get consistently, especially in these hog dogs. Some hogs will take a bay, some of them will rally or bunch well, and others will run as hard and long as you let them. There are variables that can have an effect on this like the number of dogs working and the terrain. You don’t have the luxury of knowing which you’re going to find like you do when you go work cattle. With cattle you usually know what type of cattle you are going to work and what style of dog to haul to get it done, either loose windmilling dogs for the ones that will bunch and drive easy or alligators that will convince them to bunch and that they need to stay bunched. Too loose or too catchy is a fine line. I like dogs that first push a track HARD, but once they’ve run the air out of a hog, they need to have enough bite to convince them to stay put and not break again once they’ve got their wind back. If they don’t you could run that rascal a long time. If they catch out then they stand the chance of getting cut down before you can get there to help. This real ugly guy I’m friends with has an old Catahoula that is my kind of rough. He will bay all day, but if a hog wants to run he gets 3 chances. The third time he gets to him he will straight catch out. Yes he’s been cut a few times but never too serious. He is a smart rough and if it took a while to get to him caught, he would back up once he thought he had made his point but catch again once you got there or the hog thought about leaving again. He is retired due to old age. Smart rough is my preferred style but is such a fine line between too little and too much.

What do y’all think is the hardest trait to nail down?


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[Redwood Coonhounds]

I'll have to agree with just the right amount of grit being a very hard thing to breed for. Intelligence, as far as game sense is another one that doesn't always pass down as well as you'd hope. For me, my hardest obtained goal is breeding dogs with no quit. No matter how tough the parents are, for me I don't think getting whole litter of dogs who won't quit is something that is obtainable. But it could just be the lines. I'm sure there are other people who's claim to fame is breeding whole litters of 7 month olds who can eat a bear, get eaten and never quit. But they also have a lot of holes in them I don't have in my line... It's about priority and balance to me.

[lawdawgharris]

I think one thing that makes improvement of a specific characteristic so hard is that in hunting dogs, there are so many other characteristics that you can’t afford to forget about or compromise while trying to improve that one that needs to be improved. Greyhounds’s are bred for speed. They don’t have to know how to get to the track or back to their paddock, just run like they stole something. There are some that are smart, but a great many of them aren’t smart enough to run around a tree instead of through it. This is one reason they were in a bind in their nature at one time. They got to where they were so funky that they couldn’t do much with them. Concentration on one characteristic usually means loss of others.


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[Twopipe]

Lawdawg you have touched on the very important issue of not taking 2 steps forward and one step back. The dogs you have need to be prepotent for the traits you don’t want to lose and the dog you are looking at to add the trait you are looking to improve on must be prepotent for that trait.

[lawdawgharris]

One thing I have learned over the years is that you have to breed to the extremes. So if I want to add bite to my line of dogs that don’t have enough bite, I would be searching for another family, not an individual, that is as similar to my family as possible. The exception being that the dogs I find would need to have more bite than I want. It’s worked several times with different traits for me. If I breed my family to another similar family that have the desirable amount of bite, it’s likely that the puppies will have more than my family but still less than I prefer. It’s also held true to make more than one cross. It may work one way and not the other or it could work both ways and it may not work at all. The genes have to niche. If you make one cross, what are you going to breed those pups to? If you breed back to your family then odds are you will be right back where you started. If you breed to the outcross family you are likely going to have too much. Neither of these scenarios benefit you. More than one cross allows you to evaluate more and gives you breeding options. You may have to breed the outcross nearly out to get your desired “right” and then the half breeds might be your “right”.


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