This dog is only 15.625% Abbott
on paper, yet we have kept the traits alive through and through in a succession of dogs going back at least 31 years, by being involved ourselves with this group of dogs for almost 23 years. Abbott was an old dog when I began breeding to him in 1991. We bred to him 3 times, and had dogs by him bred 4 different ways. The physical appearance is just an easy manifestation of where the traits are coming from, yet a very important one indeed. Performance wise Jack I don't know nor will I ever know if he has the traits, as this guy will never get a tooth in him. His brother is out there in good hands, and his sister is going to be in good hands, so in time maybe we'll get some feedback on them. There is just an overall ambience in my dogs that let's me know if they are the ones that have the traits I like or not. Now, I only know that because I had some "other kind" when we took the line down a different path. Some in a overall good litter were a different kind of animal, and then produced a very different type of dog, much more like a Boyles type of dog. I moved away from those traits and back to what I know is reliable. Here is an example of a dog from a good litter that was a little short himself, threw short, which then threw deformed (Sorry, I have to go to the competition for some of these peds because I haven't uploaded the junk dogs here.)
http://apbt.online-pedigrees.com/mod...&dog_id=157033
Now, someone might say "gee he looks like those other black and white dogs", but let me tell you there was a world of difference in this guy and what you see above. He has the wrong ears, is slighter in bone, has a different head shape, and above all this dog was a real wild son of a bitch. My dogs are calm and collected, very confident and almost human in intelligence, probaby even smarter than some humans. Whosonfirst was shown and quit in :45, so he was at least pit game, but my dogs are known for a very deep gameness, so he was the wrong kind. His 2 brothers and one sister had all the right qualities.
Now, before I knew everything about this turkey and made a U-turn, I bred him like this:
http://apbt.online-pedigrees.com/mod...e&dog_id=99759
This wild ass bastard made his sire look like a lap dog, and at the time I would have bet my left ball that this guy was a dead game killer. In fact, he ended up being at the bottom end of our line, stopping in about :25 which is about as bad as our stuff gets anymore.
Then, because I thought I was going the right direction at the time I did this with his sister when she was young to one of our good dogs:
http://apbt.online-pedigrees.com/mod...&dog_id=199488
This dog was a dwarfy, deformed little bastard. He had a sister who was real screwy too, and then there was a brother that was sent up to Washington to a show dog fancier and he was better but still a poor speciman when compared to others in the family.
So, the breeder has to go down some bad roads to figure out what he is doing, and this is just one short example that involves a little segment that didn't pan out. There are lots more of these failed experiments coupled with the success stories. The honest guys will call it how it really is without getting their feelings hurt over it. I have never been one to try to work dogs into the line that I didn't believe in because they could produce the average of the line. I have always been trying to raise the average of the line, and that is done by working on the high end. But again, you don't know which individuals constitute the high end until you manage a wide enough swath of them and have some failures.
Anyhow, this example goes right back to something I have been trying to emphasize on Jack's forums for years. (Other forums never had the collective brain power to even bother trying to explain it.) Now, one might ask "who had the purest of the old CH Bad Billy dogs? (Really, you could fill in the blank CH Jeep, GrCh Boomerang, Stonewall etc.) Let's say hypothetically that someone was out there with dogs who had equal percentages of the CH Bad Billy/GrCh Hannibal blood as mine, but the dogs were short, cobby, buckskin dogs. "On paper" they might be the same, in reality they are a totally different type of animal and pulling their traits from another ancestor. I had some of these Abbott dogs we bred from a different dam that came out cobby and brindle back in the day. I could have a source on those dogs today that were still very tight pedigrees down from Abbott, but their breeder may have locked down a set of traits that came from a maternal great granddam.
Here is the most important bit I am going to say in all of this. You
have to know where the traits are coming from in order to replicate or avoid certain traits. There are
ONLY two ways you will ever know that. One, work with a breeder who has shown or evaluated their stock for at least 3 or 4 generations. This little dog has stuff from my yard running into the 5th generation, and my mentor's influence for a few generations before that. Second, do it yourself for 12, 15, or more years and figure it all out by yourself. In my case, this is 25 years of working with the same family, and almost 23 working with this exact same nucleus of dogs.
Don't go by the pedigree, go by the traits they don't lie. The pedigree is merely an indicator that the traits might be there, but in many cases other traits coming from way back are what is being manifested. It has been my experience that traits tend to jump around by 4-5 generations until you completely settle the gene pool, and even then there are throwbacks. When you have that many generations of high quality, proven brood dogs FROM THE SAME FAMILY in the mix, the quality and consistency is unparalleled. I remember Dick Stratton in one of his books stated that the old Irish families were so tight and pure that they actually lost vigor when outcrossed. He also said that the breeders avoided an outcross at all costs. After all these years, I finally know what he was talking about, and why the Old Family Irish breeders felt as they did.
So yeah, it feels good. The only bad part is that the more active fanciers aren't using dogs like this with a pure gene pool, they're mosty trying to chase after the newest Dog of the Year sensation that won't ever produce one like himself.
Originally Posted by TFX
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