I was reading an old issue of the AGDT when me and Thomas Crapper were having our daily interaction and came across a letter in which a subscriber expressed his belief that gameness isn't a gene but an attitude. It got me thinking of all the famous dogs that quit who went on to produce game dogs that in turn became the foundation of successful programs on this side of the Atlantic and the other. Finley's Bo, Crenshaw's Missy, Wood's Snooty, Mountain Man's Bandit, St. Benedict's Meanie (feel free to add any others that come to mind), which runs entirely counter to the arguments perpetuated by idealists/purists/hardliners that you can't squeeze blood from a stone i.e. perpetuate a line of game winning dogs by contaminating your gene pool with cur blood. I don't necessarily agree with the aforementioned fellow regarding attitude>genes, but it does strike me that your not going to undo hundreds of years of evolutionary process in a generation or two. I may be wrong, but if I'm correct, what's the fuss about breeding a dog that isn't game (the belief that a dog is dead game)? At least you know where you stand with that individual. I know plenty of successful dogmen that have owned, or currently own, dogs they deem too valuable to risking losing, for one reason or another, who went on to breed those individuals without ever having checked their oil. Ignorance may be bliss, but isn't knowledge of more import? I don't know where I was really going with this disorganized stream of consciousness but maybe it will spark some conversation.