Old & New

[Officially Retired]

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.

Great post TFX, and thanks for the time in constructing it.

This is simply the kind of knowledge that can't be gained from a book, but only through years of hands-on experience.

I have had people reject buying certain dogs from me, because they weren't "tight Poncho" (or tight "Silverback"), and I as their breeder were telling them, "Forget the pedigree, these dogs carry the traits of these dogs!", but they just don't want to hear it. At the end of the day, 9 out of 10 so-called dogmen will take "the tight papers" more than the breeder's knowledge and experience

Jack

[CRISIS]

yeah so im thinkin on the right track then right? cuz thats what i was asking when i asked: eventhough its only so much abbott on paper, the traits he selected and culled for in his 25 years with the line, were mostly comming from the abbott dog. eventhough those dogs are wound tight with johnny & frisco on paper.....in the flesh theyre more abbott dogs than anything...correct?

[TFX]

Crisis, Typical size has been low to mid 30's for bitches and mid 30's to mid 40's for males. However, I have seen evidence in past litters and my most recent one that there is an increase in size coming into the line. This is really not supposed to happen with an inbreeding program, but I personally believe that the line is increasing in vigor and size, reverting back to the type of some of the large Carver dogs in their ancestry.

Amen SGC. We live in the era of fast talking hustlers who masquerade as dogmen, and will never recognize the value of a clean genetic pool.

Abe, Thanks for asking, share away.

Crisis, I never focused my breedings on Abbott, although in hindsight I dipped into that well very deliberately and with good reason. Several of the most destructive dogs I saw in my early career were sired by Abbott. When I set out to base a yard of dogs on CH Bad Billy with a Reuben catalyst, the Billy dogs were almost all gone. There was Mother's Buckwheat who was 75% Billy son and a 2X winner, and there was Abbott who was 50% Billy with a double shot of Hannibal. I was very inclined to breed to Buckwheat, but my dear friend Smith steered me towards Abbott, probably because he figured he could benefit by brokering the deal before Abbott's owner Eddie and I became good friends. Everyone in our camp was running Reuben dogs with Billy as a catalyst. I wanted to run more Billy with less Reuben blood. Abbott became my chosen sire. When Costello was born, he was in a litter of 6, and was the only one who was black like Billy and Abbott. I naturally kept him, their sister Cassie, and Hosea who I later gave to Smith's partner Pyeatt. Hosea went on to win once in a little under 2:00, and then lost to Ch Chance in 1:50. By keeping Costello; who went on to make Champion by winning over Smith in 1:46, I had the one dog in the litter who was a real throwback to the Billy/Abbott traits, and Cos was fairly prepotent in stamping his progeny with the same look and the performance traits.


If you want to see how the traits jump around, look at the Joker dog who is only 5/16ths on my Spotea bitch, and then click on Spotea.

http://apbt.online-pedigrees.com/mod...&dog_id=212921

We sent Black Widow and Beaver to Italy in the 1996-1997 time frame. The guys over there are still running this stuff blended with the Nigerino blood, and they absolutely loved what we sent them.

Jack, much like you I started out as a kid in this hobby, and now find myself one of the old guys. As we have spoke about many times, if I could start fresh today with what I know, it is almost unfathomable how much better off the bloodline would be. Chris and I squandered so much time trying to breed to this, that and the other, that we damn near lost the genetic treasures that we had right before us. We have held onto it, but oh the mistakes that were made in the process. I am convinced that we got rid of some very good dogs along the way, but by golly the ones we kept were better than good.

Crisis, you are seeing what most people see on the paper, Frisco and Red Johnny, and rightly so because it is right up front in Roto. Look, I had the opportunity to have as much of that stuff down from Garner or Boyles as I wanted, but I was stopping it right and left with my homebreds. However, Roto and her sister Precious were such high caliber animals that even an idiot couldn't help but take notice. Either one could have made Champion or Grand Champion, they were extremely good dogs. The sister was pissed away after her first win and fell into the hands of a blithering idiot dog theif. Roto was held back by her owner and played with in almost a perpetual keep on every training device known to man, but never hooked up. She was over 4 when we were able to obtain her, and was shown promptly winning in :39. By then she was 5. Having suffered with more than our fair share of cold bitches because Spotea being double bred on the cold Kudo bitch, we were on a mission for females who were consistent, high powered athletes with evil intentions. So, here we were with a 1X winner who came from a good dam, a winning granddam, and a winning greatgranddam. We didn't even like her pedigree per se, but it was time to breed her because she had the traits we wanted. The rest is history. She ended up with over 8 hours of pit time on her, taking many females the distance to find out what they were made of. If they could hang with Roto; or at least keep their head the right direction, they were worth keeping for sure. Much like our CH Costello, she was a terrible chest dog, would hit the throat and stifles, and was very ringwise. They were really the same kind of dogs, which added a measure of consistency. CH Cos lived to be 12 as a kenneled dog, and Roto lived to be 13, so these dogs have good longevity. Batters will be 10 in May, and he still looks and acts like a 4 year old. He is in better health than Roto was at 10, and he still has a set of teeth like a 2 year old.

When CH Cos was about 9 he was bred back to Ariel. She had one beautiful son, who later died of parvovirus. When I think back on the direction our kennel could have taken with that one male had he been an honest dog it's heartwrenching. Then I have to stop and say "75% CH Costello, or the 31% I have now, what's the difference?" You see, there really is no difference as long as one has harnessed the traits of the dogs they valued as performers.

[blastfrompast]

Great awesome thread!!! I'm learning so much,keep it coming TFX and Jack great stuff.

[Officially Retired]

Jack, much like you I started out as a kid in this hobby, and now find myself one of the old guys. As we have spoke about many times, if I could start fresh today with what I know, it is almost unfathomable how much better off the bloodline would be. Chris and I squandered so much time trying to breed to this, that and the other, that we damn near lost the genetic treasures that we had right before us. We have held onto it, but oh the mistakes that were made in the process. I am convinced that we got rid of some very good dogs along the way, but by golly the ones we kept were better than good.

That is exactly what I was thinking to myself as I read your article

And it's not like you or I haven't produced many good dogs, and a few great ones, it's just how much deeper it could have gone.

Again, great thread.

Jack

[Abe]

Great knowledge and way to reinforce how important key selection is. Log away deep in the brain

Crisis, Typical size has been low to mid 30's for bitches and mid 30's to mid 40's for males. However, I have seen evidence in past litters and my most recent one that there is an increase in size coming into the line. This is really not supposed to happen with an inbreeding program, but I personally believe that the line is increasing in vigor and size, reverting back to the type of some of the large Carver dogs in their ancestry.

Amen SGC. We live in the era of fast talking hustlers who masquerade as dogmen, and will never recognize the value of a clean genetic pool.

Abe, Thanks for asking, share away.

Crisis, I never focused my breedings on Abbott, although in hindsight I dipped into that well very deliberately and with good reason. Several of the most destructive dogs I saw in my early career were sired by Abbott. When I set out to base a yard of dogs on CH Bad Billy with a Reuben catalyst, the Billy dogs were almost all gone. There was Mother's Buckwheat who was 75% Billy son and a 2X winner, and there was Abbott who was 50% Billy with a double shot of Hannibal. I was very inclined to breed to Buckwheat, but my dear friend Smith steered me towards Abbott, probably because he figured he could benefit by brokering the deal before Abbott's owner Eddie and I became good friends. Everyone in our camp was running Reuben dogs with Billy as a catalyst. I wanted to run more Billy with less Reuben blood. Abbott became my chosen sire. When Costello was born, he was in a litter of 6, and was the only one who was black like Billy and Abbott. I naturally kept him, their sister Cassie, and Hosea who I later gave to Smith's partner Pyeatt. Hosea went on to win once in a little under 2:00, and then lost to Ch Chance in 1:50. By keeping Costello; who went on to make Champion by winning over Smith in 1:46, I had the one dog in the litter who was a real throwback to the Billy/Abbott traits, and Cos was fairly prepotent in stamping his progeny with the same look and the performance traits.


If you want to see how the traits jump around, look at the Joker dog who is only 5/16ths on my Spotea bitch, and then click on Spotea.

http://apbt.online-pedigrees.com/mod...&dog_id=212921

We sent Black Widow and Beaver to Italy in the 1996-1997 time frame. The guys over there are still running this stuff blended with the Nigerino blood, and they absolutely loved what we sent them.

Jack, much like you I started out as a kid in this hobby, and now find myself one of the old guys. As we have spoke about many times, if I could start fresh today with what I know, it is almost unfathomable how much better off the bloodline would be. Chris and I squandered so much time trying to breed to this, that and the other, that we damn near lost the genetic treasures that we had right before us. We have held onto it, but oh the mistakes that were made in the process. I am convinced that we got rid of some very good dogs along the way, but by golly the ones we kept were better than good.

Crisis, you are seeing what most people see on the paper, Frisco and Red Johnny, and rightly so because it is right up front in Roto. Look, I had the opportunity to have as much of that stuff down from Garner or Boyles as I wanted, but I was stopping it right and left with my homebreds. However, Roto and her sister Precious were such high caliber animals that even an idiot couldn't help but take notice. Either one could have made Champion or Grand Champion, they were extremely good dogs. The sister was pissed away after her first win and fell into the hands of a blithering idiot dog theif. Roto was held back by her owner and played with in almost a perpetual keep on every training device known to man, but never hooked up. She was over 4 when we were able to obtain her, and was shown promptly winning in :39. By then she was 5. Having suffered with more than our fair share of cold bitches because Spotea being double bred on the cold Kudo bitch, we were on a mission for females who were consistent, high powered athletes with evil intentions. So, here we were with a 1X winner who came from a good dam, a winning granddam, and a winning greatgranddam. We didn't even like her pedigree per se, but it was time to breed her because she had the traits we wanted. The rest is history. She ended up with over 8 hours of pit time on her, taking many females the distance to find out what they were made of. If they could hang with Roto; or at least keep their head the right direction, they were worth keeping for sure. Much like our CH Costello, she was a terrible chest dog, would hit the throat and stifles, and was very ringwise. They were really the same kind of dogs, which added a measure of consistency. CH Cos lived to be 12 as a kenneled dog, and Roto lived to be 13, so these dogs have good longevity. Batters will be 10 in May, and he still looks and acts like a 4 year old. He is in better health than Roto was at 10, and he still has a set of teeth like a 2 year old.

When CH Cos was about 9 he was bred back to Ariel. She had one beautiful son, who later died of parvovirus. When I think back on the direction our kennel could have taken with that one male had he been an honest dog it's heartwrenching. Then I have to stop and say "75% CH Costello, or the 31% I have now, what's the difference?" You see, there really is no difference as long as one has harnessed the traits of the dogs they valued as performers.

[CRISIS]

i almost wanna print that and put it in my bulldog 101 stack of info

[FrostyPaws]

You should print it and put it in your stack. Posts like that will make you realize pretty quick what it takes to breed successful dogs. It's not all about stacking a dog X amount of times in a pedigree and hoping for the traits you like. Unfortunately, that is how a majority of people breed their dogs, and it amounts to zero sense.

That way, if someone you know gets caught up in that way of thinking, you can pull it out and say, "Look here dumbass. This is the CORRECT way to breed dogs!"

[Officially Retired]

LMAO

[Officially Retired]

yeah so im thinkin on the right track then right? cuz thats what i was asking when i asked: eventhough its only so much abbott on paper, the traits he selected and culled for in his 25 years with the line, were mostly comming from the abbott dog. eventhough those dogs are wound tight with johnny & frisco on paper.....in the flesh theyre more abbott dogs than anything...correct?

Yes.

It would be helpful to read the information on The Wright's Inbreeding Coefficient to distinguish between "theoretical percentages" and ACTUAL TRAITS. In order to understand what I am talking about, you have to read it slowly and precisely, and really study each pedigree used as an example.

Jack