Originally Posted by
EWO
ery well said.
The Yellow John dog was one of the Red Boy dogs that could bite, really bite. He had a littermate brother that is was said that his dry food had to be soaked to mush so he could eat it. "Cotton mouth/couldn't bust an egg" were the references used for JR.
During that bad time there were a number of things that happened that had a number of people shaking in their boots. I was a young kid and only heard the stories. But this is how things stick. I was lucky enough to come in under the wing of someone who did not let me make the mistakes most young guys in the dogs make. I did not have to ruin two or three or more good dogs in order to learn a particular lesson. I was lucky for that edge. Back then dog men clicked up with their local counterparts as the internet and social media didn't put each other in each other's backyards with the click of a key. The two guys that helped me most laid down some rules early on and most of them were how and who I chose to be associated with in the dogs.
There was always a 'banned list'. I could run in our circle and go out with our circle how I pleased. The above guy made that list when I was a young kid and a friend of his in NC made that list as well. I remember having a nice male in the early 90's and a weight popped up. When the owner's name popped up I was told not to pick it up, nor have mine picked up. It was sort of said, it is 'them or us'. I always chose 'us'.
They used to tell me that every time you pull out of your driveway with a dog you have to be extremely lucky to come back home that night. Every single time. Johnny Law only has to be lucky once and your life takes a major blow. So, doing multiple bad things, or doing things with people who do multiple bad things really lessens your odds of getting back home that night.
The Yellow John dog was one of the better Red Boy dogs ever. The 3/4 Red Boy dogs when Yellow John was bred to his daughters and to daughters of red Boy were nice, as they were winning and then producing. The triple bred dogs is where the wheels started to come off. The inbreeding became popular as half were selling puppies and others were trying to recreate times past and neither lead to good things, much less great things.
From those earliest tripled up breedings the 'today's Red Boy' started to pop up. Length and height remained but girth and bone faded. The over time the dogs got smaller and smaller as the inbreeding took effect. Those dogs back then were 'hoss-type'. For me, based on opinion alone, the RBJ breedings thru Tant and Waccamaw and Chavis did more Red Boy preservation than the tripled up Yellow John breedings. I don't think many give credit to the making of the Jocko dog and not many give the credit to what the Jocko family brought, maybe even less is given to Chavis and his peers who kept going back to that well when the pure Red Boy dogs became the craze.
Babbling on. Back then, anything that won four, in that area, in that time, was worth breeding. And if those dogs fend well in that same way, sometimes a 'star' is born.
EWO