Dog Cloning

[Black Hand]

I personally think the biggest and only downfall would be that maybe certain people would find themselves stuck instead of advancing their program and moving forward, getting better and better. Breeding from the same source of genes for quarter century, not really getting better or worse.

[Officially Retired]

I do not think it has to be one VS the other. You can use both simultaneously. I would prefer to use on a female since you can breed the balls off a male and freeze his semen if need be. But a female, much more limited.

True.

I think cloning is unnecessary, and could even be looked at as stagnating.

[Officially Retired]

I personally think the biggest and only downfall would be that maybe certain people would find themselves stuck instead of advancing their program and moving forward, getting better and better. Breeding from the same source of genes for quarter century, not really getting better or worse.

Which is the definition of stagnating

I say, you can breed for traits ... forever ... and you will always enjoy different, unique animals ... with those same basic traits, but with their own twist.

But "clone and clone" and you are going nowhere.

Boring & unimaginative, IMO>

[S_B]

Yes, stagnating is a great way to describe it.

What fun would it really be to have the same dogs over and over? It reminds me of the movie Butterfly Effect in the sense that one would be continuously trying to make better decisions with the dog each time they cloned it.

I can respect someone else's passions, but mine is what's next not what was.

S_B

[BULLDOG ANONYMOUS]

Jack if you could have your dog's over, would you do things different?

[Officially Retired]

Jack if you could have your dog's over, would you do things different?

If I could take my experience now, and go back in time, I would have done almost everything different.

[Officially Retired]

First of all, I would have bought Miss Trinx a year previous to when I did. I would have also bought Molly, the sister to Dolly. Those would have been my two foundation (¾-Lady In Red) bitches.

And finally, I would have bought the double-Lady In Red male Dr. Savage, instead of Truman, and utilized this trio to build my foundation.

If I would have got those 3 dogs from North Carolina, I could have interbred the best, most competitive "pure Hollingsworth" dogs possible.

Then, here, in CA, I would have bred to these 2 males, exclusively: Ch Hammer and Rambo for my Eli + Carver "crosses."

And finally, I also would have also bought Bolio Jr. and Mars, when I had the chance, to keep the same basic Hollingsworth blood "pure" ... but through different, exceptional, local resources.

Jack

PS: It's kinda similar to what happened, historically, ... but I think it would have been better, and more concentrated.

[Osagedogman2015]

I get the emotional attachment side but I just don't see the logic in it unless you've lost almost everything from that family of dogs and they were the best that you've ever touched. I've always felt that if a dog didn't produce something worthy of breeding to and moving forward with, it wasn't worth the effort to begin with and deserves to fade away. The torch should be passed on to the future not the past, or in this case, the ever present now(stagnation).

[Officially Retired]

I don't even get the emotional side.

When your dog is dead, your dog is dead, and not even a so-called "clone" is going to be your dog.

Your dog is gone, period.

[Officially Retired]

Further, as someone who's bred his own family, if I only had "one" dog left of my line, I would rather watch it die-off than be put in the position of spending $40,000 to make another one every 10 years or so.

The simple fact is, it's not practical (or even fulfilling).

Breeding decisions create excitement for what the next litter might hold. You get 6-8 new pups, each with its own personality, each with a different "genetic deck" that's been shuffled via the breeding decision.

I can't imagine being SO afraid of losing some dog that I would abandon breeding dogs to "keep cloning the same thing."

Maybe I should have done that with Stormbringer, but I've enjoyed plenty of other dogs since him (although none has been at his level).
In truth, what I REALLY should have done was fed him better. (He was born when I didn't know anything about nutrition, etc., and lived most of his life being fed corn-based kibble.)
He went sterile very early in life, right when I was about to breed everything on God's earth to him.

I think the very element of chance + luck + acquired skill is what creates the INTEREST in breeding dogs.
I think the very fact that you CAN lose everything is what gives dogs their VALUE.

Even if I were able to genetically re-create Stormbringer, over and over again, that it would quickly grow old and boring.
And what "value" would any particular dog have, as an individual, if you could clone duplicates of it all the time?

Jack