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Carefull there Dave, "old blood" is a relative term.....

Evyone wants a winner, the problem with this is that many dogs that win do so by reasons other than ability to tree coon quickly and efficiently.

The truth is that most of us would be better off breeding to that really nice dog we draw at local hunts.....rather than drive 7 states away to breed to "hype".

But that isnt what sells pups either.......

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I know... I used to think I was "young" (also a relative term), but I'm starting to date myself!

And I agree it's a catch-22 if you're breeding for your own needs, but don't need 10 pups and therefore hope to sell a few, too! I've got another post on here, with some beautiful (by any standard) looking pups that are out of my heavy Clover dog, with a splash of recent Lipper, mixed in. I've got a video on there, showing that these parents are tree dogs, and LOUD. They're performance paid and half the price of most others listed. But I barely get a sniff of interest. Over 1400 hits on the post, and only a few inquiries!

I could follow Joey's advice, and have considered it, but I'm also curious what others, with perhaps better skills than me, can turn these pups into. So what do you do...

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I don,t ciaim to know much but I think people forget some of what came with old blood. I hunted with offspring of these old blood dogs.The thing I remember most were trash race and ill dogs.To each his own you can have both.

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Maybe you're referring to ill blood! Growing up, I hunted dogs out of Clint, Lipper, Beaver Lake Lightning (father of Magic) and a whole array of Finley River, and not once did I own or handle one that was ill. And, as today, there was the occasional opposum treed or deer bumped, but I wouldn't call them "trashy" by any means.

I'm by no means saying they were perfect, but if you're calling the dogs of the 90s, ill and trashy, you had a very different experience from any of mine!

I hunted my own dogs, handled dogs for others, and made it through high school as a dog trainer. And so, I thought I had some pretty good exposure.

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quote:

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Originally posted by rgregory
I don,t ciaim to know much but I think people forget some of what came with old blood. I hunted with offspring of these old blood dogs.The thing I remember most were trash race and ill dogs.To each his own you can have both.

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Seems like every week there is another post about "OLD BLOOD" Everyone that has been following hounds for 30 or 40 years remembers that great old dog that they had back in the day and in most cases that dog has gotten much better through the years since its been dead. Dogs arent born knowing what a coon smells like or that it is the game we choose to hunt, the dogs of old were no more trashy than the dogs of today, its just much easier to break them now since almost every hunter owns a shock collar. The other thing that is always brought up is accuracy and slick trees Alot of those old track pounders were accurate because they never barked up until they had stuck their nose in every coon track in the woods but at the end of the night the dogs we have today will put more coon on the tailgate.Those hounds back in the 70s and 80s couldnt start to compete with the dogs of today, a high percentage of them never made a decent tree dog until they were 3 years old and a bunch of them never would tree. Sure it was much harder to title a dog 30 years ago because the hunts drew 4 times as many dogs but the great dogs we have today would have been superstars back then. In the last couple years i have seen a handful of 6 to 8 month old puppys that would go hunting right, strike and tree their own coon like they had been doing it for years, you sure didnt see em doing that back in the good old days.

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This is just my thought. most of todays hounds are slick treeing fools and wouldnt know how to run a track. I said most.not all.and yes they were a little more trashy back then. but a good handler could stop that.
all this is caused by breeding to see how much money you can make. so you breed to everything that has 4 legs and a tail.
there are more dogs of today that arent worth a hoot, than back in the older days. you can bet on that. heck some people dont have a clue what a coon dog is.If you think you got one bring it here ,we will see..

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John - I am a business man and an engineer, and so I spend every day analyzing everything from every angle. And the engineer in me has made me pretty good at memorization and memory in general. So I'm fairly confident that this is not a figment of my imagination. Although I will admit that my old dogs had faults, and at times I think more fondly of them today, when I'm looking at a slick tree, than perhaps I did back then. But here is the basis of my argument, that is in stark contrast with your experience:

- I've owned 3 "naturals" in my life, where at 5-6 months old, they were treeing the first or second night to the woods. And all three of those dogs were from the 90s, not this decade. The closest I've come lately, is my young female who split treed with the meat the sixth time out, BUT she was also out of a female out of Cade, who was out of Lipper semen!

- You are right, that there were a lot more dogs at the hunts, back in the day, but there were also non-hunting judges on NtCh casts, too. I wonder if there could possibly be any correlation, there???

- You are right that we didn't tree as many coon back then, but we also didn't make as many trees. Perhaps if those dogs stopped sniffing every track, as you say, and started treeing on every tree, we would have treed more coon, as well. But I find more enjoyment in a high percentage tree dog. If I just wanted to listen to dogs bark their heads off, I'd stay home and listen to the neighbor's dogs.

- And how is it, that you can consistently have 4 split trees on virtually every cast, today??? Some would say that's great! But are you telling me, that we consistently turn 4 dogs loose together, and they all found a different track? Really?!? Or... do they all find the first track that they all come to, together, but jealousy and/or the beatings they've taken, tells them that they have to ignore treeing that coon, and find their own. Think about what that means... our dogs beleive they have the choice to tree what coon suits them, as opposed to finding a track and finishing it! If you want first tree, then pack a dog that can do a better job of moving the track than the other dogs, but most can't, so they get first tree by finding the first easy coon, that another dog isn't already under.

- And lastly, I've said it more than once on here and I'll say it again... if these high strung dogs of today, would stop horse-racing and start hunting, we could start treeing some coon, on the way to that one maniac out yonder!

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My buddy had a walker that came from a guy in Kentucky in his pedegree not one titled dog but him and he was a ntch this guy only kept in his own line and this dog was as close to perfect of a coon dog as I have ever seen straight, when he sat down load the gun,not fussy at all treed about 65 barks a minute and would give the tree to a mean dog just back up and sit and tree,listened to every word smart!miss him helped make a few coo dogs with him!

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Boys to me you need to stop every so often and take a look back to see where you came from. Some folks to my thinking took the wrong fork in the road and are trying to get back to the last fork that was more to their liking ,,,yup stop every so often and take a look back,,you'll see where you went wrong.

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Walkers were track dogs first with speed-drive-endurance that added the treeing component to make them the dominate dog they have become. Today the tracking is being bred out to get dogs that get on the wood quickly as competition hunting seeks, what put them on top is being eliminated now, dogs with balance, track-tree is being sidelined in favor of the tree dog...

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I think you also need to factor in people don't hunt the same way as they did 30 years ago. Most people spent more time putting the finishing touches on a dog before he went to the hunts. Usually once kill season came in the hunts dropped off until the biggies in Jan. and Feb. Grand American/Southeastern. Now there are hunts just about every night of the week, and once a pup has treed half dozen coons he gets thrown to the wolves in a night hunt.

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RRS and Dean - I think you both make very valid points!

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Dean makes an excellent point, years back dogs were not started and hunted as early as today, often dog was well over a year old before started and never taken to the hunts before 2 or so. The dog of choice was 4- 6 years of age for competition and pleasure hunting....

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quote:

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Originally posted by john Duemmer
Seems like every week there is another post about "OLD BLOOD" Everyone that has been following hounds for 30 or 40 years remembers that great old dog that they had back in the day and in most cases that dog has gotten much better through the years since its been dead. Dogs arent born knowing what a coon smells like or that it is the game we choose to hunt, the dogs of old were no more trashy than the dogs of today, its just much easier to break them now since almost every hunter owns a shock collar. The other thing that is always brought up is accuracy and slick trees Alot of those old track pounders were accurate because they never barked up until they had stuck their nose in every coon track in the woods but at the end of the night the dogs we have today will put more coon on the tailgate.Those hounds back in the 70s and 80s couldnt start to compete with the dogs of today, a high percentage of them never made a decent tree dog until they were 3 years old and a bunch of them never would tree. Sure it was much harder to title a dog 30 years ago because the hunts drew 4 times as many dogs but the great dogs we have today would have been superstars back then. In the last couple years i have seen a handful of 6 to 8 month old puppys that would go hunting right, strike and tree their own coon like they had been doing it for years, you sure didnt see em doing that back in the good old days.

---

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There are so many litters , studs and pups for sale out there ... that it's mostly luck of the draw that shapes your opinion of old vs new .... none of us will ever have owned or hunted with enough dogs to make what would be called an objective , scientific judgement of it.

I've always like good dogs , always culled alot til' I found one and always will ... granted you gotta be wading in the right gene pool to find a good one ... but the genes that make a good old dog tree and good new dog tree are the same .... genes don't know what breed they are or what year it is .

I've hunted with semen dogs , high bred dogs , local dogs , old dogs , etc ... and the only thing that matters is a good momma dog that is a tough , tough coondog getting bred to the same ... everything else from breed to strain to old or new don't effect those pups one single bit.

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Tim/Dirtdevil - I don't know that I completely disagree with you, as you do have some valid points. BUT... I don't think there is any denying that the average pup of today hunts drastically different than those of a couple decades back. In the 90's I had a dog that did a lot of winning, because he was "willing" to get by himself and/or get deep. That was rather unheard of at the time, and I capitalized on it. But today's dogs seem to have a "need" to get by themselves, (in my opinion to a fault) and get deep while doing it.

When you cut those dogs loose and watch them throw mud in the air, getting deep, some call that action packed, but I call that ignorant. If they hunt this woods, can't find a coon, and then go to the next woods... well, that should be expected. But if they bolt to the next woods, and beyond for the heck of it, that's not what "hunting" is about. The same with ignoring a track or tree, because another dog is already on it.

All these split trees, for the sake of getting split, and going deep, for the sake of getting deep, didn't occur a couple decades back, and I can't imagine any one disputing that. There are major differences in today's dogs and the ones of yester year, and I for one, don't like many of the trends.

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There is nothing new under the sun , for every trait you see today it existed yesterday too ... we might not have experienced it in our small world , but it was there .

I agree that some traits have shifted in popularity, there are always trends .... but even the trait to tree was in dogs a hundred years ago ... Lester Nance bought foxhounds that fell out of races to tree ... it's not new.

But , the law of averages and fads don't apply to us as individuals ... if even only 1% of the new dogs suit you and get you excited .. that is still more dogs than you or I could ever hunt or afford to feed ..

We can all find exactly what we want and like , in the color we want and like ... when folks argue about what "most dogs" or " most hunters" do that they don't like ..... it's a moot point because it's not our business what someone else's dogs are doing .

When you can accept that and truly know what you want to get from dogs and hunting .... your cup will be half full instead of seeming half empty.

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It sure would be interesting to be able to see the old score cards from back in the 60s-70s and 80s to get an idea of how the great dogs of that time operated compared to how the dogs of today get it done. It wouldnt necessarily be an indication of the best coondogs but it would paint a pretty clear picture of how the breeders of the last few decades have changed the hounds we hunt today.
Good or bad, the comp. hunts have ifluenced how dogs are bred. a guy Going back to the old stuff says he thinks those dogs were better and maybe they were better pleasure dogs,but i dont think overall those dogs of the past could hang with what we have today.

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Dave I hope you don't mind me chiming in a bit to offer a little "insight".

Everyone is looking for "old blood", and I'm not sure that is a viable option, and I'm dang sure that it isn't the best way to get what you and the others are looking for.

The ONLY way to get to where you want to be is SELECTIVE breeding. Throw those dang papers away when making decisions about breeding. Certainly there is some anecdotal proof that certain traits follow family lines. However there are mountains of proof that each successive generation away from the foundation dogs that you are talking about is at least one or more steps AWAY from that foundation.

You simply can not reproduce the original "Lipper" by breeding as many crosses of Lipper in one set of three generation papers. Each time you make a cross you are combining the collective genetics of all 64 dogs in the pedigree.

The key to success is to search for all of the offspring of the "old blooded" dog that you choose, hunt with them and be critical of the traits that those dogs exhibit....remembering that direct decendants only have 50% of the genetics of the original, so they may or may not display the chosen traits, and even if they do exhibit them, they may not be able to reproduce those traits.

If you are selective in your breeding, and ONLY and I do mean ONLY ever breed to dogs that both display the traits you are looking for, and ONLY to those that are proven to be able to reproduce those traits....no guarantee, but it is truly the only way to get where you want to go. Truthfully, it doesn't matter if the dogs are related even...as long as they share the traits....breed for TRAITS not bloodline.

Until you have owned and bred several generations of dogs from the same line it will be very difficult...but once you are four or five generations into your own "line" you will find making breeding decisions easy and the outcome "stable"

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quote:

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Originally posted by Oak Ridge
Dave I hope you don't mind me chiming in a bit to offer a little "insight".

Everyone is looking for "old blood", and I'm not sure that is a viable option, and I'm dang sure that it isn't the best way to get what you and the others are looking for.

The ONLY way to get to where you want to be is SELECTIVE breeding. Throw those dang papers away when making decisions about breeding. Certainly there is some anecdotal proof that certain traits follow family lines. However there are mountains of proof that each successive generation away from the foundation dogs that you are talking about is at least one or more steps AWAY from that foundation.

You simply can not reproduce the original "Lipper" by breeding as many crosses of Lipper in one set of three generation papers. Each time you make a cross you are combining the collective genetics of all 64 dogs in the pedigree.

The key to success is to search for all of the offspring of the "old blooded" dog that you choose, hunt with them and be critical of the traits that those dogs exhibit....remembering that direct decendants only have 50% of the genetics of the original, so they may or may not display the chosen traits, and even if they do exhibit them, they may not be able to reproduce those traits.

If you are selective in your breeding, and ONLY and I do mean ONLY ever breed to dogs that both display the traits you are looking for, and ONLY to those that are proven to be able to reproduce those traits....no guarantee, but it is truly the only way to get where you want to go. Truthfully, it doesn't matter if the dogs are related even...as long as they share the traits....breed for TRAITS not bloodline.

Until you have owned and bred several generations of dogs from the same line it will be very difficult...but once you are four or five generations into your own "line" you will find making breeding decisions easy and the outcome "stable"

---

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I follow your logic Joe... I was wondering what was taking you so long!

Let me ask you about a slightly different perspective. What if you are not only trying to acquire certain traits but also get rid of some others? Perhaps what the other 63 dogs brought to the table. Now, this is purely hypothetical, becasue there is no way of knowing if that one dog, did or did not have the same gene as the other 63, I realize.

If that is part of the overall goal, do you keep line-breeding generation after generation, until you potentially wean those traits out, or could you say cross for a generation, and then breed back to semen of that patriarch??? My thought is that as you try to dillute certain traits, you risk dilluting others, and/or the reciprocal, which is what I think we have today... as you attempted to strengthen a trait, without the originator of that trait (say the patriarch or matriarch) you end up strengthening undesirable traits.

Here is the crux of my argument or concern... if you no longer have the undilluted source fo certain traits, selective breeding can attempt to maintain or regain those traits, but as you said, they bring the traits of an infinite line of dogs, with them. Which in my mind, means a multitude of generations to strengthen or weaken what you want and don't want. Hence my original question... if I wanted to reproduce the traits of Finley River Dan (for whatever reason) whould I start my own line and attempt to get there in a decade, OR... find someone else that has kept it refined and true, and make their stud my next out-cross???

There's no secret that you have chosen the Clover line to breed to. Let's say you could look at Clover's ancestors and then look at their other off-spring and then diagnose which traits came from where. Then you make a list of the desireable and undesireable traits, and their sources. Armed with that arsenal of data and knowledge, you seek out those like yourself that have tried to keep those lines pure. Would you then keep line-breeding on Clover, or make out-crosses to the individual sources of those desireable traits? IF the answer was yes, you would have to find kennels that kept true to those old bloodlines, without a bunch of random or even strategic outcrosses, because your analysis wouldn't account for the effects of those mixed gene pools.

Hence... my inquiry as to who was keeping what bloodlines true. I'm looking for ingredients and trait data.

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Traits don't strengthen or weaken , and can't be dilluted or gotten rid of.

You can put as many dogs in a row with with traits you like and stack the odds of pups throwing back to those traits as possible , like JOe said ... get a few generations deep and things get better.

But , there are no shortcuts or tricks to get around the legwork ... Mother Nature made sure of that .

Dogs should get better than the patriachs .... or at least percentages in litters and getting the same type of dog with more good traits or adding traits in .

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Dave,

You have to understand a genetic term called "filial degeneration". Put simply, mother nature is always attempting to get to "average"...over a series of breedings you are fighting mother nature because she always wants to get to "aver.

If two ugly people marry, and they have three children. To of them are ugly, and the third one is attractive. The attractive one grows up to have children of her own. Do you think that child will be ugly or attractive?

The answer is that it will most likely be less attractive than it's parent, despite the other 50% contribution (it's other parent), and the grandchildren will also be less attractive because Mother Nature is always trying to get to "average".

So how do we overcome filial degeneration? By RAISING the average....by choosing traits that are important to you and only breeding dogs that have those traits....

I have answered your question already...but need to state it another way. The only way to "eliminate" a trait is to breed selectively against it. Never, ever breed a dog that has a fault you can't live with, and never ever breed a dog that reproduces a trait that you can't live with. The key is to START with selective breeding, without regard to bloodlines.

I also think it is important that you stop referring to "traits". (the plural form). Just as in training a dog, breeding is taken in stages or small steps. You can't correct more than one fault in a dog's actions at a time, just as you can't improve voice, hunt, treeing, accuracy, nose, and personality in the same broad stroke.

Dave as you say I have chosen a foundation ancestor. And yes, I started breeding dogs that shared that common foundation set of ancestors. I choose my breeding stock based upon several different criteria based around the traits that I have chosen to attempt to reproduce. Successive line breedings of the dogs from my kennel has allowed me the opportunity to reasonably predict that pups from my kennel will continue to display the traits that I've chosen. It does not make them Clover, it may make them "Clover like"....but I can't reproduce Clover.

Once I make an "outcross" I have to be prepared to step back several generations. I have no idea what hidden or recessive traits exist in "outside" dogs. While it is true, I am considering an outcross right now, it is a test....I am not trying to breed "OUT" any trait...I may need to bring in some genetic diversity, I may need to bring in a different vocal quality...but I'm not abandoning my current breeding program...just creating a fork...and i plan to follow that fork til it proves to be viable or a failure.

You ask how to breed "out" traits....that is the easiest question you ask. The answer is so simple you will laugh. Simply never, ever under any circumstance, breed a dog with faults that you don't want passed on. I'm assuming that you must be at least referring to accuracy. You can't simply breed accurate dogs to get accurate dogs....I believe that accuracy is a combination of other traits. Game drive vs. chase drive, nose, and intelligence are a few of the traits that lead to accuracy.

Start thinking of breeding for type....not for traits....and you will get where you want to be quicker.

Tim,

I've never inbred intentionally. I have not yet come across a dog that I though was "worthy" of doing it. I did have an accidental cross once, and the outcome was very satisfactory for those that have the pups now.

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Of course traits can be strengthened or weakened in a litter!!! That's why no pup in a given litter is exaclty like it's brother or sister. Some pups may have a cold nose, and some a colder nose. Some pups may be loud, and some super loud. The trait may be a cold nose, but the magnitude and consistency will vary pup to pup and litter to litter. That is the very reason why folks make the breeding decisions they do.

And of course, there's no cutting mother nature, but that doesn't mean you have to do it alone, or that anyone has a corner on the market of producing the best coon dogs. If history tells us that a mix of pure House and Finley river led to (on average) a certain mix of traits, there's no reason why you couldn't cross a dog from one man's kennel keeping the old House blood alive to one from another kennel that is keeping the Finley River blood alive.

To Joe's point, you can't keep breeding offspring that goes back to Clover or Lipper, or whoever, and reproduce Clover or Lipper. BUT... is there a reason why you couldn't replicate the same cross that created Clover or Lipper???

I realize that it's not a perfect science, but I'm wondering if we have convinced oursleves that a decade or more of line breeding is the only way to get the same mix of traits as that patriarch, you're line breeding on. If DNA is like ingredients, can you not get a batch of ingredients like Chirpee and cross it to a batch like Logan's stock, and increase your likelihhod of re-producing Clover? Unless you repeatedly in-breed, to Joe's point, you bring something else to the mix so you can't recreate Clover, after Clover. So why not start with what led to Clover?

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