Reuben
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Nov 2011
Location: Freeport,TX
Posts: 1911 |
Re: Re: Tracking ability?
quote: Originally posted by Ron Moore
Attempting to answer the original question. I remember way back in the day, the old fox hunters of WV talked about a good cut dog. This was a dog that would get behind the chase, for what ever reason, and shut up and get ahead of the lead dog before it opened up again. Now, in my opinion, these types of dogs possess more intelegants, than tracking ability.
When choosing a pup with these desired traits, I would look for the parents and grand parents to possess the same traits. In other words, if I was looking for a winning race horse, a colt out of a horse like Secretariat would be a good starting place, lol. As we all know, there's no guarantees but there's such a thing as upping the odds.
there's such a thing as upping the odds.
Ron... i agree...I too believe the reasons we have so much inconsistencies is due to us not looking at the parents and grandparents critically enough and making sure they possess the same traits that we are hoping to get with the puppies produced...
If breeding for certain hunting traits were visual like the red color on a Redbone hound then it would be easy...but all it takes to mess up a breeding program when breeding Red Redbones would be to breed to a black hound and now we would have black pups pop up for several generations and it would be possible to have all black pups on the first cross...so if making this cross to the black hound one time...and it creates all this change for generations...we can see the the drastic change just by making one cross...good and bad but I believe the potential for more negatives than positives can result...
Knowing this potential we should strive for breeding the well rounded hunting dog by staying away from the negatives...
I read an article years back and the writer talked about traits...he said if we had a brown bag and it had 6 different colored marbles...50 of each color and the red, white and blue marbles represented positive trait genes...and green, pink and purple were negative traits and we shook the bag repeatedly and pulled two marbles out at a time they would match up rather evenly in a mixture of good and bad traits...but with time we removed the green, pink and purple marbles and replace them with the red white and blue...on the next shake you will have a higher percentage of the right colors pairing up (genes)...
So that is why we need to look beyond the puppy and look at parents, grandparents and great grandparents...and it’s not that easy on account there are many other variables...
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Training dogs is not so much about quantity, it's more about timing, and the right situations...After that it's up to the dog....A hunting dog is born...
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