BULL TERRIER TIMES COMPILATION

Colour Type In Breeding

Many times colour type selection has been overlooked in breeding game dogs, especially in the USA where I went to visit big yards of dogs from 35 up to 250 dogs at a time. It surprised me that only one or two men did this and they are legends in the breeding of game dogs, these men are Floyd Boudreaux and Jerry Clemments. Over the years we have done the same and with great success, to say the least. If you have lack of space or have a small genetic pool, then you can actually tighten up your blood/family by selecting on type and colour. It is never a guarantee as game dogs come in all colours and shapes, but for instance lets say you where breeding the alligator line, and you only access to say 4 to 10 dogs, then I suggest you use this tecnique to your breeding program. If I breed for Ch. Alligator blood then I want them to look like him in every way, which means black coat, red eyes, long body and all the other qualities this dog was known for. Now I was in the yard of Gary Hammond and he showed me the purest Alligator dog he had, and to my surprise it was a buckskin and white. Although i never said anything out of respect. To me this was a big shock. as I found out that the Alligator breeders over there try to have as much Alligator or his son (Rufus) shown in a pedigree, but they did not select on colour or type.

I realised that the purity of them families dropped by 40% in my mind, as they bred on a paper %. I also realised why they could breed much tighter now than we could, because they stack and pack various amounts of different dogs. With colours from white to brindle, red to buckskin and black in to the genetic pool, the result is a great diversity of different acting and looking dogs out of the same breeding. To my mind this shows a lack of uderstanding in breeding dogs, they see it as a short cut if you are able to keep 50/100/200 dogs . In the US they call this a breeding crap shoot, which more or less confirms their way of thinking on breeding. Now, we have been breeding better dogs % wise in this part of the world , probably because of lack of space and could not afford to feed so many dogs or just had dogs that lacked quality. We have all had are mother or aunty say - "Johnny boy you look and act like your grand-father in every way". In theory you are only carrying 25% of your grand-fathers gene pool, but in real life you could be a throw back to him and be carrying 75/80% of his gene pool, and this how it works in the dogs. Too often people look at the pedigree and not the dog, and breed such and so to such and so - because it looks good on paper and yes then the outcome becomes like a crap shoot. If I breed for the Alligator type of dog, the apple must fall near the tree, he doesn't have to be a duplicate. But the one that resembles him the closest will join the breeding program. You might say his buckskin brother is much better quality than him - why dont you use him?. My answer to that, is a dog like that would be good for the box, but he definitely has a genetic build up of dogs prior to Alligator. I am trying to base my breeding on his colour type and quality, so you can see there is a difference between breeding stock and brood stock. Of course the brood stock must be of the same quality as the stud stock, this you do by weeding out the bad dogs and you will be left with a couple dogs that resemble the original dog you are breeding for.

From this foundation stock, this is where your breeding really starts. And you will find your breeding is a hell of a lot tighter, with less breeding needed and you are less dependent on the name of a particular dog. This means that a dog that has Alligator 6 times in his pedigree is much tighter and purer than a dog that has Alligator in his pedigree 12 or 15 times. Recognising type and colour is a very unrecognised tool for breeding good quality game dogs. Another example of of breeding good dogs, or should I say a VERY good example is the Nigerino dogs. I am sure that most of you know this dog, or have at least heard of him. Well take a look at his pedigree, he is 75% Eli Jr and 25% Gr Ch Art. From that Art blood, 50% is Eli too, meaning 50% of Art is Claytons Java. And in the pedigree of Nigerino she is only 12 1/2 % present, but this bitch had a phenomenal influence on Nigerino and Art was his grand daddy. Now Gr Ch Art was red and won all his matches in short order. Some say he was blessed by the Eli Jr style which is true to a certain extent I would say. But Nigerino got his ability, his style, his colour and his conformation from Art. Now Nigerino was a prepotent dog and produced lots and lots of dogs red in colour with black masks like he and Art had. All the way down from Art to Nigerino his grandson who produced his son Red Rover, who produced our bitch Rosey. They are red dogs with a blackish mask and perform in a very quick way. If we start looking at the pedigree the dominant dog by far is Eli Jr, I believe he is there 35 times. If she carries 5 times Gr Ch Nigerino/ Gr Ch Art, then yes she is still an Eli Jr dog. Well nothing could be further from the truth, she is a complete throwback to Gr Ch Nigerino and Gr Ch Art., and there you have your answer I guess. Your questions and papers are inportant of course, but nothing is more inportant than using the type and colour tool, if you are breeding for a certain dog.

JAMES BOND.

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