Breeding approaches. Competition vs breeder

I think posts similar to this have cropped up many times in the past. Is there a difference in approach to the two. I watched a YouTube video the other day. There was a gentle men there. He was looking at pedigrees. His approach was stacking wins. “They made the cross and bred out the losses.” The sentence made no sense to me. I approach breeding as breeding athletes. “Athletes can do anything” one of my grand mothers say that.

My question is are there fundamentally different approaches to breeders and breeding.

I lean towards family breeding. You find something you like. You stick with it. You take honest assessments and build. All loses aren’t necessarily losses. the approach of looking solely at wins ignores much information. Who conditioned the dog. what was the weight. Snooty lost two. Who chose his weight what did he show during the losses. Can a breeder correct it with a group of dogs that consistently throw traits that correct the short coming.

I think there is another approach where they stack titles. To me this approach can create phenoms but you will get a lot of nothing dogs. Because there is to logic to the approach. I liked to think of this like boxing metaphors. To me they are like

I’m going to take some Muhammad Ali, throw in some macho Camacho, some golden boy, a quarter mike Tyson and some Floyd mayweather. There were a lot of wins there but its all over the place. You wil have to go through like 50 dogs until one has those traits, plus the reality is they are so radically different you get crap 9 times out of ten.

I know guys who have bred just the way your last paragraph describes. They had pretty good successes. Did they go thru a lot of dogs? Yep. Were their percentages high? Not really. The next question would be are they trying to win matches or make dogs that could make dogs that win matches?

And to take your analogy a bit farther once you identify your Muhammad Ali's and most of the competition is knocking people out in the first round, do you go back and find some of that Mike Tyson blood for an improvement? At some point these dogs will get a little dumber and you search for the one carrying Floyd Mayweather. And then at some point the pretty puppies with a lot of splash and color sell very well so we go back and find some Camacho.

Again, regardless of dogs, it is all about selecting traits and not breeding the dogs that do not possess said traits.

We cross Eli and Bolio type dogs on our Mims dogs. (Mr. Mims-RIP-always said we were mixing chicken shit with chicken salad). We stayed consistent because in our click offensively minded head dogs are the mainstay. If I bred to an Eli dog I am not looking for the hard charging barnstormer that is in the chest but giving his face up to get there. If the dog has the traits I like I would not care if he was 'whatever-whatever.

Great conversation.

EWO

With all the babbling, I am not a breeder.

I never seen the point as my dogs of choice were just a handful of miles down the road. In comparison to other dogs they were incredibly cheap. And then after a number of years of doing right by that family of dogs I got a number of dogs for free. There were some stipulations and as long as I followed the rules I got dogs at no charge.

If you think winning with a dog that cost a lot $$$$$, try winning with a free dog. It sort of stops the earth from spinning on its axis.

EWO

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EWO

I know guys who have bred just the way your last paragraph describes. They had pretty good successes. Did they go thru a lot of dogs? Yep. Were their percentages high? Not really. The next question would be are they trying to win matches or make dogs that could make dogs that win matches?

And to take your analogy a bit farther once you identify your Muhammad Ali's and most of the competition is knocking people out in the first round, do you go back and find some of that Mike Tyson blood for an improvement? At some point these dogs will get a little dumber and you search for the one carrying Floyd Mayweather. And then at some point the pretty puppies with a lot of splash and color sell very well so we go back and find some Camacho.

Again, regardless of dogs, it is all about selecting traits and not breeding the dogs that do not possess said traits.

We cross Eli and Bolio type dogs on our Mims dogs. (Mr. Mims-RIP-always said we were mixing chicken shit with chicken salad). We stayed consistent because in our click offensively minded head dogs are the mainstay. If I bred to an Eli dog I am not looking for the hard charging barnstormer that is in the chest but giving his face up to get there. If the dog has the traits I like I would not care if he was 'whatever-whatever.

Great conversation.

EWO

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It’s sad mims died. Crews is supposedly getting out of the game. I wonder what happens to real family bred dogs. I hope someone is picking up. Duhon died.

Yes. These guys are taking 50-60 years of experience with them. That is a blow to the perpetuation of good dogs.

The dogs will continue. Maybe not the way they would have done it but they will continue. Some may even do it better in time.

EWO

I agree there are not a lot who have built families of dogs that have passed the test of time. I am not being nostalgic or seeing the past thru rose colored glasses but I don't think we will see the Mims, Beaudreaux, Tudor, Carver, the 'names' of the past ever again. They operated in a different time and the overwhelming part of their successes were winning dogs that produced winning dogs. I am not saying they did not make money, or even a living off the dogs, but back then their dogs were bought off the potential to win, vs. the potential to breed/sell puppies. Did some of them capitalize/make money off their names later in life? Absolutely, and deservedly so.

Today it is much harder to do the things they did back then. Today you do not have to put in time to capitalize on the success of others. A person can go out right now and make the initial investment of buying a pair of pure Red Boy dogs. If those two dogs have papers and are bred, they will sell regardless of who is doing the selling. Regardless if the two dogs ever did anything or if the seller ever did anything. Pure Red Boy dogs are the most popular family in the history of the dogs and anyone can sell Red Boy dogs. Mostly because they sell themselves.

Other lines the same, but none have been as sellable as a Red Boy dog.

The really well bred dogs now are easy to obtain, easy to market and easy to sell. With each set of dogs bred based on paper and puppies the disconnect between today and yesterday widens.

Are there dogs out there today that can compete with the very best ever? Absolutely. Will that dog be the basis of a family forty years from now? Odds are, no. The difference? Back then the times allowed a dogman to be a dogman with much less risks involved. Back then the majority of people who were breeding dogs were also doing dogs. Today, the risks are at the 'not even worth it' level and the number people that are selling dogs far outnumber the people who are doing dogs.

The disconnect continues to widen.

EWO

Sad Russia has more freedom.

I guess. Last summer I spent a weekend with a Russian Army officer who had been sent here as a Laison Officer between the two countries.

I was in the the Nuclear navy on a sub and he told Russian/Soviet stories that we were told in the 80's. It was funny how well the stories matched up.

He was a 'country boy'. He and his wife were as close to living off the grid as possible in a rural coastal town. They fish as a primary food source and trade fish and shrimp for meats. They grow the majority of the vegetables and fruits they eat.

My favorite part of the weekend is when he asked me if I knew the difference between an American Red Neck and a Russian Redneck?

He replied, "the accent".

EWO