Picking from litter based on color?

[Officially Retired]

Before I got Frosty, I wasn't very successful at it as I just didn't understand what it really took to breed any type of successful dogs.

As I well remember

I don't take it as being mean. The facts are the facts. Nothing outstanding ever came from any breeding I did before him.

And I was not trying to be mean, honestly, but I did want to state those facts to "lift up the hood" and examine the engine a little regarding the statement of "what you had been doing for all these years."

Point being, your understanding of breeding for most of your years was remedial at best. Again, not being mean, just stating the facts.

I know you're very good at conditioning, and I would unhesitatingly believe you if you said a dog was game, but on the finer points of genetic management you really don't have a whole lot of experience ... while (as someone who has successfully maintained the same family of dogs, for over 20 years, at the top of the food chain) that is my forté

I had some decent dogs here and there, but that was it. I didn't have the aptitude at that time, or really the willingness, to understand what it took. I just wanted to show dogs more than anything else so that's really what I was interested in. I wasn't interested in attempting to maintain any lineage of dogs as I simply didn't care about that.

If I recall correctly, you had neither the aptitude nor the willingness to listen, LOL, as I well remember our 10-page discussions about perpetual cross-breedings versus linebreedings

There were a couple of things that ended up changing my mind on things. The few dogs I had bred, while they weren't anything outstanding, were better than a lot of other dogs I'd gotten elsewhere. So, I knew I had the ability to possibly change my own course. So, I started talking more to people who had/were/are successfully breeding their dogs, and I picked things up from each individual. When I got Frosty, no one knew how good of a producer he would be. He'd been bred two or three times before I got him, and there wasn't really anything special about him at that point. When I finally settled down enough in my own mind to breed Frosty, I discovered a dog that produced exactly what I wanted a lot more times than not. I'd been around dogs like that such as the Little John dog of Soggy Bottom and a few other dogs. But that was something I'd never had before, but by then, I'd gotten far enough along in my own thoughts and exchanging ideas or picking the brains of others that were successful at breeding dogs that I had my feet on the right path. And since that time, I've never looked back.

I also remember that you didn't believe in "prepotency," and you didn't believe in "high-percentage litters" either, until you got Frosty. You basically used to think all dogs produce less then 10% gameness and that 90% of dogs were just curs, again until you got Frosty.

I think a person really needs to actually have a truly prepotent animal before they can understand that they really do exist. Some dogs simply produce better than others, and that is all there is to it.

This touches on what I was saying to Widerange about "rolling the dice" ... even if we agree that all breedings are rolling the dice, that still doesn't change the reality that most people are blindly rolling their dice when they breed their animals (because they're not using truly prepotent animals and they're not following time-proven, genetic-management breeding patterns) ... while knowledgeable breeders are loading their dice by using truly prepotent animals, from truly prepotent families, and are then managing those genetics by following time-proven breeding patterns, based on individual selection of those animals who exhibit the key traits which are desired to be maintained.

This is essentially "The Breeding Secret" I continually mentioned in The Hollingsworth Dogs

Dogs such as Frosty, Little John, Deacon, whatever dog a person wants to use as an example, helps us realize what can really be accomplished with the right dogs, but those dogs can only help us if we're at that stage to accept what it is we're seeing and not just piss it all away.

I agree. And their prepotent abilities can only be maintained for the long haul if they're linebred upon, and if the selection process factors-in both traits and prepotency as things progress into new dogs. Ideally, each step should involve paying attention to prepotency also. Conversely, the quickest way to piss away prepotency is to breed outside your prepotent family/genetic combination, particularly if what you're adding isn't itself prepotent.

That kind of genetic mismanagement is why MOST people in these dogs always have to "buy new dogs," which is because they "fumble the genetic ball" as they try to carry their breeding programs forward, and their tripping point always involves "crosses" and not paying attention to the percentages of what they're working with.

When I saw what Frosty produced for me as opposed to other studs and what they were producing, I knew right then that, for me, there wasn't another stud to use. There was absolutely no reason for me to leave my yard, ever again, if I did everything right.

I agree with you 100%, and I am living proof of this, as I am now beginning my 3rd decade of breeding the same family of dogs ... that still win over the best in the world FAR more often than they lose ...

That was about 10 years ago, and the dogs from Frosty and his offspring still rule this yard with an iron fist. Which I'm proud to say

Well, you're to be commended on that, and it is a good feeling.

But consider the possibility there's still more to learn, and that you can further refine what you're feeding to be even better than what it is now. I know, because I have further refined my own family, and again this has to do with selecting for the traits that we favor most.

For example, suppose in your own family that you have a standout animal (e.g., Ray, if I remember correctly). You may have (say) 25 dogs on your yard that "can win" ... but some of those dogs will "win ugly" (and take a lot of abuse to get there), while others can win impressively (taking less abuse and being more in control), while Ray sits at the top of the heap being able to quickly and effectively control and destroy his opponents. Now maybe you can get "a lot of game, winning dogs" by interbreeding various members of your family, but by selecting Ray to be the focus, and by funneling your future endeavors through him, if Ray has inherited the prepotency of his father Frosty and is a better animal, you will eventually take your "high percentage yard" to a higher level than it was with just a bunch of "Frosty dogs."

Why? Because now you have a bunch of Ray dogs, a superior specimen to Frosty, while his supporting bitches are based on the same breeding combination as Frosty (and his best breeding clicks). Basic logic holds that in order to get better results, you have to use better specimens, which would be what you're doing now. Repeat this over time, and of course there will be a progressive evolution toward more consistently high-end animals than merely breeding the average Frosty to random bitches. There has to be!

This brings us to the point of this thread topic: if you are trying to get "dogs like Ray," then it only makes sense to select those pups that look/act/move like Ray. I agree, final evaluation as an adult animal if the proof in the pudding, but (as the topic mentioned) if you're selling some of the pups, then you should be keeping the ones which look/act/move like Ray ... because there ABSOLUTELY IS a correlation and an increased likelihood of success the more a given pup looks/acts/is colored like the dog it's linebred on. As I mentioned previously, while color may not be the primary motivating force in selecting a pup to replace Ray ... if a given individual has the color of that key dog, and if it also exhibits "the look in the eye," the attitude, personality, the speed/athleticism/movement, and the other characteristics you see (or remember) about Ray, on whom that pup is linebred, then you can best believe that said pup stands the best chance in the litter of being like Ray in his abilities. For I have seen this happen dozens of times in my own dogs.

It simply makes "genetic sense," if you think about it

Jack