While I do understand your partner's point, in that intelligence/talent are what separates the very best, I still agree with Skipper in that consistent, extreme gameness is always worth more than any other trait.

I can't begin to tell you how many "badass dogs" my dogs have stopped passed the 1:30-2:00-hour mark. People that always talk about "quick wins" are always left wanting when they step up in class and face a real bulldog ... that doesn't just "go away" after they get a little winded or because they have "been behind" for an hour. The trouble with game plugs, however, is that too many idiots don't appreciate them and even abuse them. I can think of two dogs in particular that had to deal with stupid owners.

One of them was Brawlee's Tracer, a double-grandson of Ch Tonka. This dog was used as a roll dog several dozen times, and would be taken off the chain and set down again-and-again before his scabs fell off from the last roll. He kept changing hands because no one wanted a dog with "no ability" ... until he got in one genius' hands who decided he would roll Tracer to death. This fine fellow selected his "baddest match dog" and put him on Tracer with the specific goal of killing him. Well, this dog beat the bejesus out of Tracer ... until about the :40 mark when he started to get a little windy ... and then Tracer came up to the top and stopped this talented POS in about :50. But what do you think happened after that? Instead of being an intelligent dogman, and respecting Tracer's extreme gameness, our friend and hero (Tracers retarded owner) became irate at Tracer for stopping is favorite ... and so he put another dog on Tracer to finish him because "he had no time" for game plugs. Fortunately for Tracer, there were a lot of fanciers at pitside, who themselves started to get irate at how Tracer was being treated and the guy was essentially forced to pick up. I don't know what ever happened to Tracer, but I am sure he died an unappreciated, premature death because there is almost nothing off of him.

Another dog that comes to mind is my own Vise-Grip's Igor dog. A littermate to Sassy and Razor POR, Igor was a thick, rugged powerhouse but had "no ability" either. After I sold him to some upstate NY fanciers, Igor also changed hands several times as no one seemed to have the yard space for a truly game dog. They wanted to hang onto their talented curs instead. Time-after-time, some "new owner" would tell me of the badass dogs Igor stopped ... after taking a beating ... and time-after-time I had to hear some new idiot lament that "if only Igor had ability" ... to which I would then say If only those other dogs were game. People don't realize that the ability to keep going *is* an ability. The ability to TAKE punishment (rather than collapse to it) *is* an ability. Not every ability has to do with speed, talent, mouth, etc. ... other abilities have to do with raw power, grit, durability, and determination. Well, Igor had a TRUCKLOAD of these kinds of abilities ... so much so that everything his weight ultimately quit to him ... to where he was finally was put uphill 16 lbs and got ransacked so badly by the disparity in weight that he died afterward ... but he still had that giant cur turning before he died. It was a sad waste of a truly game dog, but so it is when game plugs fall into the hands of those who cannot appreciate them.

Ahh, but I digress. I guess the moral of the story is I agree that physical "talent" is a FAR easier trait to breed for than is truly deep and consistent gameness. If I were breeding hog dogs, however, brainless gameness would make a dog a memory pretty quickly, as dogs do not have to be dead game to be a hog dog. In fact, a lot of times people mix-breed their hog dogs to take some of the gameness out of the animals in favor of some sense, so that the dogs don't just run in there and commit suicide. So, in the particular case of hog dogs, your friend may have a point.

However, in the case of pit dogs, where the sizes are equal, I absolutely think that a person will do better starting with a consistent DG foundation, and build on the abilities, than he will to start with a rough cur foundation and try to build on gameness.

Jack