Good read. Sometimes I like the history of the dogs as much as the dogs themselves. Not to play the ends against the middle but here is my take. Jack you should call up the PATRICKS, say, "hello, this is Jack and thanks for all you did in the dogs" and hang up. If they had actually bred Hammer the way he is papered Poncho may not have ability or durability or finish. He could have even checked up right off the bat. The next dog you had in mind may not have taught you or made you see what Poncho was able to do. So regardless of whether he was bred this way or that way you started with him and bettered things starting with him. So now some hundred years later, does it really matter? For me, no. Did I enjoy the reading and the conversation? Absolutely.
My thought process about this using a similar story. Young pitcher is our area that is blessed with a golden arm. Like a lot of them he has never been blessed with good coaching and worse has a father living the glory years thru his kid. He is asked to throw too much. But the father's penis lengthens with every outing. The kid's arm begins to fade as 16 year old. Just too many innings. Father and coach have major argument. Coach is an ass and does not have kids best interest at heart. Just uses him to no end. Kid has elbow issues. Coach pressures him to throw and dad wants him to throw. Kid quits baseball his senior year in high school. Does not pitch a day because the two people who are looking out for him are not. Sad story. But wait. His arm rests for an entire year. His love and passion are still there. He walks on to a D-1 school and makes their starting rotation. His future is bright.
The moral to the story is that if those two people that should have been looking out for him had not pushed him out of baseball for the wrong reasons he would have thrown his arm out and became a 'never-was' or a 'couldabeen'. But instead the shortcomings of another was a blessing in disguise. Poncho was Poncho, and Poncho had no idea who his 'pops' or his 'moms' were. So in back door way they did you a favor by making Poncho regardless of which route it took to get to Poncho. The important fact is Poncho was Poncho. Just like this kid. The key factor was he rested a worn out arm, why he rested in really amounts to nothing in the grand scheme of things.
A great article. Enjoyed the read. I recently had the opportunity to talk to a dog man in his 70's who had dogs in the fifties, a two generation dog man. The phone call lasted nearly two and a half hours. I never met or talked to 95% of the people he talked about but it was history and it was interesting. So for the history aspect, great job. EWO