It is a very interesting topic and kind of difficult to come up with a real answer. The smaller the group of men that keep a certain breed, the bigger impact those will have as a whole on the population of animals. The more people, more studs available, more families, subfamilies or extended families that there are makes it much harder for an individual and his dogs to really impact the rest like in the past.

My own opinion is that Carver was the best and most influential straight across the board. This is mostly attributed to the man not needing any particular dog and didn't stumble on success. Bolio, Midnight cowboy, Stompanato, Boomerang, Snooty, Missy, Honeybunch, Rascal and more. Its hard to deny the impact of those animals and the lines they gave birth to that we see and talk about today. That's one hell of a line up and I know im leaving a lot out.

The cold part about it is, some of the guys who had those dogs probably didn't know how they were really bred but that never stopped the dogs from having awesome production careers. Basically, they produced without any real blueprint to look at.