That was a great post.

I used to have a lot of trouble picking the weight myself. Truman came in 3 lb light, Mac came in a 1 lb light, and Poncho came in 1.5 lb light (and 3 lb under his best weight).

People always give me shit for "losing more than I won," but that was back in 1990, 1994, and 1995, respectively.

I've learned quite a bit since then

Honestly, though, I never had a conditioning mentor during the early stages of my dogmanship. The people I got associated with early (Faron, Patrick, Hollingsworth) were all breeders, who really didn't know shit about conditioning, calling weights, etc. Consequently, I really didn't know shit about these things either ... and for a long time.

But what I did learn how to do was breed high-percentage dogs

Over time, of course, I eventually met some really good conditioners and (after I quit my job in 1999 to breed dogs exclusively) ... at which point I quickly went from 5-10 dogs to 30-65 dogs ... and was rolling-out a gazillion dogs constantly ... and part of what I did was experiment with their weights.

Another key thing that happened over the course of the years was my meeting "The Old Man" who was part of The A-Team, and even though he wasn't much of a conditioner, what that mofo knew how to do (as good or better as anyone I have ever seen) was call the right weight

This dude had been doing dogs since the mid-60s, had faced pretty much anybody who was anybody in dogs (Mayfield, Hall, Burton, Indian Sonny, Tant, Hargrove, Meaddors, Murphy, Strothers, Crenshaw, Rebel, etc.), you name them he faced them. And beat most of them. Believe this or not, most of the time he did NOT even condition the dogs he used when facing people at this level of the game

He would just chain his dogs on a 15-20' heavy chain, on the side of the hill, up near the front door of his place ... and the dogs would get excited and constantly run that huge, long chain uphill/downhill throughout the day. Then he would pay a walker (his nephew) to walk the dog in the evening for several miles. And that's it. His "keep food" was Diamond Green bag, plus liver, plus a can of Veg-All vegetables

Don't laugh, because he beat some of the best dogmen, and dogs, in the game

In fact, he used to say he would PAY someone to use a treadmill against him ... and he would PAY for their steroids too

He said no way in hell was a part-time, mill-run dog, bulked-up on steroids, going to have a snowball's chance in hell of beating HIS dog ... that was conditioning itself all day, every damned moment of his life, drawn down to a MASSIVE weight for its size.

His dogs were drawn down to "all rawhide and sinew" and were always HUGE compared to his opponents ... and (for the most part) he won over some "top conditioners" ... primarily because (1) he knew what a bulldog was and (2) he really did know how to call a "best possible weight" on his animals.

The guy wasn't a "part-time dogman" either ... showing "1 dog a year" like a lot of guys () ... No, this guy had 3 yards of dogs, paid people to do what I just described, and pretty much had a match going (sometimes) every weekend, but at least once a month, for the 5 years I rented one of his properties. And he'd been doing this for about as long as I have been alive.

I learned a lot about calling a dog's weight just by hanging out with him, and speculating alongside him about "What do you think his best weight's goin' to be?" ... on a lot of his dogs over the course of 5 years.

Wish I would have known all that I learned ... back when I started

Jack