I heard stories growing up of an old black man named Mr. Calvin who had dogs in SC. The first stories was his approach to calling a dog a bulldog. He would roll a dog at night and bang him up pretty hard. He was put back on the chain for the night. The next morning he was brought out of the box and put on another dog. If he scratched after being beat up for another ten minutes or so he went from being a dog to being a bull dog. A little bit much for me, but it was a story that was told.

It was said he had a yard full of bulldogs, not dogs, but bulldogs. It was the 60's or so and the difficulties of being a black man in the rural south, in any endeavor, had its challenges. Bulldogs no different.

The story goes that some of the other bulldoggers in the area (white men) left him with the short stick in a lot of the dealings. The story says they would get dogs from him, paper them as their own, matching them and/or breeding them. Mr. Calvin never receiving credit for the work he put in his dogs. It was said he could neither read nor write so all his 'registration' was in his head.

The story was told that Mr. Calvin delivered a large catch weight dog to Mr. Teal at his restaurant. That dog was later matched into Cable's Fang. People that were there said the two dogs looked just about like twins. When the story got back to Mr. Calvin and how much Fang and Red Boy resembled one another his reply was 'where do you think those (Fang) dogs came from?".

The story also went on to talk about the Stidham dogs behind Fang and that a lot of those dogs were down from or either directly from the yard of Mr. Calvin. This was always an interesting story to me, not so much because of the breeding or the history, but how hard that game check was and how the number of 'match quality-winning type dogs' that did not get the opportunity as the test was more than I think should be asked. So I sort of filed it away.

Maybe ten years later after a show in the mountains of NC we were hanging out, some doctoring dogs, some taking the box down and some talking dogs. There was an older gentlemen there and for the life of me I can't remember his name. He rented the farm to a young guy and the first turntable I ever saw was out back. I thought it was the neatest thing I had ever seen. The older fellow told me it was the 'greatest thing since individually wrapped cheese'. We talked dogs, working dogs on the table and the conversation steered to the Red Boy dogs.

He told me/us about an older black man from upstate SC with family in the rural mountain area of NC and how he was the real breeder of Red Boy. He told the story almost to the letter to what I had heard some 10 years before. The only difference is he called him Mr. Krebbs. I filed it away as well because being hooked on the conditioning of these dogs I kept trying to lead him back to that turntable. He kept going back to the brutal game tests that left the old man with 10-12-15 real life dead game dogs, or at least the closest thing to it and still be breathing.

Then a few years after that I was talking with a well known dog man from the 70's/80's and he told the same story all over again. This time he put the two names together as Mr. Calvin Krebbs. Same brutal game check stories. Same delivery of a catch weight dog to Mr. Teal.

The difference in this conversation is that he followed up with 'ever wonder why the Jocko-Red Boy dog threw dogs that threw dogs that threw dogs' and are still throwing dogs to the day? He then broke down pedigrees. The bottom half of the Jocko dogs are bred the same way the Stidham dogs (Rast) are bred. Those dogs were said to be Krebbs dogs. So instead of being a 50/50 dog of Red Boy and Jocko or maybe even a 50% Red Boy dogs and a split between the Jackson/Rast/Stidham dogs he said the Jocko-Red Boy dogs were actually 3/4 Krebbs dogs with a 1/4 out of the Jackson dogs.

From there I pulled up pedigrees and pictures and asked about dogs from yesteryear. In a lot of the conversations the dogs described line up with that picture I have in my head. The more and more I looked the more and more made me think Mr. Krebbs may one of the most influential breeders in the history of the dogs but never, and will never get any of the credit.

EWO