Hardest thing to breed for

[TC]

Brains
knowing Where to look and When..........
Knowing When they have over run and how far to go back.......
Knowing Patterns......(where the Rabbit is Most likely to be Setting in Certain environments)
When to bark When not to.........
Who to go to And Who not to go to.........
Knowing When another dog is just babbling........(not checking the babbling dog more than a couple times)
Knowing When and Where its Safe to PEE.......(not in the house on on the boots)
When to bark and When not to.......(not in the kennel or the dog box)
Crossing the creek over the log not trough the swift water.........
how far out or away from you to hunt.....
Now A lot of these are LEARNED......
The ABILITY to LEARN.................And how Fast!!!!!!
SOOOOOOO Would you Rather breed that Dog that Took 2 years to learn the above or 2 mo???????
Brains....

[mybeagles]

TC, I can agree with your list for the most part. All the things you mentioned are learned, and I would agree, a smart dog learns them much faster. This brings me to the bigger point I wanted to bring out. If your going to find the dogs that are fast learners, you need to spend several hours a week with several young dogs so you can compare which dog learns fast compared with litter mates. On the contrary, I hear these same guys say they dont even try to start a pup till its 6 months old, and then its dropped off at their buddies house, not to be picked up till its running good. Leaving the owner (potential breeder of the dog)with no idea how much work it took to train the basics. Im certain very few spend the hours necessary to pick up on the critical characteristics necessary to be breeding for brains.

I base this on the fact that you can read over 100 posts on this board of dogs for sale that say "havent had time to work with this dog due to xxxxxxxx but Im sure it will be a good one because it has good dogs in the pedigree"

What do you say about a guy who claims to be working with a line of dogs that are "slow starters". Dont catch on till 12-18 months. By structuring the argument the way you did, that would mean these dogs lack a little brains........I wouldnt necessarily dissagree with that

[drifter22no1]

I've raised and trained different dogs for years not only hunting dogs but many breeds for obedience etc. and I start with a pup, the way I choose a pup is by spending time with them looking for several things, I believe a few of the most impotant are alot of eye contact and attention span and desire for my companionship and attention. I have found that if a pup makes alot of eye contact with you it will mature into a dog that desires to please you and pay attention to what you do and say.

I talk alot to my dogs, kinda like they are people when in the field and yard, as a result when in the field my dogs tend to learn what it is that I want and thats what they do instinctivly.

when my dogs do something right they get the royal treatment from me and when they don't they either get scolded harshly or a boot in their butts.

back to picking a pup, when I have a pick of a litter I spend alot of time with the pups and perform alot of things repetitively to see how they respond, a dog that has a good attention span will learn how to respond to recieve what it wants and the dog with the shorter attention span will always approach or attempt the situation from willy nilly angles to get what it wants. some of this i do with scent and some i do with visuals, depends. Now I am not saying this is the only way to do it, I am saying this is the way I prefer to pick and choose and train my hunting partners (which some make and some dont).

There have been plenty of things happen to me over the years that have confirmed for me that what I do works and achieves results, For Me.

I think the most important time in a dogs life to be trained is between birth and one year, like children, we get out of them what we put into them and I believe this is true even for the ones that dont make my cut, lol so to speak. you can teach your hunting dog more in your own back yard and livingroom than it will ever learn in the field, (in my opinion). And I am a firm believer that nothing is better for preparing a future hunting partner than letting the kids spend all the time possible with the pup. I am a firm believer in is seperating pups at weaning time as well, I dont kennel pups together period.

I wish you tons of luck and fun raising yourself a good hunting partner for the future and hey come hunt or run some dogs with me and my hunting partners.

as far as choosing a dog to breed to I go look at pups out of that dog run, for example, I recently bred a female to IFC Greenwells Reggie, before i decided to breed my female to him I went and watched six different young dogs out of him run all out of different females and ranging in ages from 7 months to two years. I saw consistancies in these dogs that told me that there were certain traits that were coming from reggie or atleast he was contributing to. I knew ahead of time what specifics I would not want to see bred into my dogs and I knew what contributions I was looking for.

[Duke]

I guess i'll wade in on this one. I guess I have a few traits that are difficult to breed for and getting them all in one package is very difficult. And im not talking a smattering of these traits, but all on. Brains, Hunt and Endurance. Those are the categories that I think are the toughest 3. Speed may be the easiest to breed for, speed with control is another thing.

As far as brains are concerned, well I have seen a beagle learn to hunt, run a rabbit, discern between game and offgame, learn all the tricks of a house dog including giving its paw, dancing on two feet, crawling and playing dead, work on a lead like a trained obediance dog, when lost from the owner at 4 months old make its way back to the truck a couple of miles away, come back when dogs are on off game and sit at my leg, know by the clothes I got on were going hunting, come to the sound of a gun, knows when im sneaking out with another dog to run, and dang near read my mind. Hmmmmmmm that seems pretty smart ohhhh and win a couple of trials while he is at it too.

Sorry had to do that always wanted to use that icon. Really, I do respect your opinion and that was just in fun.

[drifter22no1]

lol

[mybeagles]

These are some posts that have some substance to them. These are some of the practices that I was trying to draw out. To many of the posts leave people walking away with nothing. When you break things down, some will walk away with something they can put into use. Not just, "I breed for brains".

[Duke]

Valid point.

[MasonsBeagles]

good post and good points. i think consistency is the hardest thing to breed. color and size are hard. hunt is hard to get as it seems alot of the lines have gotten away from it for one reason or another. but its the challenge that keeps bringin us back. lol

[sanfordssj]

Trying to breed for that perfect dog is never going to happen! Everyone has to learn from past experiences and study all the information they can in order to make the best choices they can. I just look back at what I have learned over the last couple of years and laugh at some of the choices I have made concerning dogs to buy, keep, and what to breed, etc…These posts are not something i believe in 100% of the time, but you can pick up a lot of good points in a few. I'm here to have fun and enjoy my beagles. I will make more mistakes on down the road, but no matter what I will never stop enjoying my dogs and friends that I have made along the way.

I will say that the most important thing I have picked up on is:
Breed a rabbit dog to a rabbit dog. Papers and bloodlines are tools to use! Study them wisely and put an effort into research because you owe the bloodline that much! There is no guarantee to any breeding.

[RiverBottom]

Breeding for one trait is easy. Breeding for two traits is a little harder. Breeding for ten traits is much harder. The more traits you try to breed for the harder it is to get them all at the level you expect. The more traits you breed for the longer it takes, the more generations you will have to raise to get what you are after.

To make it more complicated, you can't just say a dog has "brains" or "good conformation" or "good line control". There are many varying degrees of each trait. If you raise a litter and keep the whole litter to evalute for breeding stock, chances are some of them will be better than the others in one trait, while at the same time not as good in another trait. Which ones do you choose? What trait are you willing to give up in order to keep a dog that is strong in another trait?

The hardest thing to breed for is everything, all in one dog

[Duke]

You are right there are few total packages. And yes bring all the traits together is very difficult. But some are easier to breed in than others. Such as speed.

[mybeagles]

Speed is completely relevant to control. Everyone seems to think Speed is easy to breed for, but if the dog doesnt have the ability to control the line, its not really speed. I would argue speed with the ability to use it properly is very difficult to get. Nearly everyone on these boards is looking for a fast hound, so if speed was easy to breed for is seems like there would not be so much demand.

I would argue nose is extremely important to speed and that is another reason I like to see a big nosed pup. The potential for that dog to be fast is much greater. If I understand many of you correctly, you like speed with very honest mouths. Thats seems to be quite rare according to the dogs Ive watched run.

[drifter22no1]

lol

[Nor' Easter]

Well said Mybeagles, speed does seem to be realavant to nose power and maybe Desire. Seems if you have a good nosed litter or two you may get one of those pups to have nose and speed. I'm talking LPH style speed, not other formats that run slower dogs to start with. Nose power seems to energize many other traits we like in a hound, without nose power all the other traits we look for in hounds seem to be duller.

[mybeagles]

I like how you put that "it engergized the other traits". I completely agree with that. I also am speaking from a northern michigan hare perspective on speed. Perhaps dogs in the slow to mid range speed find it easy to bump up the speed with one breeding. When you talk about increasing speed with dogs that are pushing the limit to begin with, you can end up with some completely worthless beagles for rabbits. Of course there are also hounds that are extremely fast during great running conditions, but when the real hot or real cold dry temps come, some of these dogs dont even open, while other dogs are slowly moving the game.

I have yet to hear anyone say "my dog runs a 10 speed in all conditions". Until that time, there is room to improve the speed. That would have to be descibed as anything but easy. I can only think of two breeders in the Northern Michigan Hare Association that have been consistantly successful doing that, but my goodness they have to go through a ton of dogs to get the right balance. Easy.....No.....possible......Yes........Am I willing to go throught that much work.........No....which explains why I dont field trial any more. Maybe when my 4 kids are raised and I have more time, but then again, maybe not