BREEDING AND THE STUD DOG

Well, in spite of all being said let’s face it, it is a rare breeder who doesn’t keep a stud dog or two or three or more and as with the brood bitch, we must ask ourselves, what constitutes a stud dog. A male dog is usually chosen to be a stud dog for two reasons:

– He has a great show record

– He has breeding, or at least what a breeder considers to be a great pedigree.

Either of these reasons can possibly get you into trouble since the only reason a breeder should choose a stud is, because the stud has the capability to produce dogs of superior quality. The history of the pit bull is full of famous performance dogs that never produced anything worth while. Go through some of the old magazines, look up some of the champions. How many of them have ever produced a thing that has ever won? With famous pedigrees, you can find much the same thing. Several years ago Maurice Carver bred a dog sired by a two time winner, that was double bred off the famous Corvino dog Teddy. His dam was one of the greatest brood bitches in the history of the breed, Carver’s Miss Spike. The dog I’m talking about was called Carver’s Hard Rock. After winning one in an hour and a half Hard Rock was retired, at stud, in New England. He was bred to no less than twenty bitches. Now out of twenty bitches there must have been one or two, that at the very least, that was capable of producing, and I’m sure there were, but not when bred to Hard Rock. When I moved south I took Hard Rock with me.
I was sure, with his bloodline, I could find a bitch that would justify that great breeding and throw some good dogs. A lot of good breeders came by my place to breed to Hard Rock, they just couldn’t resist that pedigree. We bred him to seven bitches and I can’t think of a dog that Hard Rock sired, that won a match. In somewhat of a contrast Bully Bob won one, but In the last issue of the Journal we discussed the importance of the brood bitch to the breeder. This issue we will attempt to give equal time to the opposite sex, the stud dog. If in breeding, the brood bitch is the singular most important ingredient to possess, then it must follow, that the stud dog is, at least, the second most important ingredient. Of course, technically a breeder doesn’t even have to own a stud dog. You have an amazing array of dogs, advertised at stud, in every magazine available. You can search the internet.

The choices are limitless. You have the entire spectrum of bloodlines to choose from. Every color, even every nose color and eye color, size, personality, you name it somebody has it advertised, standing at stud, from the ten time winner, that never won over a known dog, to the one time winner who just beat the unbeatable ace. They’re all there at your disposal, for just the meager price of a stud fee. BREEDING AND THE STUD DOG BY jack kelly had lost three times – once his handler was fouled out – but until he died he was fairly well sought after as a stud dog and produced many,many winners so it goes, down through the years, that many dogs with either no record at all or less than great show records have went on to fame and fortune as great stud dogs. Mayfield’s Nigger, a sire of at least four recorded champions and many that were not recorded, never was shown. Hammond’s Rufus another Register Of Merit sire and a grandson to Nigger was never shown. Colby’s Dime, never in his life got bit, but he produced some of the best. Teal’s Sarge a pure Colby dog and a son of Dime quit standing up in one hour, yet he is the foundation of a great strain of dogs, the Red Boy dogs. Sorrell’s Bull, Indian Bolio, Jerry’s Trim Moody, Loposay’s Buster, Wood’s Snooty and Cotton’s Bullet are all great studs, that themselves had little or no notoriety as performance dogs. We do have the multiple winning aces like Art, Zebo, Carlo, Boomerang, Cowboy, Chivo, etc., who were also great studs, but a great show record is certainly not a prerequisite for a stud dog. The only question we need to ask ourselves is “what kind of dogs can I expect off of him?”. If you can answer “match dogs” then the showvrecord and the fancy pedigree becomes of little or no consequence. Like does produce like. However when we get down to the minuscule details of such an illusive trait, such as gameness, to look for that hidden gene way down deep in the pool of genes of many dogs, go to the producers. There is an old axiom in bulldogs, “don’t breed to the world beaters, breed to the ones that produce them”. It was true a hundred years ago and it’s still true today.