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Chapter III - The Way Up Having compared the middle-rangers to a huge reservoir with water in the shape of novices seeping in continously from below, one would expect an equal outflow of good breeders brimming over the top. Funnily enough this is not the case, the novice entering in ever-increasing volume, the reservoir remaining much the same and comparatively few grading up into the range of recognised good breeders. In a reservoir there is always a leakage of water through the sides and this happens in Labradors. Middle-range breeders find they are getting no higher and give up, or their jobs change and they are forced out, or they get overstocked and have to wait until their 'oldies' die before starting in again, or they lose a job and can't afford it. Whatever the reason the number of middle-rangers seems to stay about the same in spite of so few graduating, yet they always constitute the biggest mass of breeders. But graduate some do, usually because they have raised their plateau in their own kennel, so have promoted themselves from being thrilled with a VHC to getting placed somewhere higher in the cards and therefore getting noticed and eventually asked to judge. Up till now they have bred some useful stock, but now their sights are higher and they want to go on up. A distinct change has come over their outlook and with it their thinking. Most middle-range breeders follow the same path when they are intending to breed a litter. They have a useful bitch and want to improve on her, so they consider the top Champions as the ladder up which to take her. Here I must remark in passing on a very odd thing. I have often found that the newish breeder will have a sort of vague idea that to mate to a top dog somehow puts their bitch into a top category. The old-time breeders of the last century and earlier even thought this a fact of life. Indeed in my memory our old and well-respected Master of Otterhounds, Sir Maurice Bromley-Wilson, Bart., used this method in his breeding. He held and acted on the theory that if you mated a bitch to the same dog three times, the third litter would virtually be clones of the dog. He thought that each time the bitch somehow absorbed and retained physically the attributes of the dog so that you could start with a half-bred Otterhounds, mate her to the same pure-bred dog three times and her resulting last litter would be pure-bred. And he actually did this, mating a Welsh Fox x Otterhound half bred bitch three times to the same pure Otterhound stud-dog and registering the last litter from the half-bred bitch-hound as pure. It seems incredible to us nowadays but he was certain he was right. Many breeders of those days were convinced that the bitch did somehow absorb the dog's attributes into her own blood, and that thus, through the circulation into the womb, the blood became 'thicker' with the physical traits from the dog each time. I am not saying modern breeders believe this, but as I say I have found that occasionally people do think they are grading up the actual bitch by mating her to a Champion dog and also degrading her for future litters if she gets to a mongrel by mistake. I just mentioned this as a curious red herring in passing. The middle-range breeder will very seldom consider using anything except a Champion dog. There is nothing wrong with this and in theory it should grade up the litter. The fact that one parent is a Champion also makes the puppies much easier to sell and it is obvious why, because everybody except the Eternal Novice is striving and struggling to breed and own Champions themselves. As they say about Lords, everybody loves a Champion. The middle-range breeders does not yet have a strain of his own. That is a very advanced thing and is really only found amongst the best and the oldest breeders, so he sits down and thinks which of the current Champions he likes and should use. It is difficult to select a stud-dog this way and many are the methods used to help sort out the problem. Quite a lot of breeders actually count the number of Champions in a five generation pedigree. Another method recommended in a book on breeding was to write out the pedigree with the Champions in red ink and to select the pedigree which had the reddest 'tip', i.e. the most Champions in the immediate generations. Many people decide to collect the blood of one of the Champions appearing in their own bitch's pedigree, this possibly being the most usual method. That is all right so long as the selected animal to which they are line-breeding did not have ghastly hereditary fault. I well remember a New Zealand breeder writing to me in great distress saying she had decided to collect the blood of one English bitch Champion that 'You English breeders have neglected'. She blindly collected the blood of this bitch, spending a lot of money to import stock which contained her, and breeding this blood together very expertly. Indeed the only mistake she made was not to find out just why we English breeders had 'neglected' this lovely bitch. Therefore she was amazed and horrified when she bred an absolutely super dog in the fourth generation which had Entropion very badly in both eyelids. She was absolutely baffled by this and wrote to me for help, sending the pedigree which on paper was impeccable. I had to write and tell her that as the bitch herself had had bad Entropion in both eyes (her beautiful head had been marred by heavy operation scars), it was no wonder that his had cropped up in the fourth generation because, had it been a virtue which the New Zealand breeder had wanted to perpetuate, she couldn't have bred for it better or more methodicaly. It was a really top-class bit of line breeding and had worked like a charm, but alas, for a fault not a virtue, because the breeder had not looked before she leaped. So using a Champion dog that ties in with your bitch's pedigree is an excellent way of grading her up, providing you know the inherent dangers in the line which you are collecting. It is very surprising, though, to find that a lot of breeders don't even use such a clear-cut method such as this. They want a Champion sire and they see a dog from the ringside which is winning and winning. As soon as he becomes the top-dog of the day every middle-ranger breeder sends their bitch to him. It doesn't seem to matter if he is long-backed or short, thick set or rangier, big or small, he is top-dog and he gets the bitches. If he is a worthy top Champion with a lot to give his bitches whatever their faults or type then he will do some good, indeed he will do more good than just by the law of averages. But this is a very slow method of raising the kennel because things will probably go slightly wrong. The shorter-loined puppy will come a bit too tall, taking after the bitch, or the well boned puppy will be slightly long. The good-headed pup will have big heavy ears, and the one with a good tail large sloppy feet. There is such a hodge-podge of things that can go wrong when such a sire is chosen simply because he is a top-dog that in the end one has to keep the puppy that has not much wrong with it, but not much right, and one is back in the vicious cycle of mediocrity. However, using the dog of the day will probably grade your norm up slowly and every little helps until the day you want to breed on from the progeny. You then find that every dog and bitch in the country are now either by him or are his grandchildren. Then comes a scramble amongst the middle-range breeders to find a dog far enough away from him they can use, and they breed out in all directions thereby reverting into a big pool of wide-spread genes which is always a difficult problem to deal with. One of the troubles is that the middle-range breeders all think alike, that is unless they are potential good or top breeders. Having all used the same dog because he is the top and for no other reason, they all fly off into whatever blue they can find as their next step, so undoing whatever good the top-dog has done for them. Then they all seem to decide at once where to go next and all go off to the next budding top-dog. We had this happen after Ch. Sandylands Mark had been top sire of all. Everyone took their bitches to Mark and he proved a good grader-up. But by the time he had been used for ten or eleven years, being a hale and hearty old dog and very popular, there was nothing that had not got Mark several times mixed with different bloodlines to be found, and the situation was getting desperate. The Ballyduffs were having good run with the Int. Ch. Ballyduff Seaman ex Electron of Ardmargha progeny, so now everyone went to the Ballyduffs, either directly or through big winning descendants. The grade of middle-range kennels was most certainly keeping up, and the cleverer breeders were raising their plateau considerably, but what were they to do next? There were luckily other good strains to be used, such as Poolestead and Follytower, and these were used, but once again we were in a reservoir of varied genes and the huge Championship lower classes were filled with Labradors of all shapes and sizes though of a fairly decent standard. So there was nothing much to choose between them all because they were all bred virtually the same way, i.e. Ch. Mark, then an outcross, then Ballyduffs mixed with Poolestead and Follytower and although the top breeders had bred top dogs from these blood mixes and the good breeders good dogs, the middle-rangers seemed unable to to get out of their usual rut. At the moment of writing we have about five or six dogs taking it in turns to be top Labrador and all completely different in type and style. Breeders are using all these, to me almost indiscriminately, and are producing all shapes and sizes in the middle classes. So far nothing great has come up to the top, so it will be interesting to see where the middle-range breeders go next. I cannot prophesy because I have such a very clear-cut idea of exactly what I myself look for in a Labrador that I would never use the top-dog just because he was top-dog. Neither could I ever flit from flower to flower like a butterfly as many breeders do. Top dogs like any other other dogs have failings and Champions at any one time will differ greatly in type and style even though all may be typically good Labradors. And one also has to remember that a dog is not necessarily a good dog just because he becomes a Champion. I have seen many flatcatchers get their titles simply through follow-my-leader judging, because like Champion Labradors, Championship judges are not all good. I am quite certain that a medium breeder to get higher must look and look at his own stock and must also look at the various dogs in the ring. He must have a perfectly clear picture in his own mind of exactly what he wants and although he may still feel that he must use a Champion because he will not sell his puppies otherwise, he must use the dog most likely to give him what he wants rather than use a dog just because the judges say that he is the top. In other words, to grade up into the good breeder class, you have to think for yourself rather than let the judges do it for you. Once you do this and are starting to get somewhere towards what you are wanting, you can grade up more quickly, because you are breeding from stock that you have improved, so your selected dog, which you also used because he is somewhere near what you require, will be almost sure to produce one puppy you will like. And as soon as that runs about in your kennel your worst ones will be will start to worry your eye, and out they will have to go. At last you are out of the vicious cycle, and are ridding yourself of your first millstone, that of mediocre kennel companions, and have also got rid of millstone number two, because instead of listening round the ringside to the ill-informed, you are both looking and thinking for yourself, and by grading up your own stock up you are coming into touch with good and top breeders and talking to them on equal and much more carefully at their dogs. So your former ignorance, however slight it was before, is now vanishing like the early morning mist, and at last you are on the way up. |
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