I found this post on another site while reading old posts by one of my mentors Linda Stonehocker. Very interesting article. Be sure to read the follow up post by Linda, very thought provoking as always. Linda was a treasure...
Ward

Selecting A Stud Dog
by Linda Stonehocker
This article appears in the The Bulldogger, Number 103, March 2003:

"Looking Back-submitted by Mickie Brown-BCA History Committee Chairperson

Carolyn Rogers Horne passed away last November, just short of her 100th birthday. She was an owner, breeder, exhibitor and judge of Bulldogs. She and her husband, Robert were notably remembered thru Hobbyhorne Cinnamon, dam of nine American bred champion Bulldogs. According to friends, Ch Hobbyhorne Cintorson (Chug) was her most notable champion, doing his winnings in the 1940s and 50s. Bob Horne was the first National Treasurer when BCA was re-organized in 1950. The following article was first published in the 1952 BCA Yearbook:

SELECTING A STUD DOG-By Carolyn R. Horne
There is no infalible recipe for breeding a champion Bulldog, nor even an excellent one, if the breeder expects immediate success. Progressive betterment of a breed is based in long years of serious study, practical experience and endless patience, in spite of frequent set-backs. But the disappointments are the very ingredients which make success a thrilling and treasured experience. The fascination of attempting to raise good Bulldogs lies in its difficulties.

These facts would make the outlook seem very discouraging for a novice breeder but, fortunatley, many predecessors have paved the way for his travels toward better Bulldogs. The veterans warmly welcome the intelligent novice, he is the young blood which they need to improve upon their own efforts.

Breeders who have followed their hobby for several years develop their own theories and plans, based on their study and experience. That is what makes them truly breeders. They are making their individual contributions, through their own dogs, to the improvement of the breed. Their program is established. So my thoughts are offered merely to help the novice who wants to get started. He feels handicapped by his lack of knowledge and background, and just how does he begin?

The average tyro alreay owns a bitch. It would be quite wonderul if this bitch had been wisely and carefuly purchased with mating in mind, but-let's face it!-more probably she has been a mere pet which faned a spark of Bulldog interest into a conflagration of breeding enthusiasm. That seems to be the manner in which many Bulldog breeders, are born; present writer not excepted! We fervently hope that your bitch is promising material for a desirable brood matorn. Your bitch is the basis of all your future efforts. A wise builder does not erect an expensive house upon a weak and rotten foundation, for he know that all his time, labor and money will be lost in total collapse.

Do not hesitate to seek advice from experienced and successful breeders, they are glad to lend a helping hand. If the consensus of their opinion is "don't breed her," swallow your disappointment and realize that they saved you from many bitter future disappointments. Carrry on your breeding aspirations with something which promises real pride of achievement. Naturally, your first interview will be with the breeder of your bitch. They are probably familiar with the weakness and strength of her bloodines and they can help you with your own experience. But DO question other breeders too. Their unbaised opinions will supplement the information you have acquired.

Arm yourself with all the breed knowldge you can possibly gain. Firmly resolve that those future puppies are going to be the best you can create. After all, when one goes to the trouble of sowing seeds, he plants flowers and not weeds. Study the Bulldog and NEVER stop studying him as long as you remain a breeder. Familiarize yourself with the Bulldog Standard; know the qualities that make a good Bulldog; the faults which mar him. Try to have, at least, a basic working knowledge of genetics, enough to understand the principles of reproduction and heredity, and to avoid superstitions and false ideas.

The study of pedigrees is fascinating and enlightening. Pedigrees are the written record of successful and unsuccesful breeding. Analyze your bitch's pedigree for at least four generations. This does not mean a superficial "counting of champions"-a common pit-fall for novices and even some older breeders who should know better. Get all the informatino you can about each individual ancestor-his or her faults and good points. Trace the heritage of such attributes from parent to offspring. Such information is not easy for the novice to acquire. You will need to consult older fanciers who may have been personally familiar with those ancestors or who may have pictures and information to help you. And may I suggest that The Bulldog Club of America Yearbook has a great field of opportunity of providing such data.

In appraising the worth of a pedigree watch the tag-line! This is the bottom line which records the lowly succession of dam, grand-dam, etc. It is the Acheles heel of most pedigrees. Never forget that its influence is just as strong, and perhaps stronger, than the top line of sire, grand-sire, etc., whose dazzling array of champions may blind us to the real source of our breeding disappointments. Keep your pedgiree tag-line strong!

In conjunction with the study of your bitches pedigree, be heartlessly critical of her assets and liabilities. For instance-is she very narrow in jaw? Then try to find out if this fault appears in the majority of her ancestors. If so, you will endeavor to engage a stud dog whose heritage is strong in wide jaw. At this point, you are ready to begin thinking about the future mate for your bitch.

Your studies must have fixed in your mind the ideal of the kind of Bulldog you want to breed someday. Keep this goal bright in your mind and stick to your type. Type is an ideal and to the vast majority of breeders it is the ideal sketched by the Bulldog Standard. You can choose no better. The vague use of the word type may be confusing to you. When a judge talks about a typey Bulldog, he refers to a dog which approaches the Standard. When you hear fanciers talking about Bulldog types, they are speaking of the variety in big ones, little ones, couarse ones, fine ones, etc. Our breed embraces great variations of Bulldog flesh and uniform standardation has been indifferently regarded by many breeders and judges. UNIFORMITY WILL ONLY BE ACHIEVED BY UNIVERSAL RESPECT FOR THE BULLDOG STANDARD. (my emphasis added) So your ideal should recognize the importance of a standared in true breeding advancement.

Select the stud which comes closest to your ideal and do seek the best stud you can engage. This does not necessarily mean that he is a champion, that his stud fee is the highest or that the current ring winner is the panacea for all your troubles. You can usually depend upon it that a champion is strong in good qualities, but your major interest is in knowing whether he is strong in reproducing his good qualities. One conclusion does not necessarily folllow the other. Many fine and prepotent studs have not earned their titles. (You will find this fact recorded many times in the history of our breed.) It may be that faults hinder their show careers, but some dogs may carry the genes to reproduce the best in their heritage with out perpetuating their own faults. The fainal estimate of any dog's desirabilty at stud lies in his performance and in his heritage.

Your first consideration in selecting the proper stud for your bitch is to correct her faults with strength from the stud. But don't forget that her good points must also be retained and, preferrably, strengthened. How often we hear; My bitch has a nice body but her head is weak, so I am going to mate her to that dog with the wonderful head! The breeder ignores the fact that the dog was weak in body. So he feels unjustly abused by Motehr Nature when the pups inherit the dam's head and the sire's body.

As your pedigree analysis will show you, such a breeder started off all right in his thinking, but he just didn't pursue his thoughts far enough. A careful study of both pedigrees of the dog and bitch would have given him a much clearer picture of the probable heritage of strength and weaknesss. Wise pedigree analysis can often explain the failacy of the adage that like begets like. It doesn't. If this were true, the mating of a champion bitch to a champion dog would produce puppies of championship caliber. As many breeders have found out to their sorrow, such matings have often produced a most unworthy mess of puppy flesh. Bear in mind that the eye does not tell you all the potentialities of a contemplated mating.

Take for instance that narrow jaw which your bith has. You may find that the majority of her ancestors were strong in width of jaw. You may be happily surprised and find that most of her puppies will throw-back to that family breadth of jaw-a good quality which she herself does not possess. By the same token, a quality which you consider a virtue in your brood bitch may prove to be something she does not readily reproduce. Your future sutd has the same capacity for happy and unhappy surprises. These things can only be provided by acutal breeding, but your paper-work will shed some light on the reasons for such mysteries. Try to prepare yourself by knowing some of the answers beforehand.

In seeking a stud dog, don't limit your observations to him and his ancestors. Look at his puppies. Is there general average good? Does the sire seem to be prepotent in reproducing certain excellent qualities; qualities which will be valuable to your bitch? Find out something about the bitches which produced his puppies. Is he clicking ONLY with specific bloodlines? A stud's value may be limited to certain lines and what is one man's medicine may be anther man's poison.

This raises the important consideration of establishing a niche in breeding. It is usually accomplished by mating a dog and a bitch which have a mutual ancestry of prepotent strength and quality. Technically known as line-breeding, it is a powerful implement in bringing out desirable qualities. If such mutual ancestry is a means of emphasizing weakness, it is something to be strictly avoided. In-breeding, or the mating of closely related animals (such as a mother and son) is an intensified form of line-breeding. For your initial breeding efforts, this writer advises the longer and safer road. In-Breeding brings out inherent characteristics in a hurry. Desirable and undesirable qualities are apt to be permanently stamped for many future generations. Unfortnatley, faults appear more readily than virtues. For such matings one needs a background quite rich in knowledge of the bloodlines invovled; one needs to-grade breeding material and must be utterly ruthles in weeeding out undesirable puppies. Every serious breeder will probably dabble in in-breeding some day-just to satisfy his own curiosity, if for no other reason. Its potentialities for sucess are unlimited, but be sure you know exaclty WHAT you are doing and WHY . Such a rule need not be applied solely to in-breeding. As one sound breeder once advised me, never mate a bitch to a dog unless you can write down on paper at least three solid reasons why you are doing it.

No, it isn't easy to find the right stud. And no matter how carefully you conduct your quest nor how fortunate you are in engaging a most promising stud dog, you still won't feel one hundred percent satisfied. There will always be a small worry and a risk or two involved. That is because we must always work with materials that are less than perfect. And never forget-just as it takes two to make an argument, so it requires two parents to create puppies. Don't blame the sud for all the faults you never had before; your bitch carried the matching genes for those faults or they would not have appeared in the puppies. Likewise, give your bitch credit for her part in producing execellent qualities; the matching genes were again necessary. You will realize more acutely than ever that a good brood matron is the first and by far most important step in planning a progessive breeding program.

As a final sugggestion, I would like to leave a key-word, one which has been a guiding principle in our own kennel; family quality. By this, we mean that we consider the most desirable matrons and studs to be those which were members of good litters. So we do not seek good quality only in the individual dog and his ancestry of direct line, but we seek the same high qualtiy in brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, etc! We have always said that we would rather breed from an average bitch which was a member of an excellent litter than fron an outstaiding bitch whose brothers and sisters were a bunch of clucks. There is something very reassuring in the thought that a stud dog and brood bitch are solidly encircled by family quality. We do not regard this as a theory, but just plain old fahsioned common sense.

When a litter of pupies is uniformly good, the repitition indicates that their breeding is sound and progressive. The breeder may feel confidence that its merit can be repeated in subsequent matings. But one flyer, no matter how smashing, in a litter of mutts rear the uneasy warning that this lone puppy might be a lucky accident. A dog or bitch with the latter family environment is more apt to reproduce the low average of his family than to perpetuate his own virtues. So seek family quality. It appears to us as the proper method both for improving the aveage quality of all Blldogs and for breeding a truly outstanding dog-a dog which will not let you down when you need the stuff with which he is blessed.

Giood luck, and may your efforts make our beloved Bulldog even a better dog than he is today."

Have You Checked Out....
by Linda Stonehocker
as a learning experience if the information provided regarding Hobbyhorne Cinnamon is correct? Are you one who takes what they read at the honest to God truth? I know we all want to trust everything we read, but regarding time-it seems that things always "improve" with age. That is one of the reasons why there are some who are so against frozen semen. It's kind of like those fishing stories you always hear about-the size just continues to increase. I thought I remembered a different number of champions, but it could be that I am wrong, or that the BCA site wrong, but it is aways good to check ones resources when you have them.

Another reason to check is to see how this breeding program continued. Aren't you the least bit interest in how many times Hobbyhorne Cinnamon was bred? Of the champions she produced, aren't you interested in how many of them went on to produce champions? Aren't you interested in the stud dogs that were used and if they were as successful with other bulldog bitches?

I hope I have sparked your interest and hopefully this thread will continue. Go to the BCA web sitehttp://www.thebca.org Then go to the champion and title holders search. Then check out that Hobbyhorne Cinnamon is indeed in the Hall of Fame. Then go back to Champoins whelped by Hobbyhorne Cinnamon and see what comes up. I hope your curiosity has been sparked from there-and just maybe you will find this as the background of your pedigrees and actually the foundation of those that you hold near and dear snoring in your household!