Chapter 16 - Choosing A Stud Dog

The small breeder who owns a single stud dog, unless it be one of those so-called "pillars of the breed" around which a strain may be built and upon which his whole breeding program may be predicated, is unfortunate. Pride in his own dog and in the dog's potency in stud, together with a fear that possible patrons of his dog will believe that he lacks confidence in his dog's merit as a sire, prompts him to use the dog on all of his own bitches without regard to his suitability for any of them.

Of course, it is possible for the owner of a great dog to assemble a battery of bitches with an eye solely to their suitability to mate to that dog, making him the bright, particular star of the breeding program. Such a procedure is justified only by the certainty that the dog is one of those very rare, genetically purebred, and hence proponent animals of which there are in the entire world only a few in each generation of each breed. Even then, it is seldom thought desirable to inbreed from such a dog over several generations without any infusion of the germ plasma from other males. If a dog is free enough from faults in himself, in his ancestry, and in what he produces, the objection to so intensive an inbreeding program may not be valid. We only say that few breeders, even those with the greatest dogs, have the confidence to pursue it.

To say that the possession of a lone, great stud dog of the variety in which a breeder is most interested in his misfortune, is not strictly true. Such a dog may be of vast benefit to the breeder who owns him and to the breed in general. But no dog is the ideal mate for every bitch. The breeder who purposes to utilize only a single male and the male progeny he can obtain from him must make certain that the dog is worthy of such singleness of purpose.

Even then, he must subordinate the choice of his bitches to their fitness as mates for the particular dog. Against such a procedure, deliberately and consistently taken, there can be offered little objection.

The very rarity of dogs worthy of such exploitation, however, makes it certain that few breeders will go about the breeding of dogs in that way.

Human nature being what it is and the breeder's pride in his single stud dog as human as it is, there are and will continue to be a host of breeders who center their activities each around his own stud dog without an objective analysis of the dog's merits and demerits as a sire. It is very easy to blink the shortcomings of one's own dog. Such men, with confidence in the dog's fitness, are liable to consider all bitches as grist for the dog's mill and to breed him to all of their bitches without consideration of their suitability as mates for the particular dog.

Such breeders must, perforce, compete with other breeders who possess a large group of stud dogs of so varied pedigrees and type that among them a suitable mate can be found for well nigh any bitch, and both of these kinds of breeders must compete with those breeders who utilize whatever dog may be the fittest mate for a particular bitch, without invidious consideration of who owns the dog or where it is quartered.

These latter breeders are striving for better dogs by whatever means they are to be attained. That the dog they choose to use may belong to their fiercest rival or bitterest enemy does not deter them from utilizing the fittest mate for their bitch.

If their bitches are well chosen to be efficient dams of fine dogs and if their mates are intelligently chosen with a dispassionate eye to the best possible results, the programs of such breeders will seldom fail. They look upon their bitches rightly as the foundation of their kennel and mate those bitches at home or abroad, wherever the best and most suitable mates for them are to be found.

Every periodical devoted to dogs (and there are a host of them all the way from Pure-bred Dogs—The American Kennel Gazette, which is the official publication of The American Kennel Club, to little pulp-paper sheets of local circulation) contains advertisements of dogs of the various breeds at public stud, the services of which may be obtained for any bitch worthy to breed from for a consideration. The pedigrees and favorable data about such dogs can usually be obtained by mail from their owners and most such dogs may be inspected by prospective breeders at the kennel where they stand at stud.

The statements made by the owners of a dog offered at public stud are usually facts, but many owners are unable to view their dogs objectively and others deliberately tell only the favorable and withhold the unfavorable facts about their dogs in their stud cards or other advertising matter. Some owners of kennels exploit their dogs at stud with an elaborate ballyhoo of specious or meaningless claims for them.

The breeder with a bitch to be mated is justified in exercising all the critical faculty he has in choosing a mate for a bitch that is worthy of being permitted to reproduce her kind at all. The analysis of the data about all the dogs available, within the radius which he is willing to ship the bitch for the purpose of breeding her, entails some knowledge of the great dogs and bitches which have made the history and influenced the development of the breed, the faults and virtues of the important dogs and important strains. There is available at least one book upon almost every breed, not always very informative, not always unprejudiced and impartial, not always strictly true, but usually stimulating to the critical student of the breed in search of the truth about it. Such books enumerate the great outstanding strains of the breeds, usually set forth the virtues if not the faults of these strains, and name the individual dogs upon which the strains were predicated. The breeder should make himself as familiar as possible with his breed, the books and articles about it should be scanned and compared, the great dogs and great strains should be ascertained, together with wherein lies their greatness. But none of the information should be accepted uncritically. The searcher for truth in such matters must continually ask why, why. Neither prejudice nor propaganda should be permitted to come between him and the real "low-down."

Having obtained all the information at his disposal, he must set about the canvass of the stud dogs available for his bitch. Of them, he eliminates, of course, the patently unsuitable.

In the choice of a stud dog, the first consideration is the proved ability to sire first-rate stock. That ability must take precedence over what the dog himself is like and how he is bred. Indeed, if he is a consistent producer of fine stock, he will usually be found to be a representative specimen of his variety. He may, however, possess a single "out" which has precluded his attainment of high exhibition awards—such an "out" as size, color, or markings, which our knowledge of Mendelism convinces us he may not reproduce unless it be aggravated by the genetic composition of his mate.

If he is a sire of consistent excellence, his pedigree, if studied and understood, is sure to show that he is not ill-bred. The pedigree may not be spectacular. The parents and grandparents may not be the great stars of the breed's firmament; they may have been obscurely owned and seldom exhibited but are very likely, indeed, to be found upon examination fundamentally good dogs.

Going further back into the pedigree it will surely be found that the dog traces to the great ones of his breed, and very likely to a single, great producing individual through several lines of his pedigree.

It may be well to ask whether a dog recognized to be a consistently excellent sire is so in fact or only in appearance. Is he responsible for the great progeny that have sprung from his loins? Is his apparent success due to the actual superiority of the genes with which he endows his sons and daughters or is it due to the clever advertising, propaganda, and ballyhoo of a group of mediocre offspring which have been touted and maneuvered and jockeyed to championships?

Even assuming that the progeny he has sired is of great excellence, it is worth taking into account the opportunities he has had—both the number and quality of the bitches to which he nas been mated. Even a dog of but indifferent genetic excellence may produce rather spectacularly if mated to a host of superior bitches. And, conversely, a dog of no matter how excellent germ plasma , if permitted to prove himself upon only a few bitches and those few of but mediocre quality, need surprise nobody if the average merit of the progeny is but little greater than that of the bitches that mothered it.

Consistency may in some things be a doubtful virtue, but in a stud dog it is a great one. A dog which has proved his ability to sire puppies of consistently high quality, but all short of greatness, must be preferred over one which has produced one or two outstanding celebrities among a host of inferior progeny. This is true even for the breeder whose purpose it is to produce a few super excellent dogs and is willing to breed a lot of culls along with them. The chances of being the person who obtains one of those paragons from such a dog is little greater than winning the major prize in a lottery, while the dog which produces consistently well proves that his genes are desirable ones and when they unite with equally excellent genes in the ova, the zygote of the great dog is formed.

Fine dogs are not freaks and are seldom mere accidents. A study of the pedigrees of great dogs of any variety shows that a mating which produces one great progeny produces more than one much more frequently than would be expected and two or more champions in a single litter have often enough occurred. Such mating will seldom produce any offspring of a quality that is inferior, except by comparison with the stars of its produce.

Hence, it is the ability of a dog to produce a high order of general excellence in his progeny that determines his worth as a sire even more than does the few paragons of winners of championships among his get.

It is not to be denied that it is usually the dog that consistently produces good puppies that also produces the great winners. This is especially true of a dog that has been several years in the stud and has had an adequate opportunity to prove his prepotence. A young stud dog, even one which sires good progeny with consistency, may not have had time for the skyrocket of near perfection to flare from among the general run of his good progeny.

Indeed, in evaluating the worth of a dog for breeding, it is necessary to consider his age. By that statement it is not implied that a dog is, at any given period between his puberty and senescence, more likely to sire good progeny than at some other period within that range of time, or that the age of the dog should be balanced in any way with the age of the bitch with which he is to be mated. However, a dog only two or three years old who has achieved a record for excellence in the stud is to be given greater credit for that record than is another dog five or six years old with no greater a record—assuming that the two dogs have had approximately the same number of mating per year and to bitches of approximately the same breeding worth.

In such a case, it is easy to understand that the older dog not only would have produced a larger number of progeny with which to prove himself, but also that more of his progeny would have had full time in which to develop and go through an exhibition career. Here again we see that it is a dog's consistency as a producer that counts more than the absolute numbers of his outstanding progeny.

All of which brings us back to the chromosomes and their genes upon which we are forced to continue to harp. It is the genes within the gamete which determine the excellence or inferiority of the individual parent's contribution to his offspring.

If the dog is genetically purebred, that is to say, if he is pure recessive or pure dominant for any given pair of genes, then during meiosis one member of that pair of genes would go into each of the secondary spermatocytes, both of which, as pertains to that particular allelic pair, would be exactly alike. There will, therefore, be consistency in that dog's contribution to the heritage of all his progeny so far as pertains to that particular pair of genes.

The ideal stud dog would be one which was genetically purebred in this fashion for every pair of genes and which carried the desirable recessive factors as pure recessives and the desirable dominant factors as pure dominants. Such a dog would be consistent in his contribution to every zygote and any variations among his progeny would derive from their dams. Considering that there are many thousands of pairs of genes in the cell of the dog, nobody knows how many thousands, it is impossible to expect to find such an ideal stud dog.* Our breeds of livestock have not yet been long enough in existence as separate breeds nor has selection been exercised long enough or carefully enough to bring us to the realization of such an ideal. However, the longer a given breed survives and the more carefully the selection is exercised by the breeders, the closer will that ideal be approached.

It is the breeder's problem in the choice of his breeding stock to find the animals which approximate that ideal as nearly as is possible and to use them in his breeding program. It is because so many breeders of dogs—most of them by rule of thumb and empiric selection, without the realization that they were dealing with genes at all—have chosen so well that our dogs in recent years have grown more uniform and excellent within their respective breeds and are reproducing themselves with more consistent uniformity than hitherto.

For every individual pair of genes, every dog is recessive, pure dominant, incompletely dominant, or hybrid dominant. If he is recessive for any pair of genes, each gamete he produces will contain a recessive gene of that pair. If he is pure dominant, each gamete will contain a dominant gene of the pair. If he is incompletely dominant then the two genes may produce a blended effect in the phenotype. (Remember those Fi pink flowers?) If he is a hybrid dominant, half of his gametes will contain a dominant gene of that pair, the other half a recessive gene of the pair. There is no possibility that any gamete will possess a blended, neutral, or middle-of-the-road content as pertains to any pair of genes. Also, there is no possibility that there will be any blending in the genotype. The genes themselves do not blend.

It is to be remembered that the manifestation of any attribute in the phenotype may depend upon not a single gene or a pair of genes, but upon a complex of genes, which will present a mixed pattern of dominant and recessive genes. This, of course, complicates our choice. Herein the pedigree becomes of value.

If a given trait is present in a dog and has been present in all of his ancestors for five or six generations, it is reasonable to assume that the trait has acquired genetic stability. Even so, there is always the possibility that an unwanted recessive may be lurking in the woodpile that was his family tree and is present as a hybrid dominant in the dog under consideration. From such a dog, half the spermatozoa will carry that recessive trait and, if it encounters another like it in the zygote, the resultant organism will be pure recessive as to that pair of genes. Or it may be hidden by its dominant mate in the zygote, in which case there may be no evidence of it in the offspring, which will carry a hybrid dominant pair of genes.

There must be a first time in every breed and every strain when any given pair of genes appear in their pure form, and it is always possible that any dog may have received like genes of any pair, one from each of his parents, both of which were only hybrid dominant.

*By an ingenious method of reckoning, the German geneticist, Spiihler, has calculated the number of genes in man's chromosomes to be between 20,000 and 42,000. Now, just for the sake of discussion, let us assume that the dog has only 15,000 genes in his chromosomes and that each gene has one alternate allelomorph. The possible variations from this structure would be 2M00°, a number so large that it is genetically incomprehensible. Obviously, the dog is not this variable, either in the wild or domesticated state. The answer lies in the fact that the great bulk of the genes is devoted to basic structure: one head, two eyes, two ears, four legs, etc. However, if two given dogs were variable in only ten genes, the number of possible variations for those traits is just over one thousand. Genetic purity in the sense of complete homozygosity for desirable dominant or recessive traits is never found, nor is it to be expected, though it must remain theoretically possible.

It has long been recognized that certain dogs were proponent for attributes which appeared in their progeny with consistency. Few of the breeders who talk of prepotency know how and why a dog manifests it. The secret is out. Both genes of every pair of genes which produces that trait are alike. Further, they are homozygous dominants rather than homozygous recessives. So long as the genes for that trait are kept pure, that trait and the prepotency to produce it will persist from generation to generation. So are great and proponent strains built up.

Here, then, is the breeder's task—to attain and maintain the purity of the gene pairs that determine desirable attributes in the breed.

The consistency with which a dog transmits a given attribute to his offspring is a mark of the purity of his genes which determine it. This prepotency for the desirable traits of the breed is the very essence of what we must try to find in a stud dog. Having found it and mated to the dog a bitch equally proponent for the desirable traits, the results can never be in doubt.

In no dog of any breed have we found absolute perfection of genotype or phenotype, nor are we likely to find it. Meanwhile, the desirable must be balanced against the undesirable, the good against the bad. The compromise must be made and the essentials emphasized. In this compromise, this choice of what he chooses to emphasize as essential, the breeder expresses himself as a creative artist. In his dogs is the personality of the breeder reflected. Whether he choose fundamental soundness, exaggeration of breed type, or merely arbitrary, fancy points as his first consideration for emphasis in his strain is a straw which shows which way blows the wind of his character.

Each man chooses what he wants and a prepotency for that choice is what he must look for in his breeding stock.

In the case of a young dog whose progeny, if any, is not numerous enough or old enough to be an earnest of this prepotency— this purity of the gene pairs—it becomes necessary to base a decision in regard to him upon his appearance as an individual and upon his pedigree. In this, there is greater hazard than in choosing him for his proved ability to transmit consistently to his progeny certain wanted attributes. But there are dogs which are good enough as individuals and whose breeding is good enough to justify that hazard. If he is an excellent specimen and his parents were both very superior dogs and consistently good producers, the chance one takes in using him is not a long one.

It is well, however, not to trust all one's eggs to such a basket until one has made certain of its soundness. One is quite justified in taking a flier by breeding one or two bitches to such an unproved dog, but until his merits as a sire are proved in his progeny—and one or two litters from good bitches will prove or disprove them—it is wiser to wait before entrusting all one's best bitches to the fond embraces of such a dog.

Of course, a dog cannot be a great stud dog until some breeder has the courage to use his services and to prove him. If he is one's own dog and if the pride of possession does not blind one to his faults, one is justified in making a more elaborate and extensive test of his powers than if he belong to another breeder. This is true not because by using one's own dog one saves a stud service fee, which is a stupid and false economy, but because one wishes to prove the merits, if he have them, of what may be a valuable, even an invaluable part of one's breeding scheme. If one has acquired the dog by purchase for stud, one must have had definite and well formulated reasons for doing so. If one has bred the dog, one is familiar with his ancestors and a large part of his collateral kin and has retained him for a purpose. It is worth while to prove his prepotence and retain him or prove that he has it not and get rid of him.

But it is not justified to use a dog merely on a hunch and because he happens to be one's own property. More bad dogs are bred because doting owners of mediocre males want to prove that the family pet is a great stud dog than for any other one reason.

It is true that in almost every breed there have been great breeding animals that have not betrayed that fact in their appearance. Such animals are about as rare as valuable pearls found in oysters on the half shell in metropolitan restaurants. When they do crop up, they are usually not as bad individuals as they are reputed to be, but usually have a single "out" which precludes their being of exhibition quality.

That single "out" may result from a recessive gene that is covered up in hybrid dominance in the progeny. But it is all too liable to reappearance in the second or subsequent generations unless caution is used to keep it out of sight in the pheno-types. Here lies the danger of using breeding animals which, however excellent one may suspect their genotype to be, are inferior in phenotype. Their faults as individuals are liable to rise up to blast the breeder.

There are, doubtless, many potentially great stud dogs which, for want of the opportunity to prove their prepotence for good, go to their graves unhonored and unsung. This is not so great a calamity as it appears to be. There are recognizedly efficient stud dogs aplenty in every breed—if only they were used to the full extent of their powers to benefit their breeds. The experimentation to prove the breeding worth of a host of males which as individuals are of indifferent merits, in the hopes of finding one that is propontent to produce the good attributes of his breed, is like searching for two grains of wheat in two bushels of chaff. The breeder is much better off who seeks to prove the breeding worth only of the promising among the unproved, and, for the most part, to utilize dogs which have been thoroughly proved and found efficient.

High breeding fees deter many breeders from using the best stud dogs. This is due to short-sightedness on the part both of the breeders and of the owners of such males. The breeder were wiser to use the best dogs, whatever, within reason, the cost may be, and if necessary breed fewer litters. The owner of a stud dog would find it more profitable to have his dog kept busy at a low fee than to have him idle three-quarters of the time because of the prohibitive charge he makes for the services of his dog.

Most owners of stud dogs who demand high breeding fees do so not so much as a source of revenue but because they believe that it enhances the prestige of the dog. This is not true. A great dog is a great dog, a thing of beauty and a joy as long as he lives, whether he be maintained in maiden meditation at a high stud fee or whether he be permitted to run the streets and breed to every proud mongrel bitch that comes his way.

Artificial insemination has been recognized as possible in dogs for some two hundred years. With horses it has been in practical use for a long while. By employing it in dogs, it would be possible to divide the semen from a single orgasm of a great dog among several bitches and so would enable the best of the males to participate in several times as many mating as are now possible. By such a process it might be possible to bring about a reduction of stud fees also.

Modern rapid transportation makes feasible the shipment of semen. Without leaving their own kennel and without the nervousness resultant from a long journey among strangers, bitches could so be impregnated with the semen of a distant dog.

This process is not as yet in general use. Whenever the dog breeders arrive at a full realization of the worth to their breeds of a single, great proponent male dog, such a method of utilizing his germ plasma will be undertaken; and even more than in the past, the best producing dogs will sire a preponderance of the puppies of their respective breeds.

This is not a mere visionary idea but is a practical process which in the economy of dog breeding, a sport and not a business, has been overlooked and neglected.

The breeder who recognizes that an occasional litter by a great and suitable dog will carry him further than a vast crop of puppies by a mediocre dog is already on his way to success.

By watching the show reports it is not difficult to spot the dogs who are producing the winners. The winners themselves may in their turn produce as well as their sires, but until the younger dogs have demonstrated their prepotency for excellence, the safer measure is to utilize the proved sire.

Breeding animals from a great and successful strain are prone to prove more valuable than those which are mere lone wolves of excellence. By a strain is not meant merely the inmates of a kennel. Many of the largest and finest kennels, especially in America, have been assembled from whatever sources and strains struck the owner's fancy, and there is no close unity of origin among the dogs. The fact that the whole strain or family has a given desirable attribute and has had it for generations is an earnest of the purity in it of the genes which determine that attribute. To be certain to retain that attribute in the progeny, it is best that both parties to a mating shall possess it and shall belong to the same strain.

It is entirely justifiable to cross strains for the purpose of uniting two or more virtues of which each strain manifests but one. However, the immediate progeny from such an outcross will probably disappoint the breeder and it is even likely that both virtues will be lost in their phenotype. But by breeding together the members of the F1 generation, or by crossing them back into one of the parental strains, the virtues of both strains may, with persistence and good fortune, be united in one animal, eventually obtained in a genetically pure form. Thus is a new and superior strain developed. This is the work of years and in these years many animals inferior to the parent stock may appear. Only the breeder who knows exactly what he wants and why he wants it should undertake such a project.

A knowledge of the behavior of the chromosomes and genes will enable him to understand how the apparent loss of the type of both strains may not be a loss at all, how and why the reappearance of the hidden virtues may be brought about.

Such a knowledge of the chromosomes and genes causes one to understand why outcrosses produce such disorder of type, why inbreeding and line breeding within the strain retain, intensify, and purify in genotype and phenotype.

It also explains the hazards of attempting to balance, one against the other, two faults of mates. Assuming that one has an undershot bitch of a breed which should have an even mouth, she should be mated to a dog of even mouth and of even mouthed ancestry and not to an overshot dog in the expectation of one fault overcoming the other. A bitch too low on the leg should be mated to one of correct station, not to one too high; a sway backed bitch to a level backed dog and not to a camel backed one. One member of the union should be excellent in those features in which the other is faulty. Animals of grossly faulty structure should, of course, not be bred from at all.

The stud dog should be chosen in the light of an objective analysis of the bitch to which it is proposed to mate him and with full consideration of the ancestors behind her. For the realization of fine progeny in the first filial generation, he should be more rather than less closely related to her, with the common ancestor which determines their consanguinity, one of the great common denominators of the breed.

The wise breeder does not fly off on experimental tangents unless he knows exactly what he is seeking to attain and the hazards he is assuming in the quest of it. He knows that the striving for a new virtue for his strain through an outcross is much more likely to result in the loss of what he has than in the addition of something better. He is willing to make haste slowly. Even most of the wise breeders know these things only empirically and from observation. The ones who understand something of the mechanisms of heredity have a small candle to light them through the uncertainty. While great strains cannot be built up in a single generation, the application of this scientifically accepted knowledge will enable the breeder to go ahead at a greater pace and with an added surety.

The breeder who obtains bad results from the use of a dog, for which he may have paid a large breeding service fee, is all too prone to place the blame for his failure upon the dog. He should ask himself how much of the failure was due to the bitch, her general mediocrity as an individual and as a producer, how much due to his own bad judgment as to the fitness of the mates, one for the other. Was the mating a direct outcross? Did both the mates manifest similar failings?

Assuming that the dog has been a consistent sire of fine progeny, a single failure to a single bitch does not discredit him. The breeder should send to him another bitch, one chosen particularly to breed to him and a member of his own strain.

Breeding arrangements between the owner of the bitch and the owner of the male should be definitely stated. The owner of the male usually upon his stud cards sets forth his refusal to assume responsibility for the injury or death of bitches sent to be bred to his dog or for their escape or misalliance. By accepting such bitches for his dog, he tacitly undertakes to exercise reasonable care that they do not come to harm but the bitch's owner has but uncertain recourse if something goes amiss.

There should be an exact understanding of the amount of the stud fee, how and when it is to be paid. Such payment is usually made in advance of the breeding but some owners of dogs will accept breeding fees on the installment plan.

In the event that a bitch fails to prove in whelp after mating to a dog for use of which a stud fee is paid, it is the customary policy for the owner of the dog to breed the bitch again without charge at her next ensuing heat, provided the dog is yet alive and in his possession. Such a policy is one of mere courtesy. The dog has served the bitch for a given stipend. Assuming that he is not sterile, the fault is not his if she fail to conceive. The obligation for the "return service" exists only if it be specified in the original contract or is stated on the stud cards. Even then, it is not generally considered as of effect unless the owner of the male be informed of the bitch's failure to conceive before the date on which she is due to whelp that he may, if he doubts her failure to conceive, satisfy himself that she is not in whelp.

The second "return service," if the bitch fail twice to conceive, is seldom demanded or given. To ask it is not customary.

A few owners of dogs return the money paid for stud services if the mating proved infertile. This may be a good business policy, although it implies falsely that the failure was on the part of the dog. Unless this arrangement is advertised as the policy of the male's owner, or unless a special arrangement of the kind is made before the mating, it is unreasonable on the part of the owner of the bitch to seek to invoke it.

Frequently, by special arrangement, owners of stud dogs agree to accept one or more members of the resultant litter in lieu of a cash payment for stud service. This is, in most cases, one puppy, the choice of the litter. Sometimes it is the choice of puppies of a specified sex. Sometimes it is even half the litter.

Such arrangements all too frequently result in dissatisfaction to one or both parties to the contract and are even the cause sometimes of subsequent animosity or enmity between them. Unforeseen eventualities arise which are not provided for in the agreement and the final settlement is not always amicable.

This can be obviated by definite terms to the contract, which should be noted in writing, best in duplicate, and signed or initialed by the parties to it. Most dog breeders are not dishonest or deliberately unreasonable, but all are human. There is little need of legal "whereas-es" and "know all men by these presents," and "parties of the first part"; mere notations of what each may expect from the other set forth in work-a-day words is ample to clarify the deal and to avert controversy.

It is not proposed here to set down what are fair or equitable terms in such contracts but only to suggest that the terms be clearly stated in writing, that as many uncertainties as possible be provided for, and that misunderstanding be so avoided. What is fair in one case might not be equally fair in any other; and what appears fair to both contractual parties need not concern others. A puppy from one litter may be worth his weight in gilt edged bonds, whereas a puppy from another litter or even an inferior puppy from the same litter may not be worth his weight in old newspapers.

Among the conditions that should be specifically agreed upon in such a deal is the age at which choice of the puppy or the puppies is to be made, who is to make it, the age at which the puppy payment is to be made and accepted. In the event that the sex of the chosen puppy is specified, is the owner of the male to accept or be given a puppy of the other sex if the litter should contain none of the sex agreed upon? If the agreement is for half the litter, what is to become of the odd puppy if the litter number is not even? If but a single puppy in the litter survive to the age at which delivery is to be made, shall the owner of the male claim it?

If the owner of the male choose a puppy with which the breeder is loath to part, may the latter pay a cash stud fee and retain the puppy?

The owner of the male, in the event of such a disagreement, stands in a somewhat favorable position since he can withhold his signature from application for registration of the litter in the stud book until a settlement satisfactory to him is made. This right to hold up registration until settlement is made secures the owner of the male in his accepting of the stud fee in installments. However, the breeder should be frankly told that he will not be permitted to register his puppies or to permit their buyers to register them until payment in full for the stud service is made.

The male dog to which a bitch is to be bred should be selected before she is due in heat and arrangements with the owner of the dog for his use should be made. To delay until she is ready to breed may result in finding the dog unavailable, in which case it is necessary to make a hasty second choice of mate for her. Even the second choice may be unavailable.

If it is possible, the owner of the bitch or somebody with whom she is familiar should accompany her on her visit to the dog. If that is impossible and she must be shipped, it is best to send her early in her heat that she may become used to the surroundings in which she is to be bred and to the person who is to superintend her breeding.

If shipped, she should have a roomy and comfortable crate with a basin for water, food in a cloth bag attached to the crate, and a note to express-handlers asking them to see to it that she has such exercise as not to make it necessary to defile her crate. Such a note should reassure such handlers of her temperament if she is friendly, or should warn them if she is untrustworthy. Insurance over and above the liability the forwarding agency assumes on all dogs shipped is desirable, not for its own sake and the indemnity to be obtained for the bitch's loss or death, but for the added care and attention she will be vouchsafed en route.

The owner of the dog should, of course, be notified of when she is to be sent and his reply that he is ready to receive her should be awaited. To have one's good bitch lying in an express office while the consignee is away from home at a dog show or elsewhere is not a pleasant prospect and should be avoided.

There is a belief that bitches shipped to be bred are not always mated to the dog agreed upon or at all. Such dishonesty on the part of owners of dogs or carelessness on the part of kennel employees may occur but it is indeed rare. Photographs of the pair in coitus do not prove that the bitch has not been bred also to another dog. The signed statements of most owners of dogs that the breeding has occurred are usually to be trusted. However, if the breeder is suspicious of the good faith of the dog's owner, the bitch should be shipped not to that owner but to a trustworthy agent with instructions to take her to the dog, have her bred, and take her away again.

One normal breeding service, if the bitch is fully in heat, is usually ample and perhaps better than two or more. There is an old custom of breeding twice with some forty-eight hours intervening between services. If a dog is much in use, a policy on the part of his owner of permitting but one service to each bitch will conserve the dog's germ plasma and will give in the long run better results than the double service. Even if it is customary for any given dog to permit him to serve each bitch twice, there is no additional benefit from the double service for any bitch. Of course, if the mates fail to hang together or if for any reason there is doubt of the normality of one service, a second is indicated.

The breeding of a bitch the property of one person to a male the property of another is the mere purchase of the semen of that dog delivered into the vagina of the bitch. The contract of such purchase is a mere matter of business and is in no wise esoteric or involved. Indeed, its very simplicity leads to negligence of the specific definition of its terms and from that negligence come difficulties which could easily be avoided. While there are generally observed customs and practices among breeders of dogs, they are not Medean and Persian laws and may be set aside for terms more agreeable to the contracting parties without violation of any mores of the breeder's cult.

The breeder's true problem is the selection of mates, the bringing together of genes in pairs favorable to the determination of desired attributes in the resultant generation. If the bitch is carefully chosen, little sleep need be lost about the male dog. If she is in herself proponent for the things we ask her to produce, she may confidently be mated to well nigh any male of her variety who has with some degree of consistency reproduced the virtues of his kind.

If through good judgment or good fortune such a bitch is given the benefit of the fittest mate for her particular type and ancestry—if her sound genes be complemented by another set of equally sound ones—the resultant litter, given a favorable environment, will manifest not only excellence but also supremacy.

It is with the purpose to eliminate, as far as it is possible to do, that element of mere good fortune in the breeding of dogs that this book has been written and to substitute for it as much good judgment as may be predicated on genetic principles.

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