GETTING STARTED
Getting Started, it ain’t easy!!!
Often times we have the tendency to want to use a forum such as this to brag about our accomplishments in breeding. That is perfectly okay, but it sometimes giving newcomers a feeling of a false sense of security. Or worse yet, they make a breeding and feel completely let down when it does not pan out. I would like to see some of us share some of our breeding errors/mishaps so that others might learn from our mistakes. I know that this will probably make some of us feel very vulnerable, so I guess that it is only fair that I go first.
In 2006, I found myself without any beagles. My hounds had got old, I had suffered a bad leg injury, and I knew it was a time for a new direction. Keep in mind that this was before the beagle forums that we depend on today. The main resource that I was relying on was a few old beagle contacts that I had and a stack of old Rabbit Hunter magazines that I had saved. In my ignorance, I was under the impression that Hounds and Hunting focused mainly on Brace so I took a subscription to Better Beagling only to find that a majority of the advertised beagles were northern hare hounds that were advertised to be fast.
What I was looking for was a medium speed hound that was similar to what ran in Progressive Pack when it was first developed. In one old back issue of The Rabbit Hunter, I found an article written by John Parks about Black Creeks. His description closely matched what I was wanting, so I set out looking for a start. I quickly found that while there were a few guys raising these dogs, but they were not easy to find and when you did, they were often out of my price range. I was working as the Superintendent of a non-profit and my pay was pitiful. I got in the habit of starting every dog purchase conversation with the statement, “Remember, I am just a poorboy”
Anyways, I was able to eventually able to buy two dogs. A male named Luther and a female named Dixie. Luther was off of Rob’s Blackcreek Double Duce MH and he was out of a daughter of Cotton Country Looney Tune and Dixie was actually a half-sister to Duce, out of Peggy Sue Singing Dixie. I now had a pair of related dogs that I was sure that I could line breed and build a pack around. I studied pedigrees and listened to everyone that would talk to me. One thing that I was not aware of is that some of these dogs had trouble whelping. When I bred Dixie to Luther, I found myself at the vet’s office in the middle of the night helping him do an emergency C-section. I lost every pup, one pup was huge, and my vet argued with me Dixie had to have been bred to a Walker coon hound. I was back to the drawing board.
I was able to purchase a young female that was off of Blackcreek Coal and out of a Blackcreek D-Bone female. My nephew had shown interest in beagles so I gave her to Brian as a birthday present. As I mentioned, I stayed pretty broke at the time, so to buy the pup, I had to sell three goats. We ended up naming that gyp “Goat” When she came in heat we bred her to Luther. When she whelped, she had one pup! I was thinking that at this rate we would have a pack in 20 years or so.
In a short period of time, the word got out that I was looking for a female. I got a call out of the blue one day from a guy that I had never talked to saying that he had a pair of litter mate sisters that he wanted to sell cheap. He said that their biggest fault is that they would fight in the pen. I bought them sight unseen. He agreed to meet me half way and he only wanted $150 for the pair. When we met, I was surprised to see two big, over-weight 14 ½ “ females. One was tricolored and the other was black with dot eyes. I gathered the papers up and loaded them into my truck. Before I pulled away the guy warned me not to pen them together with other dogs.
When I got home, I started rearranging dogs in my pens, I was short on leashes so I just threw the two of them in a large run with my two other dogs as I was going to make a repair on another pen. To my shock, those two females dove on one of those other dogs and almost killed it before I could stomp them off of it. I had never seen such vicious beagles in my entire life. I learned a lot about those two over the next few days. They did much better in the pen if separated. They both ran a good upper medium speed, the dot eyed female turned out to be, as a buddy of mine says “bat-crap crazy”. In the pen you had to corner her to catch her, for the first week she would try to bite when you caught her, but put a shock collar on her and she handled like a dream. The first and only time that I ran her without a shock collar, I had to catch her in a live trap. When I ordered a pedigree, I found out that they were the result of a littermate breeding of Nelson’s Sweet Talking Jake and Bridge’s Betsy. Both of whom were off of Backroad’s Buddy and Chief’s On-Line Lady Bug. The breeder of the litter was Mr. Gerald Bridges.
In hind sight, I probably should have knocked the crazy one in the head and kept the tri-colored female. Instead, I sold the tri colored female to a guy I owed a favor to and kept the crazy female named Bessie. I am ashamed to admit it, but part of the reasoning revolved around the fact that I wanted a litter of black, dot eyed puppies. So as soon as Bessie came in, I bred her to Luther.
Thankfully, Bessie safely whelped six healthy pups, with four being males and two females. By this time we were seeing some real promise in the Luther X Goat pup so I had hi hopes for these pups. Brian picked a male and female, I gave one male pup to a hunting buddy , I sold another male and kept a matched male and female for myself. I kept close tabs on the litter. To be honest, for the most part, the litter was a failure. The male that I kept never ran a rabbit, he could scald a house cat though. He was eventually given away as a pet, my female matured into a below average individual. I tore her papers up and gave her to an elderly man that just turned her out to hear a racket. Neither of the other two males were worth a grain of salt and I do not know what their fate was. Brian’s pup did turn out better. He named the male Troubadour, he made a really nice running hound but he had a crooked front leg and was eventually sold. We still debate on whether we made the right decision by selling him. He was full of good qualities and I always wondered if he would pass the bad leg.
That left one female, Sadie. I do not know how it happened, but Sadie turned out close to perfect. She was a freak of nature, she did things that I had never seen a dog do, much less a green started pup. At six months old he ran like a seasoned hound. At eight months, we were hunting her with the old dogs at the edge of a large swamp, they had been running for about twenty minutes along the edge when during a check, Sadie started swimming into the deep water giving mouth. She would swim to a tree, open a few times then wade/swim to another tree. I thought that she was tapping a squirrel, so after about five minutes, I wade the deep water with the intent of giving her a thrashing. Just about the time that I got to her, she climbed up on a log, tounged and trailed the length of the log, then to my surprise, she leapt into the water almost catching a huge swamp rabbit that was laying in the water with only his nose sticking out. This all happened within ten feet of me and was a glorious scene.
Later in the season, Brian and I were running on a cattle farm near my house. It was 15 degrees and the ponds were frozen solid. Dixie, Sadie and Diamond were running a rabbit near a small pond. We watched as the rabbit weaved through the foxtail that grew on the edge of the pond, then the rabbit turned and scampered across the ice at the widest part of the pond. I thought for sure that would be the end of the race. All three dogs trailed through the fox tail, but had a check at the edge of the ice. To my delight, ten month old Sadie walked that rabbit across the pond, with the two old dogs bouncing around trying to figure out what she was smelling.
Brian and I were sure that Sadie was the kind of hound that were dreaming of. Unfortunately, the next spring, Sadie was killed by a car while running a rabbit. I always wondered, if she would have been a producer, considering how poor the rest of the litter turned out.
On a positive note, in Luther’s life, he sired several litters from a variety of bloodlines and had a high percentage of quality offspring, a few of which are still in our kennels, as well as, kennels of our friends. I have also attached a photo of Luther, Bessie and Sadie.
I realize that this has been a lengthy post, but I think I learned some serious lessons that others might benefit from. First, just because it looks good on paper doesn’t mean that it is going to be good. A “bargain” is not always a bargain. There are good and sorry individuals in almost every bloodline, and sometimes even in individual litters. Research, research and then research some more. Every bloodline has some skeletons in the closet, in this case: pen fighting, timidness and small litters and sometimes whelping problems. Never settle and just breed for color or breed a female just because she is what was available. If you do, be willing to keep a close tab, because chances are, your percentages are not going to be that great.
Most importantly, know what you want. I ran into some real hurdles, and actually thought about scrapping them all and starting over. But with the help of friends, bringing in some new blood and culling ruthlessly, we were able to establish a pack that suits us and can reproduce their selves with a high percentage of success.
I hope others will be will to share some of their thoughts and struggles. Until then, keep’em running!!!
