Newt wrote:I think it depends on who has been breeding them for the last twenty years.
I agree, you nailed it.
I think you will find that in every “bloodline” you will absolutely have to watch the dogs or ask the current breeder to get an accurate answer to “their version” of that particular line. Weir Creek, Gay, Patch, Yellow Creek and even Branko and several others….etc… There are so many factors and out-crosses, line-breeding, in-breeding etc…
Many dogs that have the same “kennel name” in their pedigree may not be “blood” related at all. And dogs that do not share the same name once in 4 or 5 generations, may be closer related than they appear.
I will use a bloodline that’s close to home for me as an example. Years ago I wanted some Yellow Creek. I found a guy that had a full Yellow Creek female, and it said so in her pedigree for 5 solid generations. All it said was “Yellow Creek” before every name. Well, the dog did not have the foot or hunt that I liked or witnessed in other Yellow Creeks that I knew of. When I had a 8 generation pedigree done on this female, I found that starting at the 6th and 7th generations, dogs were brought into Yellow Creek Kennels “at that time” and were used as outcrosses to bring the dogs to the point, where they were able to compete in the UBGF, which was fine for the people that desired that, but it was not what I was looking for. Technically, they were indeed “Yellow Creeks”, simply because the kennel owned them and gave them that “name”. But what I was looking for was the Yellow Creek “blood” of old, which I did find, but many of them did not have the name “Yellow Creek” as their surname, but if you went back several generations, they had “by far” more Yellow Creek DNA than the dogs with the Yellow Creek “names” did.
I am just using “Yellow Creek” as an example, but this is a “fact” of history, and most bloodlines have experienced this over time. It is just a fact of life, and a result of different breeders sharing different visions of what improving the breed is, “in their opinions”. There is not really a “right” or “wrong”, we just simply need to know what the real facts are, and research and know what we really have or getting ready to get.
Many people are ‘fans” of the same “bloodline” or kennel, but they each may like the line or kennel at a different “stage” or time period of that same line or kennel, and though all of their dog’s share the same kennel name, all their dogs may be very different, with a portion of the same blood.