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From: ajm
Date: 10/30/00
Time: 11:09:29 PM
Remote Name: 64.68.230.133
I have been picking the brains of several mushers about this subject, including TMR, for the last 3-4 months. The general concensious seems to be a good dog is a good dog. Whether it be an Alaksan Husky, German Shorthair, GSP cross, English pointer, English pointer cross, and so on. The difference is so minute it makes very little difference until a musher is at the absolute top of the game. If I, or most any of us, were to take Swingley's winning team, or Ellis's, etc.. we would not do half as well as those guys do. Much of it is they have the knowledge and experience to not only condition the dogs to run fast, but to train them to run fast, when the musher wants the dogs to run fast. I spent much of last year in constant thought of better dogs, equipment, training techniques. Before you know it, the season is in full swing and the dogs that I have aren't trained and conditioned to 60% their potential. This year I have really tried to work on getting the absolute best from the dogs I have NOW. If I finish last, but know that I have gotten 100% effort from the dogs, then there is nothing more I can ask for. After a dog is born, genetics and lineage mean nothing. You can't change it's genetics, so you have to do the best with what is at hand.
Basically, what I gather is that until a person is getting the absolute best performance from the dogs they own now, getting better dogs won't have much of a benifit. Pointer crosses seem to be the future of the sport. But, so did Siberians, Greyhound crosses, hounds, etc... Obviously, it can't hurt to start with good dogs right from the beginning, but often times these very good dogs never come close to reaching thier potential because we strive for an easy way to get better performance( buy better dogs), instead of digging in and putting forth a large amount of elbow grease, ie. learning how to train the dogs better.