No. 9.  Red brindle.  No skill is required here.  Breed first to mahogany brindles, and bitches from this union to seal brindles.

We have now enumerated practically all the less desirable shades, but let me observe in passing, in the process of color breeding that the law of atavism, or “throwing back,” often asserts itself, and we shall see colors belonging to a far-off ancestry occasionally presenting themselves in all these matings.  Once in a while a dog will be found that no matter what color bitches he may be mated with, he will mark a certain number of the litter with the peculiar color or markings of some remote ancestor.  Just a case apropos of this will suffice.  We used in our kennels a dog of perfect markings, coming from an immediate ancestry of perfectly marked dogs, and mated him with quite a number of absolutely perfectly marked bitches that we had bred for a great number of years that had before that had perfectly marked pups, and every bitch, no matter how bred, had over fifty per cent. of white headed pups.  We saw the pups in other places sired by this dog, no matter where bred, similarly marked.  We found his grandmother was a white headed dog, and this dog inherited this feature in his blood, and passed it on to posterity.  The minute a stud dog, perfect in himself, is prepotent to impress upon his offspring a defect in his ancestry, discard him at once.  I have often been amused to see how frequently this law of atavism is either misunderstood or ignored.  Only recently I have seen a number of letters in a leading dog magazine, in which several people who apparently ought to know better, were accusing litters of bulldog pups as being of impure blood because there were one or two black pups amongst them.  They must, of course, have been conversant with the fact that bulldogs years ago frequently came of that color, and failed to reason that in consequence of this, pups of that shade are liable once in a while to occur.  It is always a safe rule in color breeding to discard as a stud a dog, no matter how brilliant his coat may be, who persistently sires pups whose colors are indistinct and run together, as it were.

[Illustration:  Champion Boylston Reina]

[Illustration:  Champion Roxie]

[Illustration:  Peter’s Little Boy and Ch.  Trimont Roman]

[Illustration:  Champion Lord Derby]

Remember, in closing this chapter, that as “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” so the eternal admixtures of colors is the price of rich brindles.  If one has the time the works of an Austrian monk named Mendel are of great interest as bearing somewhat on this subject, and the two English naturalists, Messrs. Everett and J. G. Millais, whose writings contain the result of extensive scientific experiments on dogs and game birds, are of absorbing interest also.

CHAPTER X.

Sales.