40 THE AMERICAN HUNTING DOG 



suiting pups will be far below tlieir mother's 

 standard as grouse dogs. You do not want range 

 and speed in a thick cover dog ; you want, rather, 

 a dog that will work close ; quiet and catlike ; with 

 a keen nose for the faint grouse scent — and the 

 rest is experience. So send her to a grouse sire 

 if you want pups that will be natural grouse hunt- 

 ers, easy to train. Another consideration is to 

 avoid inbreeding and the constitutional weakness 

 that is the sure result of it, for you do not want 

 to lose your dog from distemper after spending 

 a lot of time and money on him and giving him a 

 place in your heart that will ache for many a year 

 after he is gone. If dam and sire are of the same 

 immediate ancestors the pups will be badly inbred, 

 but if of different families, harking back to remote 

 common ancestors with many outcrosses, you can 

 count on strong, hardy pups that will also be good 

 hunters. But do not look for the exact qualities 

 or markings of either dam or sire in them. The 

 family traits will be reproduced with exact fidel- 

 ity, but the individual pups will take after grand- 

 sire, granddams, ancestors of the third and fourth 

 generation, etc., one or two of them perhaps being 

 good copies of the dam and sire themselves, 

 though even then possibly not inheriting their 

 mental traits. 



