Breeding 249 



There is another breeding rule of equal horse 

 sense value. That is to get what the noted 

 breeder and trainer, Andy Gleason, used to call 

 " old pie " bitches. Gleason meant those females 

 which, without any apparent reason, have the 

 quality of reliably producing high-class dogs, no 

 matter how mated. Gleason himself had one of 

 this kind in Don's Nellie. Dave Rose had one 

 in Lady May. Titus had one in Betty B. All 

 of these were setters. Pearl's Dot is an example 

 in pointers, and Mr. Lowe's White Lips the most 

 conspicuous in greyhounds. Perhaps the best 

 advice in breeding is that the breeder should 

 secure bitches of this kind. Neither I nor any- 

 body else could tell him where to get them, but 

 the advice is none the less good. Very few of 

 the " old pie " bitches would have been selected 

 by tape-line critics. Betty B. was fairly well bred, 

 but she weighed less than thirty pounds, and 

 would have been rejected by any theorist. White 

 Lips was not fashionably bred as Englishmen 

 would call it, but she reached results by some 

 inherent virtue of reproduction. 



Mr. Charles Askins, an experienced breeder 

 and handler and secretary of the Handler's 

 Association, has a rule that the important thing 

 in breeding is to know what the sire and dam are. 

 As he puts it, a man can take chances on any- 

 thing back of the third generation if the sire and 



