CHAPTER V 
Buyinc a Doc 
m]OW to buy a dog is as difficult a question to answer offhand as 
Al| to tell a person what dog will satisfy him. With the general 
custom in America of worshipping the fetish of pedigree 
in animals—while holding that the man must be guaged 
by his individual merits—it is difficult to get any person 
to consider the purchase of any dog that has not a number of champions 
in his pedigree. If he has that, you can dispose of the veriest scrub that 
ever lived. Pedigree has a value, but you must know the history of the 
dogs of the day and the most prominent of the past generation or two to 
enable a proper conclusion to be drawn. From a pedigree it is possible for 
one of the initiated to form an opinion as to what might be expected of the 
dog in certain characteristics and which of these characteristics he might 
perpetuate. It has but little to do with the future excellence of the puppy 
beyond the fact that a dog of good breeding has a better chance of being 
good-looking than one bred from scrubs. 
To understand this it is necessary to state that there are few breeders of 
prominence who do not lay stress upon some particular point in confor- 
mation. With one it is head, with another it is “front,”’ another must have 
a good coat, and so on. An expert fox-terrier judge would make but little 
mistake at an English show in picking out the Redmond, Vicary or Powell 
entry, all of which is in keeping with what Youatt tells us about the two 
sheep-breeders who purchased some pure Bakewell ewes and rams, and 
although there was not a drop of outside blood introduced into the flocks, 
they became entirely different in type within a few years, each breeder 
making his selections along a line of his own. 
Then again we find every now and then a sire that is particularly 
good in giving to his progeny some much wanted characteristic, such as 
the ability of the late Finsbury Pilot among collies to give heavy coats, 
while the sparse-coated collie Ormskirk Galopin was noted for heads. And 
it is along this line we find the value of pedigree, for an inbred Galopin 
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