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-- check this (http://forums.ukcdogs.com/showthread.php?threadid=928371942)

check this

http://www.oldtimefarmshepherd.org/...mparison-41.jpg

this is why dragon lady & some of the older leps had long hair.also explains the lep's desire to please his master & handles so well.

This is the story of Doc the Leopard Cur “Shepherd”. When Richard McDuffie brought home the last litter of the Old Bob-Tail Shepherds he faced one gigantic obstacle in preserving this line; What would he breed them with? He seemed to have had a very bad opinion of the English Shepherds and according to his son Rick they had owned English Shepherds while he was growing up so no doubt the elder McDuffie had formed this opinion from firsthand knowledge. Some have speculated that this litter of four was in fact the last untainted line of old-time Scotch Collies anywhere in America. This breed, once so popular, was dangerously close to following the path of the St. John’s Water Dog which, just a few years earlier had passed into extinction when the last two members of the breed, both male, died in a remote area of Newfoundland in the 1980s. McDuffie needed to act fast to propagate these dogs so he bred Dunrovin’s Keppie (one of the 2 females from that litter) on what must have been her first heat in 1994 to Doc.

Doc was a Leopard Cur, a breed McDuffie had helped to rescue from the brink of extinction decades before. McDuffie believed that the Leopard Curs had descended from farm shepherds, he wrote:


I doubt if anyone has spent as many years, driven as many miles, done as many interviews, or read as many books researching the history of cur dogs as I have… It is my considered opinion, based on 45 years of research and experience, that the Leopard breed descended from the farm dogs that were brought to this country from the British Isles. What were they? They were basically shepherd types.

So in McDuffie’s mind the Leopard Cur was the natural choice to outcross his precious litter with. Most Leopard Curs are smooth coated but McDuffie explains that in previous days some were born with rough coats, an obvious throwback to their shepherd forebears.


In the fifties and sixties we frequently had Leopard Curs born with long hair! Steve Ingram’s Old Dragon Lady female was one of the last of these. When some of her descendants have been inbred, They have produced long-haired offspring. All true leopards have two coats– a rough outer coat of guard hairs, and a wooly undercoat. Many have a flag tail and thigh feathers.

Doc was a rough coated throwback such as that described above. Eventually McDuffie sold Doc to Chandler Strunk where he was used in outcrossing to the other female from the last litter of the Old Bob-Tail Shepherds, Little Bit. Strunk told me that Doc was a Shepherd, that his behavior was always Shepherd-like. Which isn’t too surprising given what McDuffie had to say on the subject of Leopard Cur temperament.


Most convincing of all Leopard traits, is personality, or temperament. Like farm shepherd breeds they are extremely intelligent but they are also extremely sensitive. Their greatest desire is to please their master. The only training needed is to gain a pup’s confidence then show it what you want it to do. A harsh word can be as destructive as a clubbing, oftentimes. People who are loud and boisterous seldom have much success with Leopard Curs. Their sensitivity has a negative and positive side. The same temperament that is devastated by the yelling, cursing, kicking handler is what makes them easily trained by the kind gentle, understanding handler.
thought some of you guys might enjoy a lil history on the lep's

__________________
J.T.Robinson
oldman_bc@yahoo. com

Pound Va

Ph: 276-796-5321

i'm drinking from my saucer
cause my cup has overflowed

...

That's interesting and makes it fun to compare todays dogs with those old accounts.

The best all around dog I've ever had was a female out of Wick's Camo Jug and a heavy Clark/Ganus bred female named Sparklin Susie. While all of the brothers and sisters out of that cross looked very houndy, they had a very high percentage of the Nimrod/Cleopatra cross in them. Some of those had a very collie-like trait. If they were dealing with you in close quarters, they would want to have their face right up in yours. It's a trait I'm seeing again in the two lurchers I bred last year.

All of the leopards I've been hard on over the years had a hunting fault that was generated by rough handling. I learned that long ago and have since softened up my approach and it's paid off.

Thanks for the history.

__________________
Dan McDonough
507-261-9121 (C)
jagdlep@yahoo.com
Superstition Mtns., AZ
American Leopard Hounds
& Lurchers