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Here's a question for you all something to make you think

I normally ride the fence seems like I learn more by keeping my mouth shut but here's a question for you all. Years ago the ALBA voted to change the Leopards Curs to Leopard Hounds. I'm assuming it was voted to do this by a select group at a hunt or a phone call to certain folks. What was the main reasons to join the UKC Coon Hound Breeds as the 7th Breed. Was it to sell pups or compete with the other breeds to see how they stack up or what?

The Leopard Breed is a who's who if you ask me there a little of everything in the pool if you don't agree with that your not being honest as for is it pure it can't be if it had all the dogs folks have brought in from the beginning I truly understand some breeders have been breeding their lines for Generations after Generations and that's as good as it gets. The problem I have with the open or close deal is this when you open it it's like opening a flood gate and any that meet the requirement is in as long as the owner want's to pay the extra fee that's what I don't like. I liked the old way if as a Breed it was agreed upon you could vote one in I felt that was a better deal and then you could make sure the dog had something to give to the breed.
The main plus to me right now with the X Breed is its out in the open but trust me folks have been doing it out behind the barn for years mixing stuff in and it will continue just watch if you have your eyes and ears open you know its true. I would love to see all the leopards have a DNA done I bet you will find there not as pure as you all think and I also would bet a lot of folks wouldn't do it. I also don't see it opening anytime soon which is fine I can see where it doesn't need to be with the way it is now. But if UKC would send a list of dogs meeting the requirements and then a board of folks could vote on each dog that would be a better deal to me. JMO

__________________
John Cox
580 284 8378

I'll take that one...

I'm going to start near the beginning.

Richard McDuffie has been heard saying that he wishes that he would have never called them curs and also his vision for the future of the American Leopard Cur was that some day it would be legitimized by it's acceptance into the coonhound community and gain normal registration along with the other 6 hound breeds.

The ALCBA presidents (not all of them) had flirted with getting the UKC to bring the leopards into the coonhound group at various times prior to it's last successful run at it.

In the end Perry had done quite a bit of setting the path due in part to the difficulties that arose between the registry and the membership. If you'll remember back to the time when the ALCBA registry put out a set of questions shortly after Randy and Jed bought it from Steve Ingram. The results of those polled questions showed the member ship wanted some things one way and Randy decided to go contrary to several of those preferences. This was in good part why Jed backed away from the Registry. This also played a role in the ALCBA Association's move away from the ALCBA Registry. Both sides stood their ground and here we are.

I think that if you go back and read Todd Kellem's explanation of why they moved the Leopards over to the coonhound group that he laid out in the introductory article in the 2008 Bloodlines (Aril, May, June, no sure anymore), you'll find a logical explanation that made really good sense.

As for the vote, I was there and it was well attended and the vote in favor of the individual parts of this change were fell well in the majority. I would imagine the minutes of that meeting appear in the following yearbook for reference. This was a well known issue at the time and was as heavily attended as any annual meeting I've been to.

As for the motivations behind it all I can only say for sure what I was thinking. Leopards are open trailing, locating and treeing dogs. For the purpose of comp. hunting they are very different from the cur breeds in the way they operate and to me that difference was very noticeable when I went to the NKC Cur and Feist hunts for coon. At that point, I had never walked one of the other six hound breeds into competition but I had hunted with many of the other six hound breeds with my Leopards. They belonged there, at least for the purpose of comparison/competition far more than with the other cur breeds.

When this was all on the fence I asked Todd weather he though it would be easier to argue that the Leopards be moved from the curs to the hounds or the hounds to the curs. I don't know if that changed anything for sure but it seemed to move along quite a bit faster after that.

The definitions may be a little grey to some but not the folks over at Merriam-Webster:

Hound-

a : dog

b : a dog of any of numerous hunting breeds including both scent hounds (as the bloodhound and beagle) and sight hounds (as the greyhound and Afghan hound)


Cur-

a : a mongrel or inferior dog

We all may have our own definitions of what we've been taught the word cur means but it really does have a real definition and that's it.

All of this discussion about opening or closing the books has centered around the idea of being able to bring in outside blood. Most of the "old school" guys want the books to stay closed and yet they also want to keep calling them curs. That is a verifiable contradiction of ideas. If they are in fact curs then the "cur people" should be encouraging the opening of the books and the discarding of standards. We would then have genuine curs. Oddly enough, the very people that would like to call the Leopards curs are in fact attempting to keep the books closed and shut the doors on the gene pool effectively creating a pure bred dog (the antithesis of a cur), when in fact what they are creating is factually, entomologically and truthfully a hound.

Well, they are officially called hounds, like it or not. Now all we have to decide is if you want to breed them like hounds or breed them like curs. If you want to breed them like hounds than close the books and work like mad on your kennel occupants and your culling criteria. If you want to breed them like curs than throw the doors open and let's see what kind of improvements can be made.

There are going to be a lot of people that won't like how the facts of this matter fall because they are contrary to their idea of how they thought things were but until they come to terms with how things are they will always find the promotion of the Leopard breed a difficult path.

It's time to at least get ALL of our thinking on the right page. After all, this is precisely why definitions are important after all.

I'm tired and not going to proof read this so I hope it all makes sense. See Richard, I can make a contribution without belonging to the toxic place. I really do mean that to be good natured. We have a place here where we can all discuss and debate openly. This one would have gotten me booted from the other board in a heartbeat.

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