Do percentages really tell the whole story? The pedigree said that your dog is 50% Decker but is that always true? Here is something to think about. Suppose that your 100% Decker is homozygous. And I do believe that is the case in most all the 100% dogs that came out of my kennel and the dogs I got from Milton. That's way I don't think that percentages always tell the whole story.
Look at some of the pictures that have been posted of dogs that are only 30 or 40 percent Decker on their pedigree, some of these dogs look like they are 100% Decker's. Just looking at the pictures, it would be hard for me to tell the difference. With my experience I might be able to tell a little more about them if I could take them hunting or just spend some time with them. If they had a strong prey drive then I would have to say that they were homozygous and carrying a lot more then 40% Decker.
This is one of the benefits of breeding your dogs closely in a family line, even though you bring in an out cross it really doesn't matter that much because your dogs will always breed true to your family line. When it is time to bring in some new blood to shake up the DNA a little it should always be a dog with the same characteristics.
For some interesting reading check out how the Morgan horse came about, the story is very similar to how the Decker's were developed. All Morgan horses can be traced back to one stallion and his ability to produce foals in his image. Homozygous in a living organism, having two identical genes for a given trait. Individuals homozygous for a trait always breed true; that is, they produce offspring that resemble them in appearance when bred with a genetically similar individual; inbred varieties or species are homozygous for almost all traits. Recessive alleles are only expressed in the homozygous condition.
Heterozygous organisms have two different alleles
for a given trait One of two or more alternative forms of a gene
at a given position (locus) on a chromosome caused by a difference in the
sequence of DNA. This is best explained with examples. A gene which controls
eye color in humans may have two alternative forms. An allele that can
produce blue eyes, and an allele that produces brown eyes. In a plant that
occurs in tall and short forms, there may be an allele that tends to produce
tall plants and an alternative allele that produces short plants. The individual
genes that form a pair of alleles are located at exactly the same point
along a chromosome. Organisms with two sets of chromosomes (diploids),
such as animals and plants, have chromosomes that are found as matching
pairs in the nucleus of each cell. This means that there will always be
two genes for a characteristic in a cell. If the same allele is present
twice, the organism is said to be homozygous for this characteristic. If,
however, one chromosome contains one allele and the other chromosome a
contrasting allele, the organism is
said to be heterozygous. In a heterozygous organism the appearance
of the organism (phenotype) may
be determined by one allele and not the other. The allele that determines
the phenotype is said to be dominantly expressed; it shows dominance over
other alleles. The expression of the other allele is described as being
recessive.
I want to clear up a couple of things. I do not encourage the use of low percentage Decker's. I was only trying to point out that if your dogs were bred "properly" and your traits were set, you could bring in new blood with negative results to your breeding program. By being bred properly, I mean breeding the way Milton did in developing these dogs. Everyone that is seriously breeding Decker's should always have the goal of breeding high percentage dogs. If you continue to dilute your Decker blood with out cross dogs what you will have in a few years is just a big standard size Rat Terrier with few of the Decker qualities.
Another point I would like to make is the Decker is not just a big Rat Terrier. If you believe that then maybe your dogs are already diluted to the point where they already lost the Decker qualities. Anyone that has ever been around a 100% Decker or a high percentage Decker knows that they are dealing with an entirely different type of dog. In Eli's book he talks about his dog Mack as being very special and he was, I remember Mack. But Mack was not the exception that came out of my kennel he was the norm.
In my opinion I think the Decker's should be recognized as a different breed separated from the standard R/T's. My reasoning on this is the Decker's cannot be recreated, the original foundation dogs, that old original Oregon Terrier blood on which the Decker's were built no longer exist except in our Decker's. And make no mistake about it, that blood is what makes a Decker' different then the standard R/T's, the more its diluted the more the Decker's are going lose what makes them different.
It probably would be possible to create a large R/T without Decker blood from the standard R/T's, but would it have the same hunting drive and personality of a Decker that we all find so appealing? It took Milton 20 years to develop the kind of dog he wanted, how long would it take to breed all those traits into another line of dog? We don't have to reinvent the wheel, you just need to preserve the Decker's and if your dogs need improving then find a high percentage Decker and bred its blood into your dogs. You don't preserve something by continually out crossing and bringing in new blood unless you are just breeding standard Rat Terriers, then I guess it doesn't matter. There are more then enough high percentage quality dogs to choose from. Just my humble opinion. Tim Brown