[ JDJ American Bulldog Preservation Board ]
Posted by Rob Barry on 12/4/2007, 11:41 pm
Board Administrator
To be totally honest, I got very lucky when I bought Hoss from Craig Gale. I was just your average guy with Bulldog fever that had been repeated burned on some dogs.Besides my friendship with MAK and his Bama Boy Standard dogs people with good dogs were not as easy to find back then. Especially a 100% Johnson bred Bulldog.At that time we were refering to them as Pure Bred Johnson dogs.
Like it states on my website, Hoss was one Bad ass looking puppy that turned into a Bad Ass dog.He was a great inside dog or was happy to sleep out back in the dog house. Very protective guard dog. At the age of 2 1/2 I decided to have his hips evaluated by the O.F.A. At this point he was being worked in protection by the Vice Pesident of the Delmarva Shutzhund club.A corrections officer that also trained police dogs. The guys name is Vince May and we still are in touch. I also took my boy to OB school and he did very well. Hoss was very intelligent however he tended to be a little dog aggressive. That was something we had to work on.Well anyway, as most of you know he rated excellent on his hips and we were like chum in the water as far as people wanting to breed to him.Bear in mind that The American Bulldog world was different back then.Suregrip and MGK were the hottest kennels at that time and Matt Boyd and Lem miller were just breaking onto the scene plus a host of now well known breedes were really starting to get the ball rolling for thier kennels.
I did some really nice hybrid breedings with Hoss that produced some really nice dogs.The Females were off of MAK stuff and Screaming Eagle stuff. I wasn't myself a high profile breeder so no extensive linebreeding program was done with my hybrids so that pretty much put the damper on that.I really wish I had bred him to more Pure Johnson gyps but there wasn't a lot of people that I knew of that had dogs of these types. not until Hoss got a little older.One smart thing that I did do was I got Hoss's semen collected twice and that gave me a total of 17 straws. One of the best stroke of lucks was when Atomic contacted me and we did the Breeding with thier 100% gyp named Dot. That one breeding helped change the course of the 100% Johnson dogs and a lot of great dogs today would not exist had that breeding not taken place. Through Mark Moler,Atomic and A host of friends an awesome breeding program took place and the Best thing about Hoss was that he and his Sons and Grandsons/Grandaughters passed on the great hips and athletic, intelligent Bulldogs consistantly.
Since all this my life has had a few setbacks.The refinery I worked at went belly up after I gave them 13 yrs. of service in 02. Hoss passed away at 10 yrs. old in 04. My ex wife broke camp on me in 06 and I have been involved in two Motorcyle accidents that were not my fault. One in 03 and the Grand Finale this past September where this jerk creamed me from behind while I was stopped at a stop sign and screwed my back up pretty good. I'm out of work due to this accident. I doubt at this point that I will be able to return to my line of work and really I have been talking to my Lawyer about possibly appying for a grant so I can persue my deam to go back to school for some veterinary courses plus I would like to find training for me to inhance my ability to train dogs.
I am financially strapped at this time although I have a quite a few assets one being the 17 straws of Hoss sperm I have on ice. I quess if I put it out there for sale I probably could make some coin off of it however I feel it would best serve the Breed as well as help to set me up in the future if things come together if I take a different route.Therefore, all 17 straws of Hoss semen will be sent to Mark Moler of Big Sky so he can decide what gyps down from Hoss to put that semen to. This I think would be whats best for the breed plus Mark, myself, and a select few friends will be taken care of from these breedings and hopefully we will take this Hoss line breeding program to a whole new level and the end result will be Beautiful, functional, 100% Johnson Bulldogs for the future. Wish us luck because hopefully the 100% Johnson Bulldog people will all benefit from this in one way or another.
Rob Barry
Board Administrator: Mark Moler
Co-Administrators: Paul Ciancio, Kenny Walters,
and John Healy
