BREEDING SECTION
Westmead Kennels is the most successful British greyhound breeding kennel of all time – by some considerable margin.
It’s reputation is world-wide, yet the most common reaction from first-time visitors is surprise at the comparatively modest size of the place.
In the 40 plus years since the Pincano’s pups drew their first Westmead breath, the kennel has never produced more than five litters in a year. The average is between three and four.
By Irish and Australian standards, that would make Nick a medium sized breeder. To the Americans, he would be one of the ‘small guys’.
Westmead success is built on quality over quantity and a consistent strike rate that few breeders in the world could hope to emulate.
As we will hopefully see, the winning formula is an understanding of breeding and bloodlines, combined with a system for producing and rearing pups to the highest possible standard.
BLOODLINES ETC
STUD DOGS
Nick says: “Looking back, the biggest mistakes I made over the years were in my choice of stud dogs. Cricket Dance went to Clonalvy Pride who was a good proven sire, but he was the only one. I used many inferior sires in the early days, poor old Westmead Satin never went to a top class dog.
“Of course I didn’t deliberately choose bad sires. It came about because when we first started out, we couldn’t make the kennel pay on its own. I decided to stand a few stud dogs to help pay the bills and felt morally obliged to use them on my own bitches.”
Although they all produced ‘Westmead’ open race winners (and at least one Greyhound of the Year), with the benefit of hindsight, the likes of Prince Champion, Mels Pupil, Fionntra Frolic, Fearless Champ and Special Account could not be considered great successes at stud.
“I often wondered what I might have bred if I had used dogs like Prairie Flash, Monalee Champion and Spectre. I only went to Sand Man at the end, and was too late, with Tania.
“In fact, after Clonalvy Pride, I didn’t use a top class proven dog until I went to I’m Slippy. Even Whisper Wishes was unproven when I put Tania to him.
“Of course I regret that some of the dogs mentioned never made it. But there is no way of telling with an unproven dog, and nobody suffered more from the failures than myself.
“I had six litters by Fionntra Frolic, a pile more by Mels Pupil and Prince Champion. I can also honestly say that as soon as I concluded that they weren’t good enough, I stopped other people from using them too.”
Conversely of course, British breeding benefited from some of the more inspired Savva stud dog selections.
The industry would have been infinitely poorer without the likes of Westmead County, Westmead Lane, Glenroe Hiker and Flashy Sir to name but four!
So – older and wiser – what does Nick look for in an unproven stud dog?
He said: “I can think of very few pure two-bend sprinters who made it at stud, nor any out-and-out marathon dogs.
“In general though, the better stud dogs have been those who stayed on well including a few who went on to run six bends, or would have done if they had stayed in training.
“From my own experience I had Westmead County and in more recent times Toms The Best, Phantom Flash and The Hawk. But there are many other examples of dogs who stayed at least 550 yards including Monalee Champion, Spectre, Easy And Slow, Droopys Vieri, Clonalvy Pride. . .
“I have also noticed that dogs who seem to be specialists on just one track seldom seem to make it.
“Everybody can think of some; and the list would include Derby winners. I think the same rule applies to potential brood bitches too.
“If you think about it – how can a greyhound that refuses to give his or her best on all tracks be completely honest? In my opinion, the best sires are those with a strong natural instinct to chase.”
Other poor sires may produce honest offspring who are simply not fast enough – Nick would include dogs like Prince Champion and Fionntra Frolic in the latter category.
Nick says “I also try to avoid dogs from inconsistent lines. There are many examples but two that recently spring to mind are The Stranger and the Greenpark Fox lines.
“So as good as dogs like Tico and Tapwatcher (both sons of The Stranger) were on the track, they failed to make the breakthrough. The Greenpark Fox line goes back to Bright Lad and was a line that never did well with my breeding.
“Although Citizen Supreme (a son Bright Lad) and Greenpark Fox (a son of Citizen Supreme) had some success, they never dominated in the way that the Monalee Champion, Sand Man or Head Honcho lines have done since.”
In recent years, no kennel, British or Irish, has produced more top class sires than Westmead. Starting off with Westmead County, it went on to include Flashy Sir, Toms The Best, Phantom Flash, Staplers Jo, Larkhill Jo and Westmead Hawk.
Ask Nick why and you get the single most interesting insight into his view on stud dogs.
He says: “There are two reasons. One, my dogs are not given any substance to help enhance their performance. I do not believe that the use of drugs is widespread, but the rules are more flexible in some places than others.
“Two, I am not interested in training any dog that needs ‘incentives’ to keep it chasing.
“In other words, the dogs mentioned were true champions who were able to transmit their genes onto their offspring.
“I believe that there have been many dogs who failed at stud, not because they didn’t throw speed. They failed because their offspring weren’t genuine enough to utilise that speed to the best of their ability.
“The same theory also applies to the stayers versus sprinters argument. Clearly some sprinters are 100 per cent genuine. Others are dogs with early pace who don’t have the commitment to win if they don’t lead.
“Give me a dog who is prepared to battle even if he is behind other dogs. That is the determination that I want to see in my pups. Yet invariably it is the early paced dogs who are in the most demand at stud.
“It also tends to be the early paced dogs who produce ‘one season’ dogs. I’ve used a couple in recent years. They start off genuine but lose interest after about 20 races.
“Among my own dogs, who I handled myself during their racing careers, I don’t think I made too many mistakes when choosing them as sires.
“The exception might be Special Account, but I always had reservations about him. In his behaviour, very hyper, he showed no sign of Westmead County and I feared he would breed to the Right O’Myross (Account’s maternal grandsire) side of the family. I always had reservations about Merlin and never used him.”
The debate over the importance of a stud dog compared to the dam is one of the oldest in breeding.
Given the 150 or so litters bred at Westmead, each under the same rearing conditions, and with many opportunities to compare five or six litters out of the same dam, how much does the sire matter?
Nick says: “Some people try to suggest that breeding is all about the brood bitch. If that were true, how do the legendary sires emerge?
“I have seen great variation in litters, both in temperament and speed, to which the only variable factor was the sire.
“Even my very best broods have failed if the sire was bad enough. The Cricket Dance litter by Faithful Hope are just one example. Physically they appeared fine, they were just slow.
“A good sire is vital. It is a lesson that I wish I had learned years ago”
BROOD BITCHES
When it comes to brood bitches, there can be few people better qualified to discuss their merits.
His Dam of the Year credits read: Hacksaw (’76), Cricket Dance (’77), Westmead Damson (’78), Westmead Satin (’84), Westmead Tania (’87) Westmead Alva (’89), Westmead Move (’91, ’92), Celtic Lady (’80), Mega Delight (’05, ’06, ’07). Droopys Jean (’08) and Westmead Swift (2010).
Nick says: “With stud dogs, if you don’t handle them yourself, you don’t know anything about their habits and behaviour. That isn’t the case with the brood bitches. I wouldn’t consider using a brood if I didn’t like her temperament.
“In most cases though the broods have virtually picked themselves. I can’t breed with all the bitches that I would like to, so I tend to stick to those who have shown the most ability on the track.”
But there have been failures, in the early days, many of them. The likes of Ardagh Star, Claremont Betty, Houghton Tara, Fevata Flash all produced moderately. (None of which were handled by Nick during their racing careers – so he knew little about their characters)
Looking back in typically honest fashion though, Nick believes he went through a stage when he felt he could do no wrong.
He said: “I was very lucky with Pincano, Hacksaw and Cricket Dance, but the others, who I mainly leased, only produced graders.
“You only find that out the hard way. In some instances I am to blame for using bad stud dogs. But in other cases, I am horrified that I continued to persevere with a second or third litter with the same brood when the first litter were clearly nowhere near good enough.”
It wasn’t necessarily that the bitches lacked racing ability. Nick experienced failures with at least three English Oaks winners including Miss Ross and Lucky Empress.
But the one that really saddened him was Westmead Chick (see chapter 5).
To this day, no finer bitch has been born at Westmead. Indeed, if you could choose a ‘nailed on’ racer to become a champion brood, you could have found none better.
At her peak, faster than any male greyhound in training, she was by the best sire at stud, out of the best brood bitch in England. She was 34 kilos of blue brindle athlete – the Serena Williams of greyhound racing.
Yet as a brood, she threw Midland Flat winner Westmead Striker, a dog who had more ability than competitive edge, and a string of minor open racers.
By most standards, a bitch that throws open racers in four of her seven litters would not be a failure – but this was Westmead Chick!
Nick concedes his disappointment. An unbroken chain of great daughters matching and surpassing their own dams over four generations had been broken.
So what went wrong? It is like asking a father to criticise his favourite daughter!
Nick says: “I couldn’t accept that she wouldn’t make it. If I try to find a reason for her falling short of what I expected I can only come up with one realistic explanation.
“Although Chick was 100% genuine on everything she did, there were a couple of times when I sensed she was going stale and we had to take her into the country to see some wildlife to motivate her.
“Apart from that one very minor fault, I think she was very unfortunate in the choice of sires. Her father I’m Slippy and her grandfather Whisper Wishes were head and shoulders the best dogs at stud.
“We ended up using a variety of dogs who, looking back, didn’t amount to great sires including Daleys Denis and Deenside Spark, though I would have hoped for better from Staplers Jo and Toms The Best.
“The only other theory that I have heard is that she might have been too big to make a brood. Apparently big bitches don’t have great records as broods, though since there aren’t so many of them, it’s a difficult one to prove.
“Cricket Dance was only around 56 pounds racing weight so any doubts about using small broods disappeared pretty quickly. ”
Interestingly, Mega Delight was a disappointment when she first arrived in Britain and won one minor open at Milton Keynes. Nick recommended that she should be sent back to John Kiely and then on to Seamus Graham for whom she became a star.
Nick says: “She was still very young and although she didn’t do anything wrong, I was convinced that the penny hadn’t dropped. John got her going and she never looked back.
“Going back to John was the making of her. But with the benefit of hindsight, I should have persevered with her myself and I’m sure we would have had ended up with the same result”
To emphasise the importance of honesty, Nick recalls his former minor open racer Westmead Flight.
Nick said: “Although Flight did not have top class pace, she was 100% genuine –absolutely fanatical.
“I remember that on one occasion when she was about six months old, she was watching other pups schooling. She became so obsessed that she cleared a six foot fence and joined in.
“The only other time that I had seen that was with Jazz Hurricane, who I reared here from a few months old. Of course she went on to become a top class open racer and very good dam.”
BREEDING THEORIES
Maidens – “As a starting point I would certainly not recommend using an unproven stud dog on a maiden bitch. There are too many unknowns.
“I know young dogs have to start somewhere, but use them on proven bitches so you can determine if they are worth persevering with.
“A good example of this can be seen with Ian Greaves and Michael Dunne. If Ian had a young unproven bitch, Michael would ususally offer him one of the better dogs. Basically, if she couldn’t throw to Top Honcho or Frightful Flash, she probably wasn’t going to make it. Once she was proven as being decent, Ian would then use one of Michael’s unproven sires. It was a perfect arrangement.
Pedigrees – “Although I don’t like to see the parents of any litter too closely bred, certainly no closer than 3 x 4, I’m not a big believer in clever pedigree analysis. Just give me a good brood and a quality stud dog.
“That isn’t too say that I don’t appreciate the importance of bloodlines. You can see the good and bad traits of sires and dams, and their parents, coming through in pups. But until unproven parents produce their pups, you can’t predict it and you don’t have any control over it.
“I think Special Account was a good example of that. He was a great dog, but until he sired his first pups, we didn’t know whether he would produce like his sire Westmead County, or like his dam – or more specifically her sire, Right O’Myross, who was an ungenuine hurdler. Unfortunately it was the latter.”
However – there is a danger of discarding a potentially good stud dog, simply on the basis of a minor indiscretion.
Take a dog like the most infamous of all fighters, Lively Band, barred from an English Derby final after a much debated indiscretion in the semis.
Nick says: “I liked him and bid £5,000 for him after he fought. The way I looked at it, any dog who can run around 80 races, including many after he had been retired to stud, could not have been ungenuine.
“It is a shame that he was so badly wasted as a sire by sending him to Australia and then him dying early on the return flight. If you look at what he threw from so few matings (Yellow Band, Balliniska Band, Linacre) I have no doubt he could have become a great sire.”
Gene traits – “I sometimes wonder whether some form of weakness in genes can be of benefit. Take Mega Delight as an example.
“Now I accept that she put some very fast genes into nearly all her offspring. But what is interesting is that is certain aspects some of the genes were weak.
“For example, look at the sort of dogs she threw to different sires, Westmead Lord at one end of the scale, and then Hawk at the other. Clearly the sires must have dominated in terms of racing distance.
“If a bitch’s genes were all very weak, and the pups took everything from the sire of the litter, wouldn’t you expect to produce good pups?”
Repeat matings – “I have no problems with repeat matings. I have done it several times and had more good results than bad. The second I’m Slippy/Westmead Move mating was the better than the first. Phantom Flash was from a repeat mating.
“It didn’t work so well with the repeat of the Daleys Gold/Move litter, but it was a smaller litter, and all bitches.”
British breeding – “Many people in Britain tend to breed on sentiment, I know I’ve made that mistake many times. Most of the best bitches go back to Ireland, because the owners at the big tracks tend not to be ‘hands on’.
“So a large number of British litters are out of bitches who ran graded on the provincial tracks. The other major factor that tends to work against British breeders is a lack of facilities.
“Not many breeders have enough space to rear adequately. If you give them the space, and equal quality brood bitches, there is no difference between the two countries.”
*uck Knows!
There are really only two breeding theories in the world, those developed by people who study bloodlines and rear pups – and those developed by people who study bloodlines. The second group are usually more sure of their facts.
Despite rearing around 120 litters in almost identical conditions, Nick still encounters behaviour and temperament that can’t be explained.
Why is one litter destructive? Why do they soil their beds, spend hours barking and are difficult to train to lead? The litter that occupied the same paddock six months earlier had none of those faults.
The non-rearing expert will naturally attribute the behaviour to the parents. Many of Nick’s broods have produced six or seven litters with a wide variety of habits and idiosyncrasies.
“Aoifa’s latest litter by Vieri are much braver than her previous litter” says Nick, “but for some reason, they plqy up when they are having their nails cut”
The difference between the two litters must be the sire.
No – that isn’t necessarily true either.
Nick says: “I have had several repeat matings and the second litter are nothing like the first in terms of behaviour and ability” – and as we discovered earlier, the first litter aren’t necessarily the best.”
Perhaps the most interesting opportunity to put the theory into perspective comes via Ian Greaves who sent his brood First To Return to Top Honcho seven times. With over 40 pups to compare, there was huge variation in ability, looks and distance preference between all the full brothers and sisters.
Nick says: “To be honest that comes as no surprise to me. There is much more variation than you might expect. So while at one level you can have a dog like Westmead County who transmitted great honesty and determination to almost all his pups, there will always be diversity. Its unavoidable.”
My secret – “It is the question that I get asked the most often – ‘what is your secret?’ I wish there was one, I would get it right every time.
“To do what I have been doing for 40 years requires 100% commitment and devotion. If you are not prepared to give that you cannot succeed.
“You have to put the dogs wellbeing first with no thought of the expense. The vast majority of people who have been successful in this industry had done so because they have private means. Quite simply, you need to put in more than you will ever be able to take out.
“You need attention to detail and always be open minded to learn something new. I am always suspicious of any trainer or breeder who claims to know all the answers.
“There are sacrifices that you have to make in your lifestyle, quite often even when it is in opposition to what your family might want and expect from you.
“I defy anybody to always get it right in their selection of stud dogs and brood bitches. I hope to get it right nine times in ten, but nature always has the upper hand. You can never second guess her.
“There have always been ‘freaks’ who come out of nowhere to surprise you. But once they happen – accept them. It doesn’t matter if they are badly bred, or had no ability on the track. If they breed on, accept it.
“No matter how hard you work, or how much you learn, you will always need a bit of luck. Without your fair share of it, you don’t have a prayer.”
LUCK
The relationship between luck and fate in breeding was never better emphasised than in the case of Westmead Flight.
The winner of a couple of Catford 555 metre open races for Wimbledon trainer Tom Foster, Nick was unsure what to do with her when she reached the end of her racing days.
He said: “I liked her and would have bred with her but I only have so much space and I had Westmead Chick. At that time Vince Berland was buying a few British and Irish bitches for breeding in America.
“Brian King found most of them for him and when he asked if I had anything available I offered him Westmead Flight for £600.
“Vince apparently replied: ‘No I’m looking for something better than that’. If I had asked for £5,000 she would probably have been sold!
“In the end I gave her to Pat and Betty Whelan with the agreement that I could have her back for one litter.
“I mated her to Staplers Jo which would produce Larkhill Jo and Pat sent her to Ireland. Later I had her back as agreed and put her to Frightful Flash.”
It was from that mating that Sonic Flight and Early Flight were produced, the latter of course threw Spiridon Louis and Dilemmas Flight.
“With the benefit of hindsight, what single piece of advice would have been most beneficial to me when I started out as a breeder? Probably not to use unproven stud dogs. I got away with it a few times, but I ruined many more litters along the way.
“We know from the few good dogs that come through at any one time, the likelihood of a new dog becoming a top sire are thousands to one.”
SNIPPETS
“I have won the Oaks with Sarah Dee, Westmead Chick, Annies Bullet, and Dilemmas Flight. I also produced litters out of another three Oaks winners. Not one of them went on to become a top class dam. How do you explain that?
“The only conclusion that I could come to is that none of them would have made stayers. My best brood bitches either stayed six bends or would have done if they had no been hampered by injury.”
