Docking

[Saeleofu]

you're missing my point. if i take a dog from a long line of bobcat dogs it has ALL the traits to be a good coyote dog & vice versa. but despite being raised & trained they may well refuse to run what you're trying to run & only run the game their great grandparents' grandparents were TRAINED to run. some dogs will run anything you train them on others will only run what their heart tells them to and no amount of correction will change them. not every line will do this & not every dog in lines known for it will do it. but you can get dogs w/ 20+ generations of bobcat dogs behind them & all you have to do is take them to the woods in good cat country & they will train themselves as well or better than you could. in such cases over time a learned or trained trait becomes genetic.

I'm not missing your point, you're missing mine. The reason a dog won;t run a different type of game isn't because their parents and grandparents were trained to run it, it's that that is what they have been bred to run. Sure, they have all the makings of hunting other types of game, all except the drive/desire to run other types. If they won't run a coyote after being bred to run a bobcat, that doesn't mean they learned to not run coyote through breeding. It means the desire/drive to run coyote has been bred out of them, intentionally or not.

Learned traits cannot be passed on genetically any more than acquired physical traits.