Definitely something with a mind to the old school. I have a big problem with the legacy of what the Victorians started with their eugenics and the weaknesses that inhere in show breeds as a consequence. So even on a health basis alone I'm going with some sort of cross.
..........That cross needs to have a number of features 1] athleticism on a dynamics to weight ratio. 2] tenacity without being over hard eg: a terrier working underground that doesn't stop and give tongue at a quarry it can't overwhelm is a liability, or worse, dead. 3] it's got to be smart smart enough to work from it's own initiative but also tractable. [kids can be taught to fetch and carry, that pretty basic, I require better from a dog]............I have a huge fondness for lurchers and longdogs so whatever it is it is going to be some kind of build drawing from that pool. A pure sight hound is no good to me, they have a canine version of bird brain. Whilst the flat out catching-up-to prowess of a greyhound is awesome to behold, and so effective under some circumstances that in the dark ages they were banned for all but nobility, or hobbled by having toes cut off, they arent very well rounded. The commoner's ban defeating version crossing a greyhound with a cattle dog, the lurcher, has been the typical poachers dog that filled the pot during the long affray between the stuffed shirts and the hungry. It would be quite acceptable to me to stop at this point, cross a greyhound with a Welsh Hill Collie and call that good......................That said, I'd meddle will the recipe further. The dog I lost two weeks ago was truly excellent. He was a mix of lurcher * deerhound. Too big to fulfill the brief here as accurately as I can but offers an excellent gist. He was extremely intelligent and gave nothing away to well known smart dogs like German Shepherds in that respect. [I grew up surrounded by German Shepherds because of stuff my parents were into, and I've meddled with a lot of dogs since so I have very high standards and a low tolerance for idiocy]. He'd fetch and carry like a gundog if that's what I wanted him to do. Although he was too big to be optimized for bunny bagging he'd take those reliably enough. In fact as a testaminet to his skills in that department if I can be bothered I might post up a pic of one he took two weeks after having a front leg amputated. And that's massive surgical for a dog of his size. As the vet said at the time it's not like a small dog with their little chicken wings that just pop out. Never the less there he stands with his kill, shaved down one flank and with a row stitches in like a shark got him, loving his work. And here's a key too, he learned real quick to work smarter 'cos he could not be as fast as he was. Anecdotes about lurchers becoming extremely sagacious in their senescence as they loose speed are legion. Seeing it happen in such an accelerated way over a period of a few weeks was phenomenal. Back to the plot though and I can say that he'd take small deer if the law was irrelevant, no doubt about it. I've never encouraged him to do it because I like them but seeing him hit into foxes at full tilt isnt something you easily forget. Harder to forget was a mistake on my part during his early training he hit into a sheep a full power, both rolled down hill out of sight into a river, only he came out. If he'd ever worked as part of a brace or trio with others of his ilk I'm confident they'd take a stag. The stag would just break it's own neck. It came as no surprise to me to see some Australian dogs similar to him but with a bunch of mastiff wound in hunting pigs..................That said, if we were down to the you can only have one type scenario I'd say go smaller. As anthropologists tell us, it's all very well the men going off for their trophy kills and some chest beating on the trapline, but it is her indoors doing the daily grind of feeding the kids that's doing the real donkey work. She is catching small stuff successfully over and over again day in day out with certainty and once every so often he snags a giraffe and claims the bragging rights. Same thing applies to my opinion of rifles come to that. I could go out from here with a pocket full of 270 win everyday for a week and not guarantee coming back with anything more significant than badly battered rabbits. And supposing I did get a deer kill every time it wouldn't take long before I had exhausted all the available and needed to relocate. Similarly, there are pitfalls in loading up a dog's attributes to shine mostly at the big kills only. I'd want something that was good for modest sized stuff but was also a good vermin grabber.........In conclusion, if I were to custom build something on a pound for pound basis it would be something like a Collie * Greyhound * Bedlington. The Collie provides the brains and the stamina. The Greyhound [or Whippet] gives it the vision and the speed. The Bedlington is no slouch on speed, fantastic round water, not too stupid for a terrier, and has the heart of a lion. That would give a compact package that would feed me more than I fed it. Yeah, I want a superfast cunning jackal that can adapt more than a wolf that looks good in the poster. Rogues and running dogs, they've got hundreds of years of proven.
