12/05/2025
Your Friday Tidbit: Passing On The Torch
There’s a strange thing about life: we often think we understand something long before we actually live it. Some people go their whole lives without ever feeling the truth of it.
I’ve known men who poured everything into a business—years, sweat, sacrifice—only to realize, at the end, that they had built it too well. Their children never came up under the same passion. They chased their own dreams, as they should, but it left these men standing at retirement with no one to hand the keys to. The lights shut off, the doors closed, and the legacy faded because there was no one left to carry the flame. No one to receive the torch.
Old breeders used to tell me the same thing happens in dogs. “It’s hard to find one that can pass the torch,” they’d say. A dog born with the rare mix of talent, temperament, heart, and grit to equal—maybe even surpass—its sire or dam. Some breeders spent entire lifetimes searching and never found that next one. Their programs slowly drifted backward, and eventually, the spark that began it all dimmed.
In 2024, that lesson hit me harder than I ever imagined.
Journey—my foundation sire, my once-in-a-lifetime fox red male—was turning ten. And suddenly, like a bucket of cold water, I realized I had never kept a son from him. Not one. And worse… not even a Journey daughter.
People all across the country were enjoying Journey pups—my close friends, clients, hunting partners. Folks were raising the exact dogs I should have been holding back for my future. I remember feeling this strange mix of joy for them and jealousy for myself. It rattled me. Time wasn’t on my side anymore.
So I made a decision that only a breeder with his back against the wall can make.
I kept six Journey sons.
For the next year and a half, I lived in a constant state of evaluation—watching, comparing, studying, making painful decisions one by one as I narrowed the group down. I wasn’t looking for a “nice dog.” I was looking for the one who could take the torch and run with it.
And that dog revealed himself.
THE BLAST’s Red Wingman — “Swag.”
From early on, Swag moved with a confidence that wasn’t taught—it was inherited. He had Journey’s brain, his looks, his charisma, his natural gifts. There was an energy about him that made the others, good as they were, fade into the background.
As Swag came alive, something in me did too.
For years, I carried the fear that one morning I’d wake up and Journey would be gone… and I would have failed him. Failed to preserve what he was. Failed to honor what he gave me.
Swag became the antidote to that fear.
At almost twelve years old, it was finally time for Journey to pass the torch. People assume that moment is easy—“just pick the best pup.” But it’s not like that. For the torch to be truly passed, the next dog must hold their own under the weight of expectation. They must be as talented—or just a shade better—so people will say, without hesitation, “Oh yeah… that’s his son.”
Swag has risen to that challenge.
Owning a stud dog is unlike anything else. You don’t know if he’s truly a great producer until late in his life. A real stud isn’t defined by the ribbons he wins—it’s by the puppies he produces. Not one great pup. Many. Across many females. You don’t know the truth until those pups are four, five, six years old.
Journey has proven himself time and time again.
He is, without question, a top producer.
But even now, with Swag being everything I hoped for in the next generation, the final question can only be answered by time:
Can he produce like his sire?
That thought puts a lump in my throat. The end is near for Journey’s breeding years. He has been everything I dreamed of when I set out to build the fox red legacy of Wingmasters and THE BLAST.
But that lump is always replaced by something stronger—joy. Because I get to watch Journey live on through his own son. Through Swag. Through the pups that will follow. Through the future that now feels secure.
And there’s a beautiful irony in all of it…
Because on your spiritual “Journey,” isn’t that the calling anyway?
To live… through the Son.
Wingmasters
Michael D Vaughn
