Beauty and/or the Beast (aka, Which Came First, the Pretty or the Brains?)- Part 2

Hopefully I made it clear in the first part of this series, but just in case I didn’t, I am NOT picking on working dogs. I love me a dog that can work stock. I have never said that if a dog can work it wouldn’t do well in the show ring, but there are a lot of people that say if a dog can do well in conformation it can’t work stock (which makes no sense!). What I was picking on was breeding for any one trait exclusively at the expense, or apathy, of other important traits. Whether that “all important” trait is working ability, head, coat, color, etc, it can’t be idealized to the point that the dog as a whole suffers because of that focus.

On the other hand comes the question, can you be breeding to preserve the breed, and use dogs that don’t show that instinct? In my case this is herding, so I will probably just refer to it as such, but you can substitute hunting, pulling, etc. I don’t have the perfect answer to that question but here’s what I do know, if I’m looking at the whole picture of a dog I am not going to automatically include or exclude a certain dog on herding instinct alone.

If I come across a dog in my program that isn’t showing the level of working ability I’d like to see in a dog, I would have to seriously consider whether or not to breed that dog, but I wouldn’t make an immediate decision to take the dog out of my breeding program. In the past I thought perhaps I would, but the more I think about it, for what I want to do, I think that a dog showing low or maybe even no instinct would be a similar situation to me as a dog with an ugly head or not enough coat . It’s something I would try to breed back in, but I would hate to take out an otherwise good dog that could have something to contribute. That’s the point where I have to balance, and I don’t think that herding instinct means more or less than any of my other priorities. Instinct is important, and I certainly want to preserve it, but it is not the be all end all of my breeding program.

I know some people might think that is wrong, and that’s really okay because this is nothing other than pure opinion, but what I’ve really had to look at is also creating a dog that can best fit into the world I put it into. The honest to goodness fact of the matter is that the majority of my dogs are going to be heading into pet, performance, or serious show homes. Most of those homes are not going to have the resources and/or desire to have a true working dog that has energy and drive to work stock every single day. If they wanted a dog like that, they probably wouldn’t be looking at me anyway because most of the really serious working dog people either breed their own dogs or buy them from someone on another ranch… none of those “foofy show dogs” for them.

While I certainly would hope and expect that my dogs could hold their own in the herding trial world if their owners choose to do that venue, a trial dog is still not a working dog (and that is a whole other can of worms I’m not getting in to). There is very little need for true working dogs in our modern society, and to create a dog that has the drive of a real working ranch dog and placing those dogs into family homes would be miserable for the dogs and the families. I would much rather create a moderate dog with an off switch.

As I’ve said before, my opinion might change in the future after I’ve seen what my efforts produce, but for now, my ultimate goals is moderation in all aspects. Moderate coat, moderate bone, moderate drive. If I can come close to that, I think I can be happy.

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Beauty and/or the Beast (aka, Which Came First, the Pretty or the Brains?)- Part 1

Just to clarify, this is NOT going to be a post about what is more important, physical attributes or working ability. There are a lot of people who know a whole lot more about dogs than I do to fight that fight every day. I don’t care to. I think both are important. And besides, I’m not a fighting kind of gal.

What I do hope to accomplish is to sort through some of my own thoughts on the subject as it pertains to breeding decisions I might one day make. And then you, lovely readers, can tell me if I’m way off base, or said something semi-intelligent, or have no earthly clue what I’m talking about (because, let’s face it, I don’t).

At herding class on Saturday the topic came up, as it always seems to when you get a group of very serious dog people together, whether it is more “right” to breed for working ability or for “show dogs” (please see the post right before this to understand what my definition of a show dog is). My herding instructor said, “I don’t care if you want to show your dogs, that’s fine, but it absolutely has to take a backseat to working ability or you can’t be breeding a good dog.” I think this statement dovetails nicely into something that was on Ruffly Speaking this morning, and that’s where I want to go into a little more depth.

To me, having a breed of dog that is meant to do a certain kind of work, actually be able to do that work, is an important part of preserving a breed. So, for Australian Shepherds, I want to be able to keep herding instinct, or I think I lose some of what is the Australian Shepherd. But to say that this is always the most important attribute, even at the cost of other parts of the dog, I just can’t see that. I think that is just as dangerous as saying that you must always breed for coat or head or any other singular attribute above all else.

Imagine I have a dog with a gorgeous head. His head is the epitome of what a dog of his breed’s head should look like. When you see his head in silhouette, you immediately know what breed he is because his head is that perfect.  He has a pretty bad front, but his head his so amazingly wonderful that when judges see it they are taken aback and they love him. I think heads are an important part of breed type and if you lose that nice head, you might as well just have any old dog, so I breed him to a bitch with the nicest head I can find. She kind of has a bad front too, but her head is to die for. I keep the puppy with the best head, even though she inherited that bad front from both of her parents.

I continue this cycle of breeding decisions for generations. The heads on my dogs are the envy of the breed world. But I’m starting to notice that some of my offspring are breaking down young. They are getting arthritis. The ones competing in agility get injured a lot. After a couple of generations I have the prettiest heads, but winning in the ring isn’t so easy anymore because the structure of the body has taken such a backseat in my priorities that my dogs no longer have the body to move nicely or stand square. My dogs can’t compete in the veteran classes of conformation because their poor bodies have usually given out on them by age 7 or 8.

How ludicrous would I be if I bred dogs like that?! People would be telling me left and right to stop the madness and balance my priorities. That to breed for heads, and only heads, was hurting my dogs. A lot of people, especially working dog people, DO say this about dogs in the conformation ring. Now stop for a minute and think. How is that any different than saying I should only be focusing on breeding for working ability?

If I am breeding solely for working ability above everything else, what is to stop me from breeding in structural faults? Or rather, because no one would intentionally breed an unsound dog, what is to keep me accountable for making sure my dogs are structurally sound? Just because a dog can mentally do its historical job doesn’t mean that its body structure has been maintained in such a way that the physical makeup of the dog allows it to do its job in the most efficient way possible. I don’t think that you can elevate working ability above everything else and say that is the one and only way to breed the best dog. Now, because breeding for working ability usually dictates that dogs do work, they will probably have structure at least good enough to be able to get the job done and not be injured every other day; but if the breeding decisions are made with no thought to anything but working ability, can you really say that the dog has the most efficient, sound structure possible? Probably not.

Again, this is all my opinion, and I may look back after 30 years of breeding and say to myself, “Oh boy, did I have it all wrong.” But I really think that to be getting the dog most true to the breed, the best possible dog you can, you have to be breeding for multiple things. You have to have priorities, and I think you have to be able to juggle those priorities sometimes.

The order of prioritizing and the act of juggling is where I start to have a lot of doubts, and where my opinions truly become my opinions, so I’m not going to go into that here. More on that tomorrow…

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Responsiblity in Breeding (and Breeding Stock) Choices

I had a discussion last night over fried cheese sticks and spinach-artichoke dip (yum!) with a friend of mine about the ethics of choosing to breed a dog. I was outlining this and that and saying things like “If I bred a dog that was XYZ, it probably wouldn’t crop up in a puppy but what if it did? Even just one puppy… am I willing to take responsibility for that one puppy with an issue?” Her eyes got kind of big as she listened to all the considerations I had just for a litter of cute, wiggly, puppies. I laughed and explained that’s why you were better off buying from a serious, responsible breeder, even if it costs more money, than some ad in the paper for cheap puppies… we actually care about these things (can I even say “we” when I’ve never bred before?).

All of this got me thinking about my own decisions in choosing a foundation bitch. Obviously if I want to only breed the very best, I need to start with only the very best. The problem is that sometimes the very best can take different forms. Take for example a litter of puppies I saw about a month ago.

They are from a particular line that has a reputation for producing really nice, really winning Aussies. The litter is actually from a different, smaller breeding program here in Oklahoma, but the pedigree itself is straight from this other really big name. The dam finished her AKC CH in one weekend with three 5 point majors (for those of you who don’t know dog shows that is a really big deal, and for those of you who do know dog shows but don’t know Aussies, a 5 point major for Aussie bitches in this region requires something like 27 bitches). The dam’s dam finished in a very similar fashion. The puppies’ sire also finished quickly and is one of the nicest dogs I’ve ever seen in person. Just gorgeous. The puppies look to have it all, structure AND type.

Someone in dogs who I respect very, very much once told me that when buying a show/breeding puppy to go out and find the nicest dog I could, who I knew would finish as fast as possible (now to be fair, she certainly never meant to do this at the expense of health, as we’ll talk about shortly). These puppies, the ones held back for show homes anyway, definitely would seem to fit that bill if they live up to their pedigree, which I imagine they will.

Here’s where the balancing act comes in. I asked someone else who I love dearly and very much respect, who has 10 years of experience in the breed of Australian Shepherd, what she thought of the pedigree. Her first response was, “I love those lines.” Then very quickly she picked two dogs out of the pedigree three or four generations back and said, “That dog and that dog will never be in my pedigrees. Too many health issues.” This got me thinking about a lot of things.

Let’s say the dog behind the puppies’ pedigree is Bouncer and the issue of concern is Syringomyelia, or SM (it is not, I’m just pulling something out of the air here that doesn’t generally affect Aussies). SM is a serious disease and not one that I would wish on anyone’s dog, and certainly not one I would ever breed into my puppies if it was within my power. I certainly would never breed a dog that I knew to have SM. The risk of passing it along would be too high unless we knew genetically exactly what to breed him with to avoid the disease, which we don’t.

Bouncer does not have SM, but according to good sources, it seems to pop up in dogs that he’s behind for some reason. On the other hand, Bouncer has been bred a lot, so perhaps it’s just how he matches up with certain other pedigrees, and SM is bound to crop up when you have that much breeding going on. In fact, Bouncer, or one of his close relatives, crop up in a whole lot of pedigrees, so to stay completely away from those genes would be hard. The breeders of this particular litter of puppies, when asked about the occurrence of SM in these lines, don’t deny that it’s there, but say they have never once had a single dog with it and think it may have more to do with certain medications being given to dogs.

So the question becomes, am I comfortable enough with the chances of producing healthy puppies because these particular breeders haven’t seen SM to take that risk, or am I going to forgo a beautiful dog because of something that might be lurking there? The answer is a tough one to arrive at. When I go back to thinking about that conversation last night, the question becomes, “Am I willing to risk that even one puppy could have SM because of me?”  Of course, nothing is ever a certain, I could avoid all dogs with even a whisper of SM possibilities, avoid Bouncer’s lines like the plague, and still inadvertently end up with it in my puppies. But with this knowledge I do have, what is the best choice?

Ultimately, I’m leaning toward the “I’m not comfortable with that” end of the spectrum. Health is very important to me, and I want every single last one of my puppies to have the best chance at a long healthy life as I can give them. I won’t lie though, if that puppy I loved so much when I first saw her showed up on my doorstep with a bow around her neck, I don’t know that I could turn her down. There are so many what ifs on both sides, but I keep thinking about that moment when I get a call from an owner I’ve sold a puppy to saying, “My baby, who means the world to me, just got diagnosed with SM. What do I do?” Maybe it would never happen, but what if it did? Am I ready to take responsibility for that?

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