Dog breeding

[Mahonri]

Oh and FYI... She was born June 6th, 2005.
He was born almost 3 years ago. (Jan)

Last time she saw the vet for shots (Less than a year ago), hips, elbows, heart and eyes are all good. The breeder in Missouri says there is no cancer in her lines.
She is a very healthy active dog that loves to go on walks and "retrieve".

I wish we would have had her spayed from day one but the kids BEGGED us not to do it as she is so beautiful and they felt her genes needed to be preserved.

She has cost us thousands already. She cost us over $1500 as a pup and to get all the papers etc...

It's sad, but I'm allergic to her and yet I feel I'm the one that spends the most time with her.... so I suffer.
She truly is beautiful, looks out for the chickens, lets them walk all over her when they are free ranging... she even attacked a hawk that came down after the chickens once!

I've just spent the last hour explaining to the 14 year old and the 8 & 10 year olds why we cannot do this.

When I told them they would never be able to sell the extras and that I will not keep more than two dogs and that they might end up in a shelter and destroyed, they started to see the light.

We went through some of those adds that were posted and they were sad about so many that can't find homes. ... and then I told them about the dogs that go to rescues and end up destroyed... I think that's where I finally caught their attention.

I'll be setting up an appointment tomorrow to have our Lilly spayed and then we won't be worrying about breeding anymore.

I am grateful for all of the advise. Kids beg and beg and beg and I kept saying no and then their mom gave in... anyway, the dogs are separated and "Bear" will go back to north Phoenix tomorrow.

Thanks again.

 

[bock]

 

[BlacksheepCardigans]

She sounds like a lovely dog. And lovely dogs are a huge blessing.

I'll tell you something that every breeder eventually finds to be true, though - you never EVER get your dog in his or her offspring. Everybody wants that - a piece of their precious dog, a fight against his or her mortality - and it never works. I've bred females I *adored* and kept their daughters and barely was able to tolerate them. I've bred females I didn't feel a particular attachment to and their kids have been some of my absolute favorites. When we breed, we're working like crazy to try to repeat the physical and mental qualities of the girl and, if we're very lucky, even improve on them. But that's all - we can get the body, can even sometimes get the mind, but you do not get the soul.

It's honestly, when it comes down to that level of attachment or that "just a dang good dog" thing that we all love, a little like your kids. You may see tiny bits of your wife in one of your kids, but it's not like you got HER, right? And she'd never say that she had kids with you in order to get you again, only this time as a baby.

You are honestly, truly, more likely to get one of those mystical great matches between human and dog by purchasing or rescuing a dog than you are by breeding one. I don't know if you can use this to comfort your kids, but it really is the truth. If you had kept one of your puppies you would have had a new puppy, which IS a great thing, but you wouldn't have had any guarantee that it would be a good match.

An older girl turning five is a fantastic age to bring in a new puppy, though, if you're ready for one, and will give your kids the fun to look forward to that they may feel has been shut down now. You may want to give them the experience of rescuing one or you may want to give them the lesson of how to buy a really great one, but it could become a really joyful time because you'll be doing the right thing.

One other thing - lots and lots of good breeders keep blogs now. My last litter had a webcam, pictures updated at least three or four times a week and the buyers knew the babies from the moment they were born until the day they picked up their baby at the airport. Local buyers visited once a week or more. So your kids could have the puppy-raising experience, if they wanted it, without the depth of responsibility.

 

[RiverOtter]

Quote:
Sweetie, I applaud your decision.
Just know that if you did go through with it, your kids would cry anyway.
Best case scenario - they'd cry when the pups left. Every kid would have a different favorite and you can imagine the heartbreak and "It's not fair!"s from all of them when choosing time came and they could only keep one. Think wailing of Biblical proportions and potentially lifelong grudges that "he got to keep his dog, they sold mine"

Quite likely, they would cry when a puppy died. Bill Tarrant (look him up) wrote that if you raise 90% of every litter, you're doing durn well. And if you think you're raising more then 90% of every litter - you aren't keeping records. From still birth to birth defects to parvo. For every person who blows this off because Fluffy had a litter just fine - there's another like the poster here who lost the whole litter to parvo.

And worst case scenario, they'd be crying because they lost their girl. It happens. Maybe not often, but there are plenty of breeders of high dollar dogs who just automatically do c-sections so as to not take the chance. And every once in a while they still loose one.

So take a deep breath and realize that this will give you the LEAST amount of crying possible - and the tears will disappear should you tell them that you're going back to the breeder of your dog to just buy a pup. Which is honestly the easiest, cheapest and most hassle free way to get one. Because honestly, dog breeders are nuts. I can say this, because I train dogs and horses, and horse trainers are nuts. I am one, and I admit it. A good breeder loses money, a good trainer knows they will be hurt, and there is a twig loose somewhere that makes us ok with that and makes life easier for you.

 

[onecent]

Im so glad you made the decision not to breed, i just found this on the internet its so sad but true!

Letter from a shelter manager

I think our society needs a huge “Wake-up” call. As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all…a view from the inside if you will.

First off, all of you breeders/sellers should be made to work in the “back” of an animal shelter for just one day. Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don’t even know.

That puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it’s not a cute little puppy anymore. So how would you feel if you knew that there’s about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at? Purebred or not! About 50% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays”, that come into my shelter are purebred dogs.

The most common excuses I hear are; “We are moving and we can’t take our dog (or cat).” Really? Where are you moving too that doesn’t allow pets? Or they say “The dog got bigger than we thought it would”. How big did you think a German Shepherd would get? “We don’t have time for her”. Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs! “She’s tearing up our yard”. How about making her a part of your family? They always tell me “We just don’t want to have to stress about finding a place for her we know she’ll get adopted, she’s a good dog”.

Odds are your pet won’t get adopted & how stressful do you think being in a shelter is? Well, let me tell you, your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off. Sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy. If it sniffles, it dies. Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it. If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers in that day to take him/her for a walk. If I don’t, your pet won’t get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose. If your dog is big, black or any of the “Bully” breeds (pit bull, rottie, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door.

Those dogs just don’t get adopted. It doesn’t matter how ‘sweet’ or ‘well behaved’ they are.

If your dog doesn’t get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed. If the shelter isn’t full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed it may get a stay of execution, but not for long . Most dogs get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression. Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment. If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don’t have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment.

Here’s a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being “put-down”.

First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look like they think they are going for a walk happy, wagging their tails. Until they get to “The Room”, every one of them freaks out and puts on the brakes when we get to the door. It must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there, it’s strange, but it happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs depending on the size and how freaked out they are. Then a euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They will find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the “pink stuff”. Hopefully your pet doesn’t panic from being restrained and jerk. I’ve seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood and been deafened by the yelps and screams. They all don’t just “go to sleep”, sometimes they spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves.

When it all ends, your pets corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back with all of the other animals that were killed waiting to be picked up like garbage. What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? You’ll never know and it probably won’t even cross your mind. It was just an animal and you can always buy another one, right?

I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head I deal with everyday on the way home from work.

I hate my job, I hate that it exists & I hate that it will always be there unless you people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter.

Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes.

My point to all of this DON’T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!

Hate me if you want to. The truth hurts and reality is what it is. I just hope I maybe changed one persons mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say “I saw this and it made me want to adopt”. THAT WOULD MAKE IT WORTH IT

 

[Hound]

Good call. We're at the tail end of raising a litter, they started leaving last week and the rest will be on their way in the next week or so. I couldn't begin to tell you how time consuming they have been. It's a labor of love, but I just don't see how anyone with a full-time job could raise a litter well. The first couple of weeks weren't so bad, when momma took care of everything, but I still couldn't leave them for any amount of time. At 5 weeks plus the chaos really began. Cleanup takes an hour a day. They eat 3-4 times a day, and it's not just a case of putting food down and leaving it. I'd say it takes 20-30 mins per meal. We go through 6 puppy pads a day, and that's just from them sleeping inside at night. Vaccines cost $100. They eat 40lbs of puppy food A WEEK! It truly is insane. Both parents were health tested, neither ever suffered from or showed signs of entropion (and the breed is not particularly inclined to the condition either), but at 8 weeks two of the puppies began to show signs and may well need surgery. The cost is approximately $300 per dog. In one case the new owners want the puppy regardless and we will take the cost of the surgery off the purchase price. The other puppy is to go to a friend of ours as a gift, but we'll probably have to spring for the surgery too. If we'd had more of the litter with the condition it would truly have been a nightmare, both financially and in terms of finding homes.

They've all found perfect homes, but that's been a lot of hard work and i'd guess that less than 10% of inquiries amounted to anything. Our breed is somewhat unusual, so some people were misinformed about their purpose (and therefore the breed wouldn't have been a good choice). They've all got homes that know the breed, but the majority of new owners had been looking for a puppy for quite some time. I'd imagine with the more popular breeds the difficulty is that those puppies are more plentiful so they are actually harder to sell.

I'm on both sides of the fence on this. The only dog I have purchased was for SAR, because I decided that with the time investment required it made sense to get a dog I knew was bred for the job. I have always had rescue dogs, I never had a wish to breed, but my husband did. My attitude was that if we were going to do this we were going to do it right. I honestly feel that they are a great litter, but I don't think i'd feel so good about it if they were a more common breed. They're going to be doing a specific job and there is only one of their breed in a pound in this state. Yes we brought more dogs into the world, but they aren't the type that someone could have got from a shelter instead. If we have another litter it won't be for a couple of years. I'd rather have a lot of demand for a few dogs than saturate the market. We really have been blessed with the homes they have gone to, but if I wasn't happy with where they were going i'd have felt dreadful about the whole affair.

I now see I was naive about the puppy health issue. The thought never crossed my mind, I thought healthy parents could only produce healthy puppies. I knew that their mother may have vet expenses related to the pregnancy and labor, but it's not until now that I realized what a dreadful predicament it could have been. It's just typical too that strays can produce litters without an issue, and those who try to be responsible run into problems.

 

[BlacksheepCardigans]

Quote:
I don't want to totally hijack the thread, but this kind of stuff bugs me. I AM a breeder, and I DO do rescue. As do the majority of all good breeders. I have stood in the back rooms of shelters and pounds and I come home and I look at pedigrees and plan the next litter.

Good breeders make sure their dogs never end up in rescue. You can TRY to give up one of my dogs to a shelter, but I'll slam you for thousands of dollars in liquidated damages. My puppies must always come back to me, 100% of the time. My contract is absolutely standard among my peers.

The numbers are wrong too - three million dogs and cats are killed each year. Nowhere near 50% of them are purebreds. In many areas of the country the adoption rate is over 90%. In the Northeast, there are literally zero puppies or healthy small dogs in the shelters; they are brought up in truckloads from the southern shelters to meet the demand up here. Of all the thousands of dogs I see on a monthly basis entering the shelters here, I see perhaps one or two genuinely well-bred purebreds (identifiable as from show-bred or good field-bred lines) a year. And those usually generate a minor crisis in the show-breeder world as we try to figure out what owner dumped a dog and work to get it back as soon as possible.

I devote a huge amount of time and quite a bit of money to rescue, and I have never felt that it was wrong to breed dogs or cats. The responsibility breeders have is to 1) make sure that your puppies never hit rescue, and 2) make sure that you're not competing with rescue. If you create the same thing that is already in the shelter - unpredictable type, no proven ability, little to no support - you really are filling a home that should be rescuing. You have to make sure your homes are the ones who really do need a well-bred dog and who would not be OK with a rescue dog.

Mahonri realized that his family wasn't going to be producing something that's not available in a shelter, and he shut down the decision. That is a fantastic move, but it's not because nobody should be breeding. It's not even that HE shouldn't be breeding. It's just not this dog, this time. The world still desperately needs good breeders producing and supporting great dogs.

 

[Carols Clucks]

Thank you for reading the replies and making that choice.

So many people think that they can breed their dog and make some quick cash. And yes you can, but only if you don't do the very things you want out of a puppy you purchased.

I have a cocker spaniel, if you saw his akc pedigree (mostly red CH's on it) you would think that he would be a great stud dog. I have been asked many times by random people and breeders that should know better. But I would never breed him and we made sure of that when he was young. As he ages, I know he has allergies and knee problems that would be passed to his puppies. I suspect he would not pass an offa test and pray he never get glaucoma or cataracts. I would hate to put another family in a financial hardship because I sold a puppy just to make a few bucks.

For those of you thinking maybe you just wont post when you breed your dog think about this:

To be a responsible breeder means researching the dogs Pedigree (and knowing the difference between the other registries and AKC) Not just looking at the pedigree, but talking to the owners of those dogs on that paper and asking about the dogs health as they aged. You can look up offa/cerf records online.

Health testing is NOT a quick visit to the vet. OFFA for hips requires a good xray and has to be read by their vet. Patellas and elbows should be xrayed and certified. Their eyes checked as well and certified (Cerf). Depending on breed, there are other tests as well. Those are all tests that cost money.

Your dog should meet the breed standards for temperament and confirmation. Not just your idea of what the standard might be, but what it really is. And a dog with a bad temperament has no business passing those genes along.

If you do it right, you will loose lots of money and a few months of your life caring for those puppies. If your making money, chances are your skipping a few important things.

By spaying your dog, you are reducing the chance of breast cancer and a few other health issues. By neutering you are helping your dog to stay on your property and not wandering off and getting hurt or killed hunting for females.


Even if you do everything right, genetics can throw you a curve ball. I have a friend that did everything right. Turns out that something in the combo threw bad patellas, really bad patellas. How would you feel if you knew your relative/neighbor you sold that puppy to for a good price now has a $6,000 vet bill for 2 knee surgeries? Can they afford that? Can you afford that x all the puppies in that litter? My friend did the testing, but if you skip it, your not less likely to have problems, just less likely to know about first.

Once again THANK YOU for showing your kids what it really means to be a good dog owner!

 

[farmchick897]

I agree with BlackSheep, at my local shelter I would say only 5% of the dogs look like some recognizable pure breed and those are the ones more often than not that are adopted or found pure breed rescues to take them, sparing them from being euthanized. Regardless, good breeders don't allow their puppies to go to shelters. Dogs found at puppy Mills and from breeders who have only the goal of making money are typically ones found at rescues and then you are getting health problems on top of behavior problems too. Puppy mills don't test their dogs for any kind of genetic defects. There are a LOT of puppy mills out there and they are producing the highest number of pure bred dogs on the market today. I think a person who has a family dog in good health who wants a litter for his children to see is NOT our nations problems. These are not the dogs found at shelters and rescues. And trying to scare him with huge vet bills and cost of raising a litter with absurd prices, come on.. The mother dog and her 3 pups I rescued from the shelter cost me about 200 bucks (probably not even that) to raise, vaccinate and to get the mother dog spayed afterwards. Not to mention all 3 pups were neutered before adoption too. Not all the vets rip you off. And if your cost of raising a litter is accurate how are these puppy mills making money??

 

[scrambledmess]

I think that is an amazing idea to take the familly to some shows, talk to other breeders/owners, maybe your boys will really get the bug and you have helped them down a new path. Good luck to you and your family