I so agree with you Rosemary . Sams paternal lineage is littered with many FTCH , whereas his maternal lineage has only a couple . However, his Mum can and does work , all day if necessary , but is essentially a family dog , an all rounder I guess . I truly don't care about labels , I wanted a dog with a sound temperament , from health checked parents and who I personally liked the look of . I wont ever have another puppy, but if I were younger and wanted another , I would most likely get another Millie , a mongrel
- no the dog under discussion is a champion, she is Best of Breed at Crufts, whether we agree with the judging standard, deviation from breed standard or not.
There really is no money in breeding and showing dogs. No money. They are not doing it for money. It's all about belief in the breed (yes, even the GSD breeders really care about and love the breed and 100% do think that their dogs look perfect!!) and also about gaining social status in a valued community (your breed community)...plus it's a hobby just like any other hobby....they enjoy it...and it's partly about wanting to win, to improve, to strive for something. All normal, explicable human behaviours. What Pippa is saying about it is 100% right. All those people out there with registered Labradors who are wanting to get rid of showing and breeding for show.... Showing and breeding for show is why we are able to have any Labradors at all. Labradors were invented by people who wanted to create a new breed with a certain look (no, Labradors were not just bred for function...) and who established breeding kennels to try to cement that look and who competed based on the look of the dog and who wrote the breed Standard that sets out to document and preserve the desired look of the dog. I think one solution is having independence in judging, so that judges are not breeders and are not members of breed clubs. But who else knows enough about a breed other than someone who is interested enough to be a breeder or a breed club member? And who will pay for these judges? I can't think of any non-interested (as in 'no conflict of interest' or 'no material interest') party who'd front up money for this. The whole show world runs on volunteer labour. Judges are just volunteers. Maybe they get paid a token amount at the highest levels. But at all other levels they are just plain old volunteers who have put their own time, effort and money into learning enough to become a judge.
I'm really starting to wonder if the whole pedigree dog thing is not totally flawed, and ultimately likely to fail.
Yes, I think it is - eventually. But I think only the closed registers need go (and I'm beginning to think they are not necessary). But that would make the definition of the breed, the core characteristics that make (eg) a Labrador and Labrador, even more important. I think we should be able to rely on an understanding and definition of 'Labrador' rather than a register anyway.
This is a very interesting discussion! I don't know enough about dog breeding, show dogs, breed standards, etc to really have any intelligent comment. I just think it is such a shame that people have become so deluded in their "breed blindness" to not see that their dogs are becoming freakish caricatures of their original breed standards. The problem is multi-layered, I fear, and will take some doing to get fixed, if it is even possible. The thing with showing is that there has to be "winners" and "losers", and so faced with many dogs who are all bred to standard the judge still has to pick one winner. So if that dog has a slightly larger head or longer legs than the others or whatever suddenly that becomes desirable. Anyhow you all know this but I just don't see how you can get around that particular problem.
Yes, exaggeration of characteristics is a fundamental problem. The idea that if broad head is good then an even broader head must be better... With Labradors, for example, we see the term 'barrel chested' much misunderstood. What it means is that a cross-section of the dog through the rib cage, left to right, should be round, like the cross section of a barrel. Not like an egg, or a tall oval, but like a circle. That's all it means. It's just meant to distinguish the Labrador look from the narrow, taller ribcage of hounds and setters. But I think people interpret it to mean that the whole front end of the dog should be as massive as possible - the size of a barrel! No, it definitely shouldn't be. Outcrossing (which I support) isn't needed in Labradors to improve the adherence to the Standards. There is enough variation in looks in the breed already to get back to more moderate dogs all round. But that's not to say outcrossing couldn't help with genetic issues in Labradors (as long as it was carefully done to avoid bringing in new problems). There are many breeds that have got to the point where they do need outcrossing to save them in the looks department, like anything squash faced.....
I agree on some points, but i have to disagree about the "there really is no money in breeding" since if you're a serious breeder you need to do control, buy medicine, food and ofcourse attend to dog show to make your dogs visible to the public etc, fine with me especially since they do try to improve the breed and that's the most beautiful thing about dogs, but as you might know where there's money there's also certain type of people who only cares about money and will do anything to get them. Here in Italy mafia controls a part of the dog show so you're most likely not to win if you don't have the right "acquaitances" and there's more, good looking dogs found to carry genetic diseases who keeps winning and do tons of litters, dogs with bad temperament, missing breed traits etc, i can keep going but it's just the same stuff over and over. In this case of the gsd winner there might be a "breeder blindness" and i agree with it but don't rule out altogether that there might not be a money issue behind it as well
Sorry, Peter, I wasn't that clear. I meant that breeders do not tend to make a profit from breeding puppies, due to the expenses involved in keeping dogs and breeding and raising pups. Well, reputable breeders anyway who put the effort and money into caring for their dogs/pups properly. So, there are a lot of expenses, and not a lot of profit. That's what I meant
