Dog Advisory Council - Proposed breeding standard/protocol

This has just been published on line - makes for interesting reading !!

http://dogadvisorycouncil.org.uk/the-reports/

View online: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q...TJMiYMrkjsok8A

Download file: http://dogadvisory.files.wordpress.c...3-2-clean.docx

I really can't believe all those experts took all that time to come up with this.

It looks good, great for commercial breeders and puppy farmers but maybe a tad stringent for those who breed occasional litters.

Things that stood out for me as not so great are :

24. Bitches must be mated to a dog when the Coefficient of Inbreeding (COI) of the resulting puppies as measured from a five generation pedigree would be lower than 12.5%.

I think that depends on your breed and the genepool you've got. Yes, we want to lower COIs but for example my bitch has a COI of 26.2% and she will be mated to a male that is partly outcrossed so the pups will have a COI of 14.7%, so it's going in the right direction. I hope to import a male in the future so the next generation will be a complete outcross.

18. The breeder must have a veterinary health plan for their dogs as agreed with their veterinary surgeon. As a minimum this must include an annual examination by the veterinary surgeon, vaccination, and regular treatment for external and internal parasites. All veterinary treatment must be recorded.

Again. brilliant for puppy farmers, but I don't want my dogs vaccinated yearly and treated with chemical pesticides.

13. Bitches in season must be kept out of visual and auditory range of entire males.

Not possible for someone like me, my dogs have to live together whether one of the girls is in season or not.

and this for kennel dogs:
d. The ambient temperature must be between 10oC and 26oC and records kept

Again, depends on the breed. 26 degrees is ridiculously high for some breeds, and even 10 degrees may not be a comfortable temperature for dogs with heavy coats.


All in all, some really good ideas, but they need different rules IMO for people with less breeding bitches or people who produce less than two litters per year.

I am afraid I will fail on the bed front as Cilla has to share her bed with us.

I can't find anything in there as a buyer that would seem too challenging.I think it is a good thing that things are being put down.Hopefully it will give councils more ammunition to tackle puppy farms etc......

It doesn't though.

Puppy farms aren't concerned about breeding co % because you need a 5 generation pedigree to do that.

They think it is important that your dog has its own bed when many dogs live in house and get on the settee rather than in any bed provided.

A lot of the other stuff is just common sense but impossible to police.

I will have to tell these dogs this is not allowed even though there are enough beds there for them to have one each.

awwwww at those pics. My Dan doesn't have a bed at all. He won't sleep in one or on anything squishy. It's the evil cold floor for him! I'm currently in the lounge where there is a large plastic basket type bed and a small donut bed and NONE of the dogs are in beds. Rogue is on the sofa and the rest have elected to sleep on the floor.

Well meannng but like most things the devil is in the detail :

..and how are all those designer cross breeders to comply with this ? - in order to calculate a COI's you need to have records of the dogs parentage going back many generations ! -

also there appears no 'joined up thinking' between that requirement and this one :

would this not reduce gene pools even more ?

Overall I think most KC ABS breeders will already meet all the criteria and most BYB's and puppy farmers will not -s o that has to be a good thing - of course the big problem will be in enforcing the standrds - will all breeders now be inspected ?

far less dogs will be bred from under this protocol - which again is a good thing but wil the public be prepared to wait and pay more for a puppy bred to DAC standards or will it simply push bad breeders underground where they will produce and sell pups 'on the cheap'

Totally agree with your point about reducing gene pools. In my (main) breed people do not routinely hip score. Many breeders are old school and doing things the way they always have done. This means it really difficult to find a stud dog that has ALL the requirements - type, temperament AND health tests in paper. If we only used scored dogs which had a score below the breed mean this would mean we would have probably 5 or 6 stud dogs to choose from in the whole UK, then we have to decide whether those dogs are the type to complement our bitch and have a suitable temperament etc. Having been in this position I could not find a single dog which met all these criteria, which means I would have to breed from a dog that was not to type or that was dog aggressive just to be able to say the sire is hip scored. Instead I have chosen a male who is not hip scored but has good type and temperament. Hopefully all subsequent generations will have both parents scored, but there may be the odd time when I use a dog with a score slightly over the breed mean. This is what you have to do to make progress. I have chosen temperament as my main concern, followed by type and soundness.