I agree with you. There are many, many considerations that a decent breeder has to take on board

yep - breeding well is fraught with difficulties and is impossible to make up generic 'rules' that will suit all breeds - it's all too easy to go with a hard line on supposed priorities but the reality is seldom that simple.

The most important thing is to stop the blame game when problems are discovered - if breeders are vilified for producing dogs with something like epilepsy for example they are more likely to hide such problems and refuse to take part in DNA testing etc - this is a disaster for any breed - we need honesty and a sharing of information - anyone who breeds for any length of time will have produced dogs with one problem or another at some point ( myself included ! ) - it's the nature of what we are dealing with....and the public needs to be realistic in their expectations of what breeders can do...the world is a different place now - when I bred my first litter 25 years ago there were no mandatory health tests and genes were something you wore when walking the dogs - now every year brings more and more advances in our kniowledge ..and with that comes even more complex choices .....the future is exciting in that we can at last work with geneticists to try and eliminate many health problems affecting our beloved breeds - but such solutions will inevitably have to be worked on a breed by breed basis and in many cases they will involve a degree of line breeding and and take at least 3-4 generations ...

Very much agree with this!

there are clear dogs ...and there are dogs with outstanding temperaments..and dogs with excellent hip and eye tests, and dogs with great construction and type and others with good working ability - and very occasionally there are dogs that have it all ...and the world and his wife beats a path to their door to use them !

.....we must have the 'wriggle room' that using carriers allows us if we are not to simply eliminate one problem and allow another to take it's place

Am I where did you pick that impression up from

Absolutely not - and the irony of your statements have not gone unnoticed!

Have we really got to a point where it is so difficult to find healthy, well adjusted dogs that look like the breed they are meant to be??

If so, we've stuffed up more than I ever thought we could

No I don`t think so...

In some breeds, Rough Collie's being one, I know from the mouths of quite a few breeders that juggling temperament, health, conformation and genetic diversity is quite a task. In fore mentioned breed lots of breeders are either importing, or biting the bullet and health testing and subsequently breeding at their own discression.
Hunter is out of a clear of CEA bitch but by a very slight (according to the relevant bodies) affected Dog (both had good hip scores and were clear for the MDR), the result were two clears, two carriers and two affected but believed if retested would be a go clear. But that said this litter had a MUCH lower COI than breed average and most others in the breed, with what is shaping up to eb great confirmation and sound temperaments.
In certain breeds, I can totally see why it's a weigh up of conscience and balancing the requirements of their breeding stock. In others however I can't see the need for it.
That said I'm entirely against studs being used too exessively either.

me too

Well appolagies if I have picked it up wrong but from the fact that you seem to suggest that my idea of breeding MORE dogs but taking less litters from each of them would mean breeding from unhealthy dogs
Which then leads me to believe that you think there is no problems with the method we currently have of overusing popular sires and heavily inbreeding from a much smaller number of dogs
If you have an alternative then please share it


I have seen a few blog posts that are pretty relivent to this thread so I thought I would share them here

This image is take from
http://pedigreedogsexposed.blogspot....-much-haw.html
The breeder is proud of these puppies because she has carefully bred to hopefully eliminate the chance of the puppies going blind from glucoma
She says that she would always pick not getting glucoma over 'a little too much haw' every time
Check the rest of the photos out poor puppies - but on paper they are healthy

http://www.astraean.com/borderwars/2...h-testing.html
Very good post here too