Okay I am not a breeder ( although may consider it, possibly, maybe if my next pup is a girly). I am not judging your decision as we all do the best with what we have and I don't know anything about your breed. I would ask though, could you not look further afield and consider using frozen semen from a suitable dog? That would help in many ways wouldn't it? Surely temperament, health, soundness etc all go together?
I know a top person in my breed with an amazing dog, fab lines, fab temperament, does well at shows, fit for function... Slightly high hip score ( and I mean slightly), the breeder opted not to breed the dog at all and I admire the breeder totally for it. Surely it has to be the whole picture?

Yes and I have looked into it. Frozen semen is not known for giving great results however. I did look into using chilled semen too, but having spoken with a breeder in Portugal I decided to purchase a puppy instead. They have all the same problems over there. Although they are not a rare breed, there are not a lot of show kennels around and many do not x ray. Of the ones that do I still couldn't find a suitable dog with a low score, they were all C and D. I found one dog in France that scored A but having spoken to a friend who met him I decided against it (he was not a friendly dog if you get my meaning). I looked at kennels in Holland too but found none with stud dogs (they usually drive the bitch to Portugal). Having weighed up my options I am using a UK dog on Rio then I'm going to import a stud dog from Portugal. The thing about hip scoring as well is that two low scoring dogs can produce high scoring pups, so until many generations of the same lines have been scored you don't get a real picture. And of course we don't know the true causes of HD either.

Just wanted to add - Ramble, your friend has been scoring her dogs over many generations I take it? I hope we will be in that position to make those kinds of decisions in a few years, but we're just not there yet. When just starting out with testing in a breed sometimes we have to use some dogs which may score a bit high, or be unscored, but with bitches who score very low etc. Hope that makes sense?

If I was to breed a litter of Malamutes in the future, the dog and bitch would BOTH have to score below the mean and have clear eye tests. There are lots and lots of quality health tested Malamutes out there so I wouldn't consider using anything else. Estrelas have a way to go before we are in that position. What we need first and foremost is more people interested in the breed and developing it in the UK.

I'm not into breeding, but wouldn't this make the breeders of 'uggles and 'oodles be more responsible? Wouldn't it stop the breeding of dogs - just because they can - because the breeders would need to select carefully and research both dog and bitch to be mated??? As said, I'm not into breeding, but it was the first thought that struck me

would it reduce gene pools or would it force breeders to outcross more and would outcrossing be a good thing if selection was carefully carried out to assist in keeping/bringing back healthy stock??

and will inspectors actually do something to uphold the standards? Enforcement is often more important that bringing in new protocols. Let's face it, if present breeding guidelines were followed, how many puppy farms (in the worst sense of the word) would already be closed and out of business?


I would hope that if they did enforce that bad breeders would eventually disappear. As for what the public would be prepared to do in respect of waiting and paying more - if there was no other option, then that's what would happen.

If all breeders followed the guidelines and testing was the norm for all dogs, would costs come down? Only thinking out loud, but I would have thought that the more something was used, the cheaper it became.

I like the general idea---but to expect the entire dogs to be out of auditory range you are pushing it a bit----basically you can't have entire dogs within a mile or more if bitches are in season.

This seems to have been written by people who don't realise that you can train a dog as well as breed from it.

rune

Loki's mum.. on my phone so quoting is tricky
Sounds like you are doing what you can but others in your breed need to be more proactive?
I asked re frozen semen because I know of a few breeders who have used it successfully ( Cosmo as a result has nieces and nephews in Canada which I find stupidly exciting!!! ) I haven't really heard of it being unsuccessful really, if stored and transported correctly?

Rune: it's not the training that is the issue I don't think, it's the stress levels of the dogs being in close proximity to a bitch in season?!

the thing with this is, i have an entire female, and two entire males in my house. when the female is in season, she goes upstairs out of the way. she is toileted in a separate garden to the boys, and is walked in different areas.

my boys, even though they could hear the bitch if she barked or made a noise, do not get stressed by it. they have been brought up with it and trained not to be bothered. they carry on as normal, they eat they play they sleep, they just dont have daphni joining them until shes out of season.

But dont entire dogs have to deal with in season bitches when competing (Think SB said that schutzhund dogs do)

There seems to be more importance placed on keeping a record of your cleaning routine than getting health tests done.

I know how often and when I do my cleaning do I really need to keep a record and I guess it would be easy to tell wether cleaning is done as routine or a quicky when you know someone is coming

Dont think most of these rules are practical. In a small gene pool the COI is always going to be higher, and surely the rules regarding seperating sexes will play into the hands of the large breeders who keep their dogs in out buildngs.