Breeders: What have YOU done to further your breed?

One of the most important reasons to breed, in my opinion, is that you do so in the hope of furthering/bettering the breed.

So my question to all breeders who come on to this site is, what have you done to further your breed?

Have you bred any champions? Regular winners? Do you even show your dogs at all?
Have your helped eradicate a bad trait, illness, or regularly occuring deformity?

Anything else?

And if not, why do you continue to breed? How do you justify breeding more animals when thousands are put to sleep every year?

I'm sorry if this is a hard hitting topic - just interested

I think that to measure that through show results is misleading, in most breeds it's "who you know, not what you bring in the ring" and there are some bad tempered, poorly constructed Champions in my breed, certainly - I can't speak for others.
There is a member on here who has two dogs bred by me, they have both been in the show ring (one was placed at Crufts three years running) but they are also turning in ground breaking results in agility, they were, in turn, the youngest to achieve the KC Good Citizen's award and are now doing carriage dog trials.
More imortantly, they are both entire yet have the most wonderful temperament and spend most of their time as well-loved pets. They are certainly good ambassadors for the breed and I am very proud of them. On the health side, they are both hearing tested and 100%, they came from litters where there were no deaf puppies and as far as I know they have no had a day sick in their lives.
In Ireland there is no hearing testing so I have the opportunity to introduce puppies which come from a long line of hearing tested stock as well as educating people over why they shouldn't breed from blue-eyed dogs and maybe one day we will have the ability to test here without taking litters over to the UK to have them done, but as the market here is very limited (it's not a popular breed) I have no plans to breed.

*Off-topic-ish but hopefully useful

BAER testing is now available in Omagh if its any help

http://www.baertesting.co.uk/contact/default.htm

Within our breed, until recently, there was a pretty restricted gene pool. Most dogs, after two or three generations went back to the same few original imports into the UK. One of the things we have done as breeders, is to import new bloodlines into the country. By the end of this year, we will have imported dogs from Hungary, France, Italy and Spain.

We show our dogs and have 5 champions from our stock. All our dogs are eye and hip-tested and we pride ourselves on the temperament of our dogs.

We also work our dogs for fun and to ensure that they still have the working attitude necessary to the breed.



When we started out, we had the dream that one day, people who know the breed would be able to look at one of our dogs and immediately recognise it as such. We're not quite there yet, but I don't think we're doing too badly.




We are also heavily involved in breed welfare. We think that it is part of any breeder's responsibility to also be involved in rescue. Indeed, our personal involvement in breed rescue became so time consuming that we started a national breed rescue organisation which has recently rehomed its 200th dog.

Mick

I have only ever bred when I wanted a dog for myself, yes I show though the best I've done is two reserve tickets, but I'm actually prouder about having one year 3 litter brothers belonging to 3 different people in the junior class at Crufts. Am pleased to say they have also been good pets & good temprements & this matters more to me than show potential.I have stopped breeding now due to illhealth but feel that taking up the health checks as they've come in researching pedigrees & taking care with stud dog choices I've done the best I can to further my breed in all its aspects not just the beauty side of things.

I show and have been consistantly placed at open and champ shows, with many wins, I normaly have at least one dog each year qualified for crufts, having said that, I dont messure my success in rosettes or places, the show worlds a facey place,
I do however try to push the obed side and trainability of rottweilers,
I found that many breeders could produce good looking pups but I would like to see others put more into training of these dogs too,
I health test all my dogs, hips and elbows as well as BVA eye exams,

Forgot to add temprament,,,,, I would only breed from dogs who have the desired calm temprament,

I had Maddy spayed, that furthered my breed. Was the best thing for Weimaraners worldwide let me tell you now.

I had Cruiser neutered as he was pet quality and has a long coat which is not accepted in Malamutes.. (Edited to add.. That having him neutered was of course in his pet contract which all good reputable breeders should do with their pet quality pups)

Really surprised there hasn't been more expert opinions on this thread...its a shame really that people simply can't back up their bravado when the facts are asked to be put forward!

I can only speak as a breeder of vallhunds, having not yet bred a litter of spitz.

I have only bred 2 litters in 13 years, in the first litter one dog went back to Sweden and gained his title over there, one of the bitches gained her stud book number, another dog from the litter went to be a hearing dog. In the second litter one dog has gained his title and one of the bitches has 1 cc and 2rcc. Off spring of both litters have gone on to produce dogs/bitches who have done well in the show ring and at agility.

Vallhunds have an extremely small gene pool worldwide, there are only around 30 dogs born in the UK each year.
The breed is a very healthy one generally with very few problems. save for my 13 year old the other dogs/bitches are hip scored and eye tested - though the breed are not on any schedule for eye problems there has been a form of retinal displasia (J175) found in Finland which is currently being investigated.

I have also helped with rescue, primarily in dealing with dogs of 8 years plus who have been kenneled all their lives and have poor manners and housetraining (although vallhund rescues are few and far between they do happen and sadly they are usually elderly dogs whose owners have decided to downsize to a smaller breed but want a "working" dog - what they forget is that with an average age of 14 the dogs will then outlive them). Sometimes these dogs spend the rest of their days with us rather than moving on to a new home.

I am not a breeder, but I love my breed. I like to think I have tried to bring some civility to the NI debates here on Dogsey. It's not much - but I hope it helps to further the breed in a very small way.