And I thought *I* was being bad! LOL!

Although we have been talking about outcrossing……

eww sorry, erase erase erase.

Hmmmm . . . . just what kind of a club is this anyway . . . . ?

{{{giggle!}}}

No corner for you… :-)
That’s one of the arguments I use to get reluctant club members involved in rescue!

(or at least write a donation check to get me off their back)

But anyone who does breed struggles with how far does your responsibility extend? I feel that all folks who breed should take part in rescue or support it in some manner. You may never know if the dog you take in is a relative, but it’s a better world if they all get treated as such. :-)

They are the AKC version of the UKC “American Pit Bull Terrier”.
Some aficionados believe they are now separate breeds; some believe they are exactly the same breed and some believe they are different strains/types of the same breed.

The AKC has ALWAYS disassociated itself from the “pit” heritage of the APBT.. it was the biggest obstacle to accepting the breed. They will never change that, nor should they.. do you expect the announcers to say good things about dogfighting when they introduce the AST? They ‘re hardly the only ones denying what was the fire that forged the breed.

And how about dogs sired by *dogs* who *belong* to club members?

(Sorry. Couldn’t resist. I’ll go sit in the corner now . . . . )

Wrong.

Bulldogs, bostons etc… have a function. They are companion breeds and pets. Pet is an important job. So important that being physically and mentally sound is crucial to the job description.

Being healthy and having a good temperament keeps pet dogs in homes and gets pet dogs out of rescue situations and shelters. Millions more people seek out a dog to be “just a pet” than for any other reason.

But pets are often, unfairly, just expected to know their job straight from day one. Folks seeking out a dog for an additional job or purpose at least expect to need to do additional training to achieve any level of competence at the desired task.

I deal sad unhealthy dogs frequently. I deal with them because I am part of a regretfully busy breed rescue. A surprising number come in nowadays with paperwork and most are from Midwest or foreign puppy mills.

The few that come in that were bred by evil show breeders are usually
in pretty decent shape, less likely to need major fix ups and usually have better temperaments, in part because they were socialized and loved as puppies.

And yay, if a show breeder bred them, they don’t spend long with me because that breeder will take them back, immediately.
If not, by sundown, every club member from L.A. to Maine will know about it. Ditto for dogs sired by club members.

With some breeds burgeoning popularity, 90% or more were not bred for show, by people with no interest in such and the only qualifications needed for breeding were that they were more or less the same breed. Some of these dogs have been in commercial only lines for 5 or 6 generations, maybe more.

They were all bred only to be sold for money as pets, a job they are poorly suited to because of ill health or ill temperament. And the total lack of regard for their welfare or future displayed by their producers.

In the companion breeds, yes. you can do agility and obedience etc…, but they rarely excel at the top levels of these activities, so there is no real demand to breed them for it.

So the companion breeds, soon to be in the much more appropriately named Companion group, are either in general going to be bred by people interested in showing them, or people who want to make a buck.

And yep, there are breeders in the clubs with their heads either in the sand or up their ass who refuse to ackowledge that there are any problems, then there are those of us who are testing, screening, researching and changing so that our dogs can excel at their under- appreciated job of being damn good pets.

As I stated before, I don’t really care what aspect of canine activities a dog breeder is involved with, so long as they are responsible. Responsible to the dogs, the breed and to the families who will make their dogs part of their lives.

I’m torn on breeds (like pugs) that weren’t working dogs in the first place, but if we can make them healthier…

For actual functional breeds, the outcrossing argument makes a lot of good sense. Cavaliers and their hearts, GSD’s and dysplasia, rampant cancer through a variety of breeds… sigh.

There’s also the unfortunate fact that registries and breed clubs don’t have ethics committees, and that means that some breeders will propogate a line that does well in a beauty contest but is known to carry heart defects, cancer, etc.

I’d like to see ethics committees instituted at the Breed Club level. And (pipe dream) in the registries. That’s where valuable discussions of outcrossing can come into play, too.