getting dog mated

morganafay

I don't really care about dogs being of show standard, but do agree that whatever dog is bred should be healthy, have a great temperament, ancestry should be known, etc.

The Sweeper

Lemlin wrote: »

To say that only show dogs should be bred is extremely narrow minded IMO though. The majority of dogs were not bred to walk around a showroom and look pretty.

Very good point.

Hunting dogs are a different kettle of fish to pets (and by pets, I mean dogs that have been specifically bred as a pet, whatever their background of living in someone's sleeve or handbag 500 years ago may have been; I don't mean springer spaniels that you just don't use for shooting.)

Some pet breeds are nearly falling apart with the problems they have from being so inbred, and some are so specialised they cannot birth without assistance (look at pugs), whatever about what other dogs have been doing for hundreds of years.

So if not a show dog, then what? You're right, not everybody shows - the show rings would be full to overflowing if they did. So what else?

A pedigree is what else. Papers. A chart that shows the animal's parents, and its parents' parents. Something from a central breed registry that shows where your pet has come from and what lineage it has. If you think these registries have contributed to inbreeding, then find one with an open stud book - one that allows animals to be registered even if their parents weren't registered.

The problems with dogs used for hunting can be less severe for two reasons; hunters want a mobile, fit, long-lived dog so they're more likely to breed for the good points, and rather harshly if they get a 'bum' pup with a problem they're also more likely to be pragmatic and get rid of it themselves. (Humans intervened in evolution happened when we decided the runt of the litter was cute and deserved a fair go, because it wasn't his fault he was born that way.)

Still though, the pet industry loves its spaniels, and its collies, and slowly but surely genetic problems are creeping into those breeds - and depending on the kind of spaniel, breed problems are rife already. So how can you ensure you're not going to worsen those problems, unless you're part of a breed registry that helps you track your dog's lines, and more importantly the lines of the dogs you want to use at stud (because even if you're fabulous if you keep breeding your own dogs with your own dogs you're going to run into problems).

If I won the lottery tomorrow and could do whatever I wanted, I'd conduct a study into the Australian pig dog, for the very reasons you mentioned above. Feral pigs (wild boars) are a huge problem in remote Australia - and as all things do, when their numbers expand they spread out, so now they're becoming a huge problem on the farming land in rural Australia. Wild boar are big, ugly, destructive and really, really dangerous. A

And there's a bunch of Aussie nutters who like to hunt them, with a knife and two dogs. (Some of them do shoot, but there's this hard-core thing involving a knife - it's all a bit too feral for the Animals & Pets forum so I'll move long and make my point.)

This is some seriously heavy duty hunting, and it involves some seriously heavy duty dogs. The average adult male feral pig sits happily at 100kgs, can blunder through scrub and brush that includes thick blackberry bushes (also taking over remote Australia) and can do a lot of damage with his tusks if cornered.

Most pig hunters scoff at using pure bred dogs. They've created this non-breed, the Australian pig dog, in an effort to find an animal that is:

• Big.
• Fast.
• Intelligent (they don't want it to bale into the centre of a pig herd and grab anything - they want it to go for the biggest pig in there.)
• Brave (seriously, if you were a dog, would you do it?)
• Sharp hunting instincts - the ability to spot, track and also hold a pig
• Biddable - these hunters often hunt with permission on farm land, and their dogs have to ignore domestic animals and, by law, Australian native wild life - so they have to ignore flocks of sheep and cattle, herds of bounding kangaroos, showing interest only in feral pigs.

Subsequently they breed their own. They might thrown in Mastiff for size, and greyhound (preserves size, adds slightness and speed). Something from the bull breeds so you get a set of jaws like a land shark with a sweet temperament with good game in a hunt, but then maybe something else from the traditional hunting circles so you get the intelligence.

You train up what you come out with, and the really good ones, you breed from them again. What you end up with is a true Heinz 57 - and while I don't know anything for a fact when it comes to health problems, you don't hear much about them.

Here's a perfect example, photograph of an aussie boar dog in full armour.



The problem is even these guys can't get the same dog twice through crossing the same breeds because it depends whose genes are dominant in every pairing.

But we come full circle again to the problems with irresponsible breeding. Even if you're breeding hunting dogs, if you don't record parentage, track history, and vet check for defects, you'll end up with unhealthy animals. The most comprehensive way to do that is still to use a pedigree from a breed registry.

If you want a mongrel, because you're hunting, don't bother to breed it yourself. Visit the pound. The pounds are full of dogs and at least one of them will be useful to you. You only want one dog - all the more reason not to breed from your bitch, who may have a litter of six, or even eight puppies (or more!), because all those puppies will grow up into dogs that need homes, and our pounds are already full to overflowing with dogs that need homes.

wolfsshadow

if a dog "proves" themselves in the show ring or field they are worth breeding, a lot of dogs aren't used for their original task anyway so the show ring is the most common proving ground, imagine going to the zoo to ask if you can borrow a "wolf" to prove your wolfhound! as for the dogs that prove themselfs at their task you should still be carefull about your breeding to do the best you can for the breed and sweepers pionts are valid, the person who has a great gun dog doesn't want a litter of unhealthy pups who aren't strong enough for the job, and there are field trials to prove dogs as well, you might think your dog is great but how does it compare with others? as for vets as a good example our recent litter took 50 hours to be born with 3 trips to the vet, yes we did lose some pups but if we had just let the mum get on with it we would have lost more AND the mum, her previose litter 18 months ago was born with no problems but there were 14 pups so the first 2 weeks we had to take turns staying up to swap pups around when feeding and supplement with bottle feeding, the main point is

THINK BEFORE YOU BREED

if you have a healthy dog and you've done your homework good luck, if it just seems a good idea at the time don't do it, leave it till next season so you have time to really look into it, sweepers post covers a lot of what you need to check, don't assume because you know other poeple who havn't had problems that you wont have any, there's more that can go wrong than any one person knows.

morganafay

A girl I know's dog had 14 pups and you can imagine she must have spent so much money feeding 14 boxers and the mother, and then even though they were pedigree, she had to give them all away. She couldn't sell them because she didn't want to dock their tails. They lost some of the pups and the mother had to go through all that, and then they lost loads of money, so if you breed you have to be prepared that, for whatever reason, you might have to spend a lot of money and make none.

Hellrazer

Im closing this thread.Its gotten out of hand and some people cant be bothered listening to Mod warnings.