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Choosing A Stud Dog For Your Bitch As a new conformation competitor, it is normal to look at the breed ring to make opinions on dogs. Ideally, the winning dogs will be the best ones and should be able to make educated decisions about the quality of the dogs based on who wins. Realistically, though, this is often not the case. Judges are trained to judge the dogs in their ring and the AKC does have criteria that must be met before anyone can become a judge. Yet, even with these requirements in place, the subjectivity of decisions and the way potential judges are mentored can and will often have a huge impact on just how that person judges. Yes sadly, politics are alive and well in the dog show world in varying degrees. Sometimes it is obvious that faces are the only ones considered. Other times, well intentioned judges will unwittingly allow someone with political motivations to convince them of merits, or lack there of, of certain dogs and sway that judge’s opinion without them even knowing it. Over the years, I’ve seen judges I had once thought judged well be influenced by someone and completely change what they believed was a good dog. Wins are not what you should entirely base your breeding decisions on. The above reasons are part of it but you also must realize that even the deserving top winning dogs are not always the best producers. So how does one go about selecting a potential sire? I don’t claim to be all knowing in this department. But here are some of the things I have learned over the years in this area. I am still in learning mode on this as well, but I will share my thoughts at this point. First of all, wins are something to factor into your decision to some extent. But you need to look at how dogs do under judges you respect. You need to learn about the different judges and a good mentor whose opinion you trust and agree with can be of enormous help. This mentor should be someone who has been breeding and showing dogs successfully for a long time, and preferably is on the end of the lead much of the time. As in all aspects of life, there are politics in dogs. As I said, some judges will blatantly always use the pro handlers or friends. Others will be less political but able to be influenced by a smooth talker in the breed extolling the virtues of one dog and sometimes even suggesting flaws in other dogs. It happens and must be considered. Some judges seem more vulnerable to this talk than others. So your job is to study the breed standard, study the dogs, learn from those whose opinion you value, and try to put it all together when looking at dogs. You need to continuously work at learning what constitutes a good dog and look for it in the ring. Again, a mentor whose opinion you trust and respect can be of enormous value here. Remember too, that at the specials level, the politics get even worse with advertising and judges knowing who is winning a lot, which seems to get those dogs an even better look sometimes. So you’ve honed in on some dogs you really like and feel their wins were deserved. What next? You need to look at their pedigrees at this point. Some beautiful dogs have not turned out to be beautiful producers. But perhaps their sire was. Check him out. See how many champions he has produced and try to also see those dogs in person, study who they won under, who was handling them, and if this is the look you like. Believe it or not, most of our top producers in this breed were not themselves top winning dogs in the rings. But many of them were the sires of those top winners! So don’t fall into the belief that the top winners will thus be top producers. You also need to look at the rest of the pedigree. This may not always be accurate, given politics and all, but you may also want to look for outstanding dams and outstanding sires in the pedigree. This will let you know if these lines are historically producing well. It is a fact, though, that well known kennels are going to sell more show pups than smaller breeders, and possibly have more litters each year to get dogs in show homes. So just because you see a certain name all the time does not always give you the full story on quality. But it is a tool to use, keeping in mind the numbers. Quality and quantity of the dogs being shown need to be factored in to your information gathering process as well. People do need to use the specials dogs out there in their breeding choices and fortunately many do. This will let you see their get in the future to try to make breeding decisions as well. I have certainly bred to dogs that were not used much yet, but typically they were sired by top producers and from good producing dams. Some have gone on to be top producers so the pedigree background research certainly seemed to be accurate. Very few of them were ever top winning specials but I did see them in the classes and good judges did seem to find them. When you have found some dogs to consider, also try to research how they have produced with lines similar to your bitch’s lines. How do they match type to type? Do they have the qualities you need to improve with your bitch? What similarities in pedigree do they have? Opinions will vary on just how tightly you should breed on certain lines and can be more or less a personal comfort level decision. I personally don’t like to go too tightly but I do like to see some ancestors in common a few generations back. More importantly, I like to look at the phenotypic similarities. To set type, you need to breed type to type. While your odds that this will work are higher when you linebreed on it, you can also do what is called assortative mating, which is breeding similar type dogs (same look) that are not closely related. For health reasons, this can be a very good idea. Of course, looking at dogs is only
the beginning. I admit that I do first look at dogs I like visually when trying
to find a stud dog. But then the real work begins, and more often than not, I
look elsewhere once I start looking into the background of the dog.
Considerations include pedigrees, health and clearances of the dog, his get, his
siblings, and his ancestors. And most importantly, you need to research
temperament. How is he himself? How are his parents? Most importantly, how are
his get? How is longevity in the line? All of these things should be considered As always, I encourage anyone with ideas on issues I’ve discussed, or issues they would like to see addressed, to please share their thoughts with me. I can be reached at shilogr@yahoo.com Thanks so much! |
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