I’m fine with this - what a PITA to have 6 different foods and have to recalculate amounts and expect dogs to readjust every time you get new food. Those dogs have enough going on without having to adjust to new foods.
But - a rescue shouldn’t have to subsist on random donations. If that’s necessary, their business plan isn’t working.
Rescue is a tricky business. There’s sometimes more heart and emotion than business sense. Say what you will, it takes business sense to run a rescue, not just a love of animals. It’s a high-risk, high-touch, high-cost operation. You need financial acumen, customer service skills, fundraising experience, marketing, operations, communications, etc. The best rescues have this and operate sustainably.
But then you have all the mavericks who strike out to start their own rescues, thinking they can do it better. These ones can go down in FLAMES. I’ve seen them end in bankruptcy, law suits, and even suicide…and the dogs are collateral damage.
I guess I’ve gone on a tangent here. Back to the point. A good rescue will accept any decent food, and will often times give it to people in the community who are struggling to feed their dogs. A shelter may be different – they’re feeding all the dogs in their care at once. It’s hard enough to clean all those cages with regular poo, let alone clean up diarrhea from upset tummies being fed different foods. I can see why a shelter might be specific about what they feed.
Yes, 100%. I mean, sometimes people might sell a pony to a trusted barn or friend for that amount. But with horses, in addition to all the stuff we’ve been talking about with dogs, you’re also paying for the sweat equity of training and experience. If someone wants a pony a kid can bop around on, doing kid things (other than leadline) for a reasonable amount of money, they’re usually better off leasing the pony. And even then, nowadays, that can be a great financial challenge.
I hate to say this, but I know a barn owner who was a successful breeder of a particular breed of large dogs, who also owned a horse farm (at least all of the dogs sold to good homes). For the past few years, the barn has been breeding horses, and other than one or two given away to friends, all of the bred, younger horses are still there, unsold, accumulating annually. 
Even though the bred horses have good bloodlines, finding the right clients and putting the training in the young horses that prospective buyers might want is quite different than breeding dogs.
I think there’s so much debate and so many opinions on this thread, because I’ve never met anyone who thinks they are a backyard or irresponsible breeder, but clearly there’s quite a bit of poor judgement going around. It’s also hard to criticize a breeding practice without seeming to criticize the animal or the person–I saw a horsewoman I otherwise respect good some sort of a Bernese Mountain Doodle, and I was a bit like…I’m sure he’s a nice dog, but did you have to support the Doodle, Inc. industry?
@Impractical_Horsewoman I’ve noticed that there seems to be a strange disconnect with some people. I know several respected horse people who put a lot of time and effort into putting well bred horses on the ground. Getting said babies registered and inspected, training and competing the ones that don’t sell early. Respected and reputable in the horse industry.
Then those same people pump out mixed breed puppies, unregistered “purebreds”, etc. I just don’t get it. One of them even lost a bitch and the unborn pups last year, and I just saw the other day that she has another litter coming.
I guess it’s less about ethics and more about the market. Easier to find a home for a puppy than a horse.
I can understand this–dogs in a kennel setting like a shelter/rescue are under considerable stress, and it doesn’t take much at all to push them over the edge into diarrhea and other GI upsets. Constantly changing food could certainly trigger that.
Trust me, a whole row of dog runs filled with dogs that have diarrhea is a genuine PIA to deal with. BTDT, got the t-shirt.
I am one of those breeders…I am a small breeder of Australian Shepherds and evaluation of temperament and drive in this breed is extremely important when matching a person to a puppy. I tell potential owners before they even get on my waiting list that coat color and eye color are not part of my evaluation. In other words, if you are looking for a blue merle with blue eyes, that isn’t part of my criteria, so you need to find another breeder.
For me, a litter isn’t just a group of fluffy puppies. Each has their own personality, attributes and I love each and every one of them and want them to be successful companion, or show dog, or agility or rally or stock dogs, depending on their drive and character.
One of the pups from my 2020 litter is incredibly laid back: go with the flow kind of dog. His owner is hoping he will be able to become a therapy visitation dog. That’s what she wanted. But the dog she was drawn to from the puppy photos was the highest drive dog in the litter! I would not have sold her the high drive puppy under any circumstances.
I think matching puppies to owners is essential in providing the best possible fit for puppy and human.
Thanks for explaining that perspective. Most reputable breeders also agree with you and do the same. Especially in the working breeds it’s vitally important to match the most important traits
to the buyer and looks and color really don’t count in those.
Exactly. You’ve got conformation, temperament, and color. Unless you’re planning to show the dog and they have a disqualified color, that’s of no concern at all. If you’re going to be showing or working the dog in another capacity, then conformation becomes more important… but without the right temperament you’re not going to get far, so you have to weigh both. I’m planning on my next dog in a few years. I’ll be going with a breeder that has had generations of her puppies and knows their temperaments well.
They’ll help me choose the right litter for me which is most likely to have the right type and temperament, and then from there my only stipulation is getting a male. I have color preferences, sure, but I would take my least favorite color if the conformation and temperament are right. I have no aspirations to show in conformation, so temperament would be slightly higher priority for me, but still want decent conformation for soundness and maybe some obedience or field trials. I like those medium energy dogs, not the overly drivey ones. That’s where a good breeder that has lived with and knows their dogs well and their puppies well comes in.
What a great example you are!
Well, there seems to be an absolute plague of them coming out of the southern states right now, particularly Tx & Fl, and none of them are “good” mals. Either they’re conformationally a nightmare (if you can’t tell it’s a mal or are wondering how much GSD is in that “purebred”, ya got problems) OR they are mentally unstable well beyond just bad socialization. Obviously we give them the best chance we can, foster or pair them with homes with a lot of experience, but an unstable mal is not an animal we can risk being out in the public. It’s heartbreaking.
We get maybe a dozen tervs or groens through rescue on a bad year and most of them are amish bred or owner hearbreak stories. We get over a dozen mals a month now, whereas five years ago, they were on par with the tervs and black dogs.
Seems like every wanna-be bad @ss gets a mal and then finds out, OMG, they are REALLY high energy and REALLY high drive and the next thing you know, it’s chained up to a tree because it ate through the kitchen drywall and who can be expected to live with a dog like that and why won’t it stop BITING THE CHILDREN?!?! Turns out, we call them “maligators” for a reason and a 30 second google search would have warned you about it!
Rednecks ruin everything.
Just curious - how often do well-bred puppies have a color DQ - or anything that is an obvious DQ at 8 weeks in most breeds?
In my breed, that can’t happen. If they are bred properly, there is no chance of a color DQ. The reason for a black nose or coat would be a DQ is because of crossbreeding. (This is for AKC only; black allowable in some countries, e.g. Australia and also I believe in UKC.)
There are preferred color patterns, but no patterns are unacceptable and in reality the pattern makes little difference in the show ring. I was at a litter evaluation yesterday and the differences between “show” and “pet” were splitting hairs. But I’m curious about other breeds and how often “mismarks” happen, whether they are DQs or serious show faults?
We don’t have a DQ color but we have faulted colors, including grey tervurens or mals. That’s a recessive coming from the groenendaels. The US and Canada are the on the places that DON’T consider them all one breed with four coat types so everyone else just interbreeds them. It makes for mess when we import and, due to the low numbers of quality dogs in the US, most breeders import at least every few generations. So greys are fairly common in tervs. A really nice one will finish despite it but it’s harder. Grey IS acceptable in other countries.
We also have height DQs and, because the US is foolish, the heights are different between the US between tervs and groenendals but the same in the rest of the world. So you can easily get a perfectly lovely show quality terv who sticks too tall here but would kick ass in France.
Other than that, the only DQ we have, coat wise, is too big of a white patch on the chest. It happens occasionally but you can tell at birth if a pup is going to have a big splash there.
That’s tough. We have a height DQ as well but it’s not common for people to show American Brittanys in Europe, or import them for American Brittany breeding, so it’s not really a big deal. I honestly don’t even know what their standard looks like.
The height DQ is a huge issue in our breed because the field breeders want them bigger to keep up with the other pointing breeds - Pointers & Setters mainly. Lots of suspicion of cross breeding “Brittneys and Settneys”…and I think at least one case going in front of our Board of Directors. I am pretty sure it’s from a line that has won our National Championship trial before so that will be huge.
It happens in some breeds, such as the Cardigan Corgi I mentioned earlier (tri-colored with one blue eye). The dog came from a litter that was show-bred with AKC champion parents and a pedigree loaded with champions.
I also know someone with a red Pembroke Corgi with one blue eye. That dog came from a pretty successful show breeder and was sold as a pet with stipulation he be neutered (which the owner did). Blue eyes are not a disqualification in Pembrokes, but they are discouraged. Blue eyes are often associated with blue merles, but merles and bluish coats are considered very serious faults in the Pembroke. I believe blue eyes sometimes show up if both parents carry a factor for black heads. So I assume this particular Pembroke had a red parent that carried the trifactor for black heads, and the other parent was a black-headed tricolor.
I am sure there are other breeds where recessive color genes sometimes make a surprise appearance, even in well-bred litters. I would think a responsible breeder would make sure the off colors get neutered and they would not repeat that particular mating.
Will also add that I have heard of a Doberman breeder that was purposely crossing isabella Dobermans generation after generation to try to produce “white” offspring (although she was not a show breeder - more of a hoarder type).
I wonder if this can be detected by DNA.
We have a tri-color in our breed and it is “not preferred” in the show ring, but now that we know more about genetics it is known that even dogs that don’t express the tri-color can carry the tri-color gene, so there is little point in declaring it “not preferred” in the show ring. We’ve been trying to work with our breed standards committee to just remove that phrase from the standard but so far, no one wants to push it. Apparently there is some fear that if we “open up” the standard for edits, people will want to raise the height standard. I’m not sure how that would happen - it’s not like a Google Doc where people could just start change it.
Oh well, they are not common and they are not a DQ, but it is useless language now that we know more about how the genetics work.
I’m looking at mastiff breeds, white markings too big, face mask too high etc. I’m not even sure it’s a dq or massive fault, but my point was that doesn’t matter as much to me because I’m not hell bent on the show ring. Completely off breed coat color? No, that’s someone putting something in there that shouldn’t be. I’m talking more about recessive eye color, markings etc.
It happens in Poodles (all 3 varieties.)
Any white marking on a non-white dog–or a parti-color of any kind–is a DQ. Blacks and whites are very commonly interbred by reputable breeders and mismarks are rare, but they do happen.
In Aussies it is tricky because of the merle gene…a DQ would be too much white on face and ears, white around the eyes, white body splashes, the hairline of a white collar that exceeds the point of the withers, Harlequin, Sable (yellow), and Tweed would be DQ in confirmation, but a small patch or small patches of dilute are not DQ.
Some breeders for dollars are breeding for Harlequin because some buyers want them…don’t get me started.
I know that wasn’t your point. I am just curious, especially because I think pet buyers think that it’s very common that lots of puppies can’t be shown from each litter. And I’m curious if that is true, or just how it turns out. For example, two fabulous litters bred this winter in my breed but only 4 show homes from one and 3 from the other. Not because the puppies weren’t show quality, but because there were no other people looking to show them.
They aren’t sold for any less money, because there is nothing wrong with them. Not that I think a mismark should be sold for less, but just wondering what % really can’t be shown from other breeds typical litters. E.g. in a mastiff litter from a show pedigree, is a mask mismark really common?
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