Don’t tell Dublin he’s not a professional, he takes my hobby very seriously.
Western Culture likes labels, boxes, and boundaries that divide and categorize people into conceptual groups. We avoid a continuum mentality. We like fractions more than percentiles, we like our device knobs to click to whole numbers instead of a smooth rheostat, we rate our movies with two thumbs and restaurants with 4 stars, and our academic achievement with 5 letters and a few milestone degrees. Our political spectrum has only one axis and only two political parties are supposed to represent the diversity of our ideals.
“What is a hobby anyway? Where is the line of demarcation between hobbies and ordinary normal pursuits? I have been unable to answer this question to my own satisfaction. At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant. Certainly many of our most satisfying avocations today consist of making something by hand which machines can usually make more quickly and cheaply, and sometimes better. Nevertheless I must in fairness admit that in a different age the mere fashioning of a machine might have been an excellent hobby…
Today the invention of a new machine, however noteworthy to industry, would, as a hobby, be trite stuff. Perhaps we have here the real inwardness of our own question: A hobby is a defiance of the contemporary. It is an assertion of those permanent values which the momentary eddies of social evolution have contravened or overlooked. If this is true, then we may also say that every hobbyist is inherently a radical, and that his tribe is inherently a minority.
This, however, is serious: Becoming serious is a grievous fault in hobbyists. It is an axiom that no hobby should either seek or need rational justification. To wish to do it is reason enough. To find reasons why it is useful or beneficial converts it at once from an avocation into an industry–lowers it at once to the ignominious category of an ‘exercise’ undertaken for health, power, or profit. Lifting dumbbells is not a hobby. It is a confession of subservience, not an assertion of liberty.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River
So in an endeavour as popular and diverse as dog companionship, it’s not surprising to find manifest the common divisions of hobby, lifestyle, or profession. Two obvious qualities that divide these groups are scale and intent.
More often than not, a hobbyist lacks the scale needed to require accommodations like outdoor kennels or an RV to shuttle a herd of dogs around the country. A hobbyist is more likely to visit sheep to train with versus owning their own pasture land and herd of ovines. Hobbyists are also unlikely to offer their services to others in a quasi-professional manner to help offset costs.
I am a hobbyist, and this means that despite spending considerably more time, money, and effort on dogs than the “Average Joe,” the concessions I make are mostly mainstream and considerations like profitability are subordinate to my enjoyment of my dogs. I need property and make decisions on cars and vacations around my dogs. And yes, I breed, but when it suits me primarily and certainly not very often.
A Lifestyler has made a more significant investment in changing the way they live to accommodate their passion. Although they would likely come to verbal blows if they were in a room together, both John Katz and Donald McCaig fit this model to me. They both chose to leave urban careers to run a small farm, for the desire to live that lifestyle more than an economic or career decision. Both obviously supplement this with income from writing, and the degree of serious effort might vary, and they might even make the vast majority of their income from the lifestyle, but relationship with the animals is more significant than the trappings of professionalism. These people place the dogs above the sheep.
The professional turns that equation around, the bottom line is more important than the players, decisions are made with profit first, or at least there are situations where the business would hold more importance to a decision than the enjoyment or the lifestyle or the animals themselves. A dog that’s not holding its weight might be traded, sold, or put down. The dogs are tools and employees first and foremost and “family” second, if at all.
This isn’t saying that professionalism necessitates dispassionate coldness, but all emotions can’t be indulged. A hobbyist probably considers all their dogs like family/children and would rarely consider “firing for cause.” They are also more likely to keep their dogs in a strictly home environment versus more utilitarian accommodations like kennels. If you’ve never kept two breeding bitches or related intact dogs of opposite sex that you don’t want to breed, you’ll likely see kennels as cruel or at least unfriendly. Those who have breeding dogs know just how convenient and necessary segregation is.
The lifestylers often have dogs that they train for a while and then trade or sell. Every animal is not family and companionship is not the highest goal. They might very well bring in new blood with a bitch or stud and then sell them later. Many have more dogs than they would if they just wanted pets because a breeding program requires it, or they wish to experiment more actively, move their lines along faster, or even meet market demands. Others simply cycle through dogs looking for the next dog that will win them a ribbon or trophy. Professionals choose stock based upon their labor saving qualities and economic strategy. Buying and selling new animals is considered with the collective goals in mind, not just the enjoyment of the breeder. You might say that hobbyists are about heart, lifestylers are about ego, and professionals are about the brain. Hobbyists are looking for an emotional connection, lifestylers are using their dogs for social rewards, and professionals are more focused on the financial arrangement.
On the extreme professional side, there might very well be someone who is more passionate about the work, the sport, or the profit than they are about the animals individually. They are running a business and even if they do love the animals, the art lies elsewhere.
It’s also worth saying that skill, compassion, and ethics are on a different axis than the hobby-lifestyle-professional axis. While there may be well defined relationships, they do need to be measured differently. Defining one’s self as a professional doesn’t necessarily equate to having greater skill or ethics or compassion than a hobbyist, etc.
For instance, a puppymill has the infrastructure of a professional but their ethics are poor, their compassion is low, and their talent comes in the shady marketing of their product instead of the wise and careful production of the product.
In reading about the formation of breeds, a common situation seems to be perhaps a single breeder who grew from a hobbyist to a lifestyler to a professional. While they had their beloved family pets, the sheer number of animals they needed to bring together to form their breed would suggest that they all weren’t sleeping on the bed.
As far as talent goes, think about spots at different levels. PeeWee is about participation, is local, and usually family member is running the team and there’s a very small budget. This doesn’t prevent there from being excellence: there are youth teams that have dynasties more impressive than any professional team. High School and College teams are a balance between participation and recruiting, enjoyment and profit. Some high schools are big enough to draw kids from other counties or even states; some players are recruited, but many are walk-ons from the student body. Unlike youth teams, though, many college teams are a significant money maker for their schools and decisions are made to fill stadium seats and thus fill school coffers.
Whereas many youth teams have Dad as coach, it’s very rare in high school and college teams to find Jr. as the quarterback, but it does happen. Many sports aficionados prefer the best college teams because they have the best balance of passion, talent, and competitiveness. Pro-teams take it to a different level and are unbound by participation. Players don’t have to be native to the state, there’s no concern with academics to pair with athletics, and there’s a much more significant influence of money and marketing. And yet all are essentially playing the same game by the same rules.
Animals, and dogs in particular, are more complicated because we’re not even playing by the same rules for the same goal. But that doesn’t prevent skill, quality, and ethics to shine at any level.
* * *
Comments and disagreements are welcome, but be sure to read the Comment Policy. If this post made you think and you'd like to read more like it, consider a donation to my 4 Border Collies' Treat and Toy Fund. They'll be glad you did. You can subscribe to the feed or enter your e-mail in the field on the left to receive notice of new content. You can also like BorderWars on Facebook for more frequent musings and curiosities.
* * *
Chris it is my opinion your outlines within the divisions among dog breeding is quite correct. It is not a sin in dog breeding to make a deposit once in a while IMO. Likeiwise in any field of endeavor such as writing an article.
I have been in this Dog World for many decades now and lately become quite weary of not only animal activist.
I heard complaints of the older generation..no new breeders coming out of this generation. Why? Could it be that our schools made test takers out of them?
Could it be they only see our feeble attempts to bred dogs with health issues?
Regardless, in me Hope dies slow..
A hobby generally makes a person more interesting. Hobbies help boredom. It keeps the mind alert. It will also keep one from being an addict of Facebook, watching TV and stuffing your face. A hobby can be a muscial instrument, a sport, painting, writing, or reading. It is something when you are done makes you happy. So if it makes someone happy to lift dumb bells when they are finished. Who are we to judge?
You are describing something that is pretty much a modern phenomena. The original “landrace” dogs were almost never owned by “hobby” or even “lifestyle” people. They were owned and bred by people who needed the dogs to do a job. Even hunting dogs for “sport” were owned by nobles who only kept the dogs inasmuch as they could do the job required. One might make a case for the “toy” or “comfort” dogs of the rich household — but those are the exception, not the rule. That the development of “conformation” competition dogs would come out of that mindset is no great surprise. It is simply a matter that the means to have large kennels and do breeding for the goal (in this case an appearance standard instead of a functional one became one of the upper class – people like Geraldine Dodge were hardly “middle class”. While it’s true that the Geraldine Dodges of the world did not NEED to have a dog that met a specific functional requirement, the same view of dogs as was prevalent among the nobles existed – one might like (or even love) a dog, but the dog was supposed to “do something” (again, in this case, meet conformation standards) and to achieve that goal, one might mix/ match or trade just as one did to find a good dog for collecting and managing sheep.
It is only roughly following WWII that one sees “middle class” people doing breeding and competing with dogs as a “hobby”. But dogs as a “hobby” are little different from antique cars – there are professionals, there are people who “tinker” with their cars, and then there are those who spend several thousands going to rallies, doing restorations, etc. Is it ego? Sure. So is playing peewee sports (just look at the parent fights that make the news on this level of games)/ It’s also something many apparently just enjoy. At any level one can encounter the ethical or non ethical person. I don’t think one can make moral judgements on people based on which of the levels of involvement they happen to match.
I’ve got a post coming up on the Fancy origins of sheep trials which will push your WWII timeline back about 50 years in that instance; although it confirms the revolution in form that happened following the war. Sheep trials have always been more hobby/sport than agricultural improvement.
agree on sheep trials, especially in the UK where the (eventually became) ISDS started before the European trials. The dogs listed for the first trials in Belgium were all owned by professional shepherds. The French herding trials were limited to professionals until the 1990s (in fact, they talked to AHBA about how AHBA program worked with largely non professional “Amateur” handlers). But the principal remains the same. Aviation is another sample. The people who fly as a part of their job are much more dispassionate (as a whole) compared to those who say, are involved in antique aircraft and those who fly as a hobby. The big difference is that in dogs, those who are the professionals tend to be vilified. Does anyone really think the guy who paid $9,000 for a kelpie to work his sheep (http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/breeding-the-mongrel-that-makes-top-dog-worth-top-dollar-20120713-221cl.html) doesn’t care about that dog? But he got it to do a job, not because he was a cute dog or would win trials.
That $9K was just last year. Apparently this year’s top sale was $12K!
I hope to hit the kelpie muster someday.
I’d say dog-space is a multi-dimensional continuum in which each individual defines his or her own space.
The dimensions include a social dimension (having friends at shows / trials/ etc.), a hobby dimension (the challenge, competition, etc. and something to learn about), a business dimension (at least countering some of the costs by selling puppies, perhaps making it a full time business), and a companionship dimension (people form emotional bonds with their dogs). There may be others as well. I know a professional Lab breeder (in the sense that she makes a pretty good income from dogs and has a good reputation with Guide Dogs, the police, and other institutional puppy buyers). Her favorite, now retired, stud dog is more important to her than many family members, but she dispassionately spins off bitches after a few litters and is most business-like in placing puppies. Field trials are hobby she does together with her husband, but show/conformation/breeding/boarding is both part of the profession and an important feature of social life. Many professional trainers, and probably some ethics-free puppy farmers, are hobbyists and get companionship when it comes to their own dogs . . . or some of their dogs. The ‘hobby’ and ‘social’ dimension, I think, have many roots in the landed gentry. Companionship spans all classes but varies greatly between individuals. Professionalism tends to be castigated by ‘the gentry’ and the ‘fanciers’. How dirty. Making money off dealing in dogs.
An apt analysis.
I always have found it a bit classist that most “how to pick a good breeder” checklists actively select AGAINST professionalism- they insist you to look for someone who only breeds one or two litters a year, keeps all their dogs in their house, doesn’t make any money off their dogs, and spends thousands of dollars on getting titles and ribbons (a huge money pit) before even thinking about breeding them. Basically, the more money you can afford to throw away on your dogs, the better a breeder you are.
So is it really such a surprise that few people want to be “ethical” dog breeders, by these standards? This seems like a highly unsustainable model. There are simply not enough landed gentry these days. 🙂
There have long been some religious (and I consider animal rights folk to be practicing a religion) views that are anti- wealth. You see that with the view that veterinarians and doctors should offer free services or are wrong to make a profit. Particularly in the US, there has been a love/hate regarding wealth. Some of the Puritan sects felt that any display of wealth was evil.
The idea that wealthy are evil has been morphed to include making money off any essential service (one of the reasons Jews were hated is that they were often moneylenders — a job that in the middle ages was the only one they were allowed and one that officially was “sinful”).
There’s nothing inherently evil about a commercial dog breeding business, but a lot of people would like everyone to think that there is.
I sort of agree.
1. There is a righteousness dimension in the dog world. I wouldn’t say it’s religion. The dog world has it’s share of judgmental crusaders heading out on campaigns. I’m agnostic, but I do remember the Bible quoting Jesus as saying “It’s easier to save 1000 sinners than it is to save one righteous man”. Rings true to me.
2. The bone of contention is income, not wealth. The wealthy tend to think you don’t truly love your dogs if you indulge in breeding an extra litter now and then to bring in a few bucks . . . or any other activity that makes money. I know a lot of breeders. Not one of them has gotten wealthy (in a financial sense . . . some in the sense of having a satisfied mind) by breeding, training, boarding, or otherwise working with dogs. A good kennel involves a big capital outlay. What’s wrong with people making something a little above minimum wage for all the cash and effort they put into breeding, training, orherwise caring for dogs?
During the early/mid 20th century, the collie’s heyday, the big breeders were basically puppymills by today’s standards.
Today, if you breed dogs, you’re guilty until proven innocent (and you’re never proven innocent). How dare you breed when shelter dogs die! I’ve even had trouble finding a vet who doesn’t treat breeders as second-class trash.
Standards change for breeders, and owners too. I like reading dog-care books from the 50s or earlier – one in particular recommends keeping the dog in a yard “although most people prefer to let the dog run free to get his exercise”. And the recommended method of discipline is a rolled up newspaper or telling the dog “No! Shame!”.
Today, it’s click click click, treat treat treat, neuter, leash, crate. And before you can even get a dog, you must do months of research to find the “perfect” breed, months of research to select the “perfect” breeder, then get on a waiting list.
Interesting times; I wish I could look into the future a few decades to see what life is like for dogs and dog owners.
Ian Dunbar has made many interesting points on how it might be possible to improve the physical and psychological health of dogs, his aim being that fewer of them would end up in shelters. One of them was that breeders should/could charge a premium for puppies that have been reared in the home and been given systematic socialisation from an early age. Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m guessing that the majority of even the most carefully bred puppies do not make the grade for showing and end up as pets, and I know many gundogs and some border collies from working lines that have ended up in pet homes.