The following is an image gallery and transcript of Episode 001 of the WarHorn which you can listen to with the embedded player on this post: The WarHorn Podcast: Why Border Collies?
GALLERY:
TRANSCRIPT:
Greetings, I’m Christopher Landauer, the author behind Border-Wars and in this inaugural edition of the War Horn, a new podcast to accompany the articles published on border-wars.com, I’d like to answer the question: “Why Border Collies?” to give you insight in to how I got in to the breed and why I’m so passionate about them.
In up coming editions of the War Horn I will flesh out my personal dog breeding philosophy, discuss the most pressing issues in dog ownership, and introduce you to scientific tools that will help further your own interest, understanding, and investigation into dogs and dog culture.
So, why Border Collies?
Border Collies are in my blood, they are part of my birthright. A history of exceptional dogs with names like Bongo, Oreo, Sassy, Black Jack, and Bonnie Belle; a pedigree which stretches back over five decades to the early 60s when my father earned the nick-name “Pavlov” from his siblings for putting over 70 tricks on the family border collie whom his sister couldn’t even house break. The Landauers, who had always been dog people, were henceforth Border Collie people.
A deep love of dogs is a legacy from my mother’s family as well. My grandma Margie got me my first dog, Rags. She rescued the abandoned and near feral dog of indeterminate breed with a coat that appeared a mix of black and brown off of the streets of Chicago, washed and trimmed off years worth of road grime revealing a pearly white dog underneath all that neglect, and drove 900 miles to deliver him to me in Denver. I was still in diapers and just learning to walk, but to me Rags was as big as a horse. He couldn’t have weighed 20 pounds but I was convinced I could ride him like a Knight bestrides a Percheron.
In the decades since then, I have lived a life measured in dog years and taken to heart the lessons, joy, and sorrow of befriending animals that live their lives so much faster than we do. Over the decades we have bought, rescued, rehomed, bred and buried Border Collies; both with papers and without, from before the AKC recognized them, before the ABCA even existed, and before the movie Babe brought them international attention. As a toddler I was lulled to sleep by my father’s stories of his border collie adventures that transpired long before the two most notable modern Border Collie authors left the big city, bought farms, found Border Collies and filled bookshelves with stories of their dogs.
My roots in this breed run deep and I value them not for romantic notions that they are living fossils of a pastoral lifestyle that can be pantomimed through historical re-enactment on hobby farms. Nor do I value them as surrogate ego champions to compete for me in beauty pageants or contests of athletic skill. I value them for the depths of their souls and the profoundly rewarding relationship a man can forge with his Border Collie. Not as a tool to support the bottom line, not as labor saving device, not as an object of conspicuous consumption or vehicle for social climbing, and certainly not as a means to accrue virtues that I am unable or unwilling to cultivate within myself.
I don’t place any derivative value above the dogs themselves. They are not a means to an end, they are the end.
And this is why my voice is rather unconventional in the Border Collie world. My interest in and understanding of the breed far predates the work versus show debate that so deeply characterizes the current political landscape. You’ll notice that many enthusiasts in both of those groups place their hobby above the dogs. The work, show, or trial success is the end and the dogs are a means to that end. This is why you’ll see many trialists and pageant breeders trading dogs like sports teams trade players, breeding and starting many more dogs than will ever end up at a trial or in a ring. And regularly changing their roster of dogs.
“Sorry, Spot, it’s just business. I’m gunna have to let you go. No hard feelings, alright? But, uh, clean out your kennel by 11, the new guy will be here after lunch.”
This attitude places work and show breeders in the odd position of trying to sell their excess dogs and puppies to a public based upon the sales pitch of “well, these aren’t really what I want, but they’ll be great for you!”
I don’t have this conflict of interest. I value my dogs for the same reasons I want my puppy buyers to value them: because they’re charming, curious, clever, chipper, and will live long enriching lives, hopefully with just one family. Our interests are aligned and there’s nothing that I would sacrifice in pursuit of some other goal that would leave a puppy buyer with a problematic dog.
This isn’t the case with many work and show breeders. I see them sacrifice health, longevity and temperament because those things are not rewarded in the ring or on the field, there’s no value in a retired or unsuccessful working or show dog and without sentimental attachments, these dogs get sold on or put down. When you have a stable full of prospects you can afford to roll the dice on their hips and if one comes up dysplastic, it’s unfortunate but $8 thousand dollars is better spent training up a dozen more dogs versus patching up the one who is crippled at 2 years old.
“That’ll do, Moss. Sorry about your hips, but there’s no pain where you’re going.”
People like me don’t buy a stable full of prospect best-friends and then rehome the ones that don’t work out after a few months. Instead, I spent years tracking down just the right breeders and just the right dogs, meeting the dogs these breeders had produced before, being highly selective in the sort of puppy I wanted. Because it wasn’t just a puppy I wanted, it was a rock solid, sweet as pie dog that would stack the genetic deck in favor of producing future generations of family dogs, Landauer Dogs, that were a joy to live with and low maintenance.
I have zero interest in being best buds with a dog who is a jerk or a liability and I don’t want just five to seven years of companionship, I want twice that.
I only breed and stud my dogs out occasionally, I home-raise the puppies, and I don’t sacrifice health or personality to win ribbons, impress judges, or follow the herd. My dogs are family and my breeding stock was carefully chosen for uncompromising quality. My primary goal is to produce Border Collies with rock solid temperaments, dogs that will be welcomed with you wherever you go and which will leave an indelible impression. Dogs that will sleep in your bed and ride shotgun in your Jeep and which will have more friends than you on Facebook. My foundation dogs, Dublin and Celeste, know no strangers and are amazingly people oriented. Their offspring have proven to carry these traits as well and now Mercury has taken the reigns as my go to stud dog and his offspring are spectacular examples of the breed.
Over half the puppies bred and studded from my dogs are owned by professional dog handlers who earn a living with their canine companions. They are at work today in dog training centers, on cattle and horse ranches, excelling in all manner of dog sports; doing therapy work in hospitals and hospice and providing trained assistance for the disabled; one is a retail store ambassador; another is a mascot for a dog walking service, and several hobby herd sheep and goats. They have modeled in print and on film for The Bark Magazine, Kong, and others. The most humbling trait, however, is that all of my puppy buyers are return border collie customers. They’ve owned the breed before, know how amazing and challenging the breed is and chose my dogs to parent their next Border Collie. No matter how amazing these dogs are at their sport, work, therapy or modeling jobs, I know that their truly highest and best purpose is to be a well adjusted, interesting, and robust friend and pet. They don’t give awards for that job, and few breeders think it’s even something to brag about let alone breed for, but it’s by far the most important quality to me.
I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about how I got into Border Collies and why I’m so passionate about the breed.
In up coming editions of the War Horn you will find more deep thoughts on dog breeding philosophy, strategies to tackle some of the big issues in dogdom, and explanations of scientific and biological tools that you can use to evaluate your own dogs, potential breeding stock, and the greater health of your favorite breeds.
In the next edition I’ll answer the question “Why Border-Wars?” and explain the reasoning behind the name and content of the articles I publish.
Thank you for listening to the inaugural edition of the WarHorn. Be sure to subscribe to the feed at border-wars.com for timely updates on new articles, like BorderWarsBlog on Facebook for more frequent musings and links of note, and if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard please share this podcast with your dog-savvy friends.
On behalf of Dublin, Celeste, Mercury and Gemma, this is Christopher Landauer… signing off.
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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.
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Anton
Christopher
Lawrence Dillard
Lech
Stephanie
Essere
Great intro. Your points on people buying prospects and then dumping them as they get HD or what have you, remind me of the story behind my kelpie. His dam owner is a known breeder in America, and when he was born, he and one brother in a litter got parvo. How the whole litter did not get it, I do not know.
The dam owner, rather than try to save the pups, decided they were not worth the money because he had already invested in importing another pup from Australia.
As far as I know, the man wasn’t even spending money to put them down humanely.
The owner of the sire, also a sheep farmer, took the two pups, and nursed them. She saved one of two, and that’s the dog I have today. Turns out he wasn’t a good worker ( does encephalitis play a role in these things? Who knows), despite the solid working lines of the family. Now he’s mine. And a good friend he is.
I can see where you get the backlash. I have no sympathy for the show crowd. The ranchers could come back with “Easy for a hobby guy to say. His livelihood doesn’t depend on real stockwork and ALL aspects have to be economically sound.” I can’t say I know what it is to live the life of a rancher myself. But the question as to whether how they behave is right or wrong when deciding how to breed, or when to shoot, shovel and shut up about the pups they have, is irrelevant. The fact is, it happens.
And people need to know this.
Thank you for creating the transcript.
Dave recently posted..Juhannus
As a lifelong show breeder of Shetland Sheepdogs and Beagles, the adage, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” may explain, in part, my attraction to Border Wars. I find your blog to be extremely well written and thought provoking, with each installment usually eliciting an instant desire to respond.
Most everything you write is true to some degree, but often the truth only tells one part of the story. The most recent post continues to depict show breeders as egomaniacs with a singular focus, humans with little or no consideration for the dogs under their care and absent the grammar skills exhibited in the balance of the article. You appear to have an aversion to the use of animals in any form of competition, combined with a sense of superiority when evaluating the quality of your own dogs and your role as a breeder.
The relationship you cultivate with Border Collies is most certainly an idyllic one- a symbiotic union of dog and man. Border Wars is an attempt to convert the rest of the animal universe to your personal value system. To assert that “pageant” breeders’ only concerns are physical characteristics, with no regard for health issues, stable temperaments or any of the other attributes you desire, is a remarkable overstatement. I would suggest that before you poke fun and ridicule the Westminster Group winners, you take the Thunder Shirt off one of your “rock solid, sweet as pie” Landauer Dogs and run him or her out under the spotlight of Madison Square Garden to the screaming, whistling, decibel busting applause of several thousand people. It would be interesting to see if riding in a Jeep was suitable preparation for coping with the severe distractions most show dogs deal with on a regular basis.
You may want to walk back the following sentence: “I have zero interest in being best buds with a dog who is a jerk or a liability and I don’t want just five to seven years of companionship, I want twice that.” I didn’t know it was all about you. You seem to have forgotten the part about, “I value them for the depths of their souls…they are not the means to an end, they are the end.” You are a young man with four dogs. Someday, you will most certainly breed a jerk or a liability. Will you then say, “That’ll do Moss. Sorry you are both a jerk and a liability, but I have zero interest in you and there’s no pain where you are going.”
A negative aspect can be found in almost any human endeavor and nowhere is this more evident than when animals are included in the activity. Much of your criticism of dog shows is valid. The same barbs can be directed at horse shows, thoroughbred racing (I’ve seen the PETA tape) and animal agriculture in general. I even seem to recall an attack on fancy mouse exhibitors. Very often the unsavory side is offset or overridden by a positive good. A Sixty Minutes expose on the underground trafficking and financial exploitation found in the human baby adoption trade, does not negate the virtues of child adoption. I’ve experienced the best and the worst of the dog show world. You’re correct, at the end of the day, it’s just a stupid ribbon or trophy- but it’s much more than the competition. It’s more than the ego. The people and dogs I’ve encountered along the way have enhanced my life immeasurably. Sure, I’ve had my share of jerks and liabilities, but I always tried to do the right thing even when it was inconvenient. Every breeder has their shortcomings, some more than others. There are a lot of quality people trying to breed just the kind of dogs you so admire- sometimes a little competition can have a positive impact.
You write as though you have an intense dislike for beauty- i.e. Panda Collies. You called American breeders “lazy” for importing Border Collies of a more desirable type- I would have called them “stupid” had they not. Have you ever witnessed the Stallion Halter classes at the Arabian Horse Nationals- if only in a video? Considered by many to be the most beautiful creature on Earth, the owners competing at this level devote countless hours and a small fortune preserving the legacy of this horse. Many of the advances in equine medicine have been funded by their efforts and generosity. Of course, you can point to the unwanted and ill-treated horses bred by people with different motives, but he same is true of pot-bellied pigs and neither situation is the result of a weekend competition.
All dogs are not destined to the couch potato, Frisbee chasing life you champion. A dog can compete at dog shows and live on a ranch, visit the hospital or ride in a Jeep. A show dog can do anything your dogs can do- and one thing more. The fact that humans derive pleasure from their beauty, which granted, is in the eye of the beholder, in no way diminishes the dogs and should not target them for ridicule.
I continue to enjoy your blog in spite of what I consider its rather perverse point of view. I only whish you would redirect your writing and debating skills to something more significant.
John Frazier, DVM
> The most recent post continues to depict show breeders as egomaniacs with a singular focus, humans with little or no consideration for the dogs under their care
Conformation breeding is absolutely about ego, I’m happy to debate this point at length. If it weren’t about ego it would not look and operate the way it does. So even if you want to parade out a list of breeders or breeds or dogs that are not particularly ravished by the sorts of ethical issues I cover, it still holds that their breeders are participating in a system that does not reward objective standards of care and improvement and facilitates ego driven competition for the sake of competition and nothing else. For any benefit, and do please list them, should we step back and say “what would an optimal system be to maximize that benefit while minimizing detriments look like” we would not arrive at the culture or structure of the dog fancy.
As for consideration, it’s not so much “little or no consideration for the dogs” but the clear subordination of the dog’s concerns and objective standards of care for the dogs under the concerns of aesthetics and fad and competition and uniqueness. See, I don’t claim these people care little or nothing for their dogs, rather they care more about other concerns and this is borne out by what happens to the dogs and the blindness these people develop over these issues. And there are so many examples that are visually disturbing, many more that are a matter of genetics and population structure that do not have evocative images to go with them but are no less problematic.
Hi Chris,
Talking to cult members to try to help them see what has enslaved their emotions is not easy, but talking to cult leaders yields even less chance of success because even if they understand, they have motive to pretend that they don’t understand your point.
But, even if the progress is slow, without effort things will not change at all. Most of the progress is from saving empty nesters, young people, and bored parents from falling into cult type beliefs. Not that you can’t save those already suckered into a cult, but it is far easier to prevent mind flubs than to cure them after they have found a home in someone’s mind.
I totally agree with your comment Chris. It isn’t a big chase after a little ribbon which you could buy at a dollar store, but about getting other people to watch you get that ribbon, to feel approved of, to feel that you have finally succeeded in pleasing a parent or getting accepted by a peer group. Basically it seems to be a case of a need for “external validation of worth”.
Some people have a greater need for approval, and this makes them vulnerable to hucksters, cults, and any group which will give them approval in exchange for their money, time, or ‘soul’. Most people do want the approval of other people, but there are smart ways to go about this, and there are self destroying ways to seek approval.
However, some people do show dogs because they like the feeling of winning over other people – take that you breeder of losers, I have taken the ribbon you desired! To each, their own thing, so long as it doesn’t harm anything or anyone.
But that is one of the problems, isn’t it? The majority of the people want a nice companion dog, so when show breeders monopolized dog breeding by breeding to get that one special show winning puppy, and then mislabeling the rejected puppies as “pet quality”, they flooded the market with fakes – puppies not designed, intended, or bred for maximum pet qualities (like health, being good with children, easy to train etc).
Beware the label “pet quality” and any breeder who uses that term, because it often means the opposite!!! It often means the breeder is trying to use her dogs to win at some competition, and these are the rejected puppies. They are usually NOT from lines of dogs bred to be good pets. Some puppies sold as “pet quality” might not have been selected for good pet traits since the early years of dog shows, and might have been selected for hunting traits for hundreds of years before that.
The selection of good hunting or working traits wasn’t bad, because it required the dog to work WITH people, and often with other dogs, and to try to please their person by destroying rodents and predators while ignoring the chickens and their barn cats. And, of course, not biting the children, or causing trouble, or keeping the human family awake at night.
But competitive events and shows are set up to be about winning. Nobody factors in if the contestants are good companions, or if they bite children, ignore the wishes of their family by running amuck killing chickens, straying away from home, barking at night, and trying to be boss over the people or be autistically independent from people. Competitions don’t test dogs for sanity, health, or temperament, and they certainly aren’t about choosing good breeding stock for producing good pets. The average child could select which dog is the better pet just by playing with them or walking them.
And what considerations do shows have for dogs? Does the bulldog or peek like what show breeding has done to his face? Do dogs like having been bred to be ungifted of the traits which allowed, for hundreds of years, dogs to live uncrated in the home? Do dogs enjoy being so unfit to conform to their environment that they have to live in shipping crates?
I feel that “Why? ” people get involved in dog or cat shows is an interesting question. I don’t know what the stats are, how many people own a pet dog vs how many dog owners enter their dogs in shows? I’d guess that less than 1% of people who own a dog have entered their dog in a show in the last 5 years, if ever.
And cats? Cat shows are usually empty compared to dog shows. In the big city that I use to live in the biggest annual cat show was held in a hotel ballroom. Now remember, each cat is entered in various different rings under different judges so it might look that there are more cats than there are. And it is a benched show so all the cats that are entered that day are in their cages in the room at the same time. Probably more pet cats within a square mile of where I lived than the number of cats entered at the biggest show in the city. And many of the cats in the show were from other cities, rural areas, and a few from out of state.
What inner trait pulls that small fraction of people who own a cat, to want to show their cat? Most people would no more want to start entering their dog in pageants than they would clip his coat into a Mohawk.
I have gone to many dog shows. And some cat shows, horse shows, and a few ferret, bird and reptile shows, so I guess I’m one of those people. I don’t enter, I never bred to enter, but I am attracted to being where animals are. But I am repulsed by how the animals are used.
Some people love animals and some people love pageants.
What bothers me the most is the clear hatred that show people display towards people who like pets. I remember at one cat show, I talk to several people. Many were nice but one more nice. She was the one the other cat show people cold shouldered and laughed about. So I asked each of the cat show people what was wrong with her, and they said the same thing.
She lets her cats run loose in the house. She doesn’t cage her cats, if you visit her, cats are on the sofa, sleeping on the bed. She makes pets out of her show cats. She gives her cats names and talks to them.
Dog show people often scorn people who have dogs as pets. The negative emotion they show after pet people walk away is overwhelming. The show people seemed to believe that I was one of them, maybe because they’d seen me at so many shows. But towards other people who kept dogs as pets, their distaste was clear on their face, their voice tone, and plainly stated in words.
And Hitler himself would hardly have been spoken about as badly as what these women did about people who breed pet dogs. Doubt me? Go to any purebred show dog site and comment that you have an unswayed female puppy and want to breed her to your cousin’s male dog when she is old enough. We’ll see if times have changed show breeder’s opinions about pet dogs any.
The chant of “healthy happy dogs” is a big improvement over “if your dog isn’t a purebred dog with champion lines, he should be neutered”. Ie: cut his balls off if he isn’t one one of ours. But more exactly: if you aren’t one of us show people you shouldn’t be allowed to have a pregnant dog or an ‘unfixed’ male dog.
Assume I’m exaggerating a bit? I’m not. Go ahead, go to a purebred show site, read what pug breeders say about puggle breeders trying to get healthier dog. Go read what Golden Retriever show breeders say when you claim to be someone with a female Goldie puppy wanting to breed her to a poodle. Read the anti-goldendoodle rants.
Where to these show people get the nerve to complain about people who want healthy happy dogs bred to be good housedogs? I have found show breeders to usually be the most rejecting people in any animal group. I guess it makes sense, people who crave approval probably didn’t get approval growing up, so they crave approval, but have a culture which is about not approving or validating of others.
So they are snobby towards other types of breeders, even hostile towards pet dog breeders, because they themselves were raised without validation. Maybe if they could open their love and acceptance of other types of breeders, they wouldn’t crave their validation through ribbons.
Want to know what I felt like, as a pet person, going to dog shows and cat shows?
I felt like Obama might of felt if he was 3/4 white instead of 1/2 white, and had blue eyes and lighter skin. Say he hears some sort of revival going on in the woods behind his home, but his grandma won’t ever let him go to it, so when he is a teenager, he sneaks out and follows the music to the revival. He has a good time.
He keeps going back. They have a good barBQ, and for $5 he gets barBQ meat, beans, and a soda. The music is invigorating. The audio system is old, mumbly, squeaky so he uses the speech time to get his meal because lines are shortest then. Mostly he goes because of how friendly the people are to him.
But every once in awhile, someone there starts saying racist stuff, not knowing he is 1/4 black, and one of his grandparents is full black. He doesn’t want to argue, so he ignores the racist comments, but it hurts his feelings. But a person can’t let a few haters ruin a good party full of friends. And over the years these revivalist become his friends. But sometimes some of them sometimes say hateful things about people like his cousins who are truly black, and that makes him feel bad.
Then one day his cousins come to visit him and that night when the revival music starts he asks his cousins if they want to go. He always has a good time there, he assumes his cousins will quickly make friends there too.
His cousins stop at the edge of the clearing “why are the speakers wearing sheets?”
He tells them “these people are kooks and they do kooky things, but they are real friendly, and the barBQ is good, and the music free”.
His cousins turn around and, when they get home, his cousins explain it to him. The letters aren’t for the Kansas Kooky Klub. It isn’t just a few racist nuts mixed in with nice people.
He can’t believe it. Maybe 10% of the people there have ever said anything racist, the other 90% never said anything racist – never disagreed with the trash talkers either, but he always ignored the haters too.
What to do? After his cousins visit is over, he goes to the revival which isn’t really a revival. He asks himself how he could have not noticed.
He comes out of the closet to his friends. Mostly they don’t care what color his grandparents or parents are, he is still there friend. Some of them are like him, part black, heard the music, smelled the barBQ, walked in, sat down, bought a meal, made friends, came back, ignored the nasty 10%. Some of his friends are all white, and they ignore the haters too, and they are still his friend.
But now that he knows that this isn’t really a revival with a nice public barBQ, he feels uneasy going back. Should he continue to go back? Or give up and let the hateful words of a few people drive him away? Or is it more than just the interactions with other people? Is there a principle involved?
After a person understands what purebred shows are doing to dogs, is it wrong to keep going back to animal shows?
It is an odd feeling going to dog shows, listening to the purebred breeders spitting venom about miscegenation in dogs. It is a weird feeling to listen to someone you thought was nice, when they start to trash talk about people who breed dogs but don’t show dogs.
There seems to be a hierarchy of hatred at work at animal shows. The bottom tier are the people who say that as long as both parent dogs are purebreds of the same breed, it is OK to breed them together.
The next tier says that it isn’t enough that the dogs are purebreds of the same breed, the owner/breeder of the future litter must have shown them. It isn’t important that the dogs won anything, what is important is that the owner is cultured into the dog show mindset. (This seems to be the attitude which the California law that almost passed, a few years ago, took).
The next tier up says “Of course it is important if the dogs won or not!” and that a dog shouldn’t be allowed to breed unless he has earned some points, but he doesn’t have to be a champion. Like maybe because the owner can’t travel enough to finish the dog’s championship.
The next tier up says “If a dog doesn’t have his championship, don’t breed him. I wouldn’t”.
The next highest show tier says that the breed is lessened by all the less qualified dogs being allowed to breed. If a dog doesn’t have his championship AND consistently go BOB (Best Of Breed) then he shouldn’t be allowed to breed. Because the whole point of shows is to pick the best of the best, so why breed the less?
They each feel that to permit dogs who win less than their own dogs do, would be to ruin the breed, or to block the continued improvement of the breed.
Above that is a tier of owners/breeders who only breed once a year, and only breed their very best female, and only breed her to the best show dog they can rent, because anything less than first place is a looser. Or they stud out only their best male and only to the best of the females, and only for pick of the litter – never for money. Because BOB is nothing. The show doesn’t even really start until all the dogs who got BOB for their breed, head back into the ring for BIS (Best In Show). They breed to win BIS, the BOB winners who don’t take BIS are all losers. (i only talked at length to one breeder who scorned those seeking BOB, but her friend agreed with her).
And above that are the breeders who actually understand that the point of breeding dogs is to produce puppies who will please the people who buy/adopt them.
That if you sell to hunters, you should aim to produce good hunting dogs. If you sell to hunters who don’t have a kennel, and who will be keeping their hunting dog in the home, then you should be factoring in good housedog traits with good hunting dog traits.
And if most of your puppies are sold as pets, or end up rehomed as pets, then you should be selecting which dogs to breed based on which dogs are good with children and other pets. And factoring barking, house training, health, etc.
This last group was like rock-paper-sissors-rock, or like the ace in a deck of card – where it is both above the king and below the 2 (deuce). Its a circular thing, shaped like a gold wedding ring. The dog breeders scorned by the lowest rank of show breeders are, at the same time, above the highest tier of show breeders, because they transcend the show ring breeders.
Maybe this is how a religious child feels when he gets past puberty, and it dawns on him that he is one of the gays which his pastor keeps trying to talk his parents (and the rest of the congregation too) into hating?
He loves being in the choir, he believes in and loves his religion, he thought he wanted to be a pastor too, he loves the people in his congregation like an extended family, but now he knows that if they knew what he really felt, they’d hate him, his own pastor would rat him out, his religion would kick him out, the congregation wouldn’t speak to him, and his parents would disown him.
Tough to continue loving people who feel that way about you. (And puts his parents in the spot of choosing either their child or their religion).
I believed all the stuff about dog shows being good for dogs. Then i went to dog shows. The reality there conflicted with what i had been lead to believe. Reality won, but then i had to keep quiet or loose friends. I came out as one who understood that this was malarkey. Lots of show breeders quit being nice.
But i knew that i always had been, in my heart, one of those “BYB” (BackYard Breeders)” who wanted to raise dogs in the home, not in a kennel or in crates, and who wanted to breed dogs to be good pets, not ribbon chasers or ribbons winners.
It took several years for me to find out, bit by bit, just how badly the temperament and health of many of the breeds has been ruined. I didn’t read it, i optimistically tried one breed then another,…..
One of the saddest things is that instead of neutering crazy mean dogs even though they are show winners, some of these nasty winners have been, and still are, being bred. The end result is many breeds living in shipping crates because, after the dogs mature, they try to kill each other.
And the creepy part is how many of these crazy dogs locked in crated solitary are used for breeding because they are show winners. And the left overs from the litter are sold as “pet quality”.
Christopher: I personally love your symbiotic union of dog and man and gives me great insight to the very character and value system of the man who writes it without ever meeting you. Border Wars is not an attempt to convert the rest of the animal universe to your personal value system in my opinion. It is a reminder to some, but for me knowing that I am not alone for my devotion to My Breed of Collie. Thank you Oh and I do see you as one competing for the Best Border Collies you can produce. Glad to have you on the side of Herding Breeds.
> You appear to have an aversion to the use of animals in any form of competition, combined with a sense of superiority when evaluating the quality of your own dogs and your role as a breeder.
Again let’s get more specific with language. It isn’t an aversion to animals in competition, it’s an aversion to the ethical and practical abuses that result from placing the concerns of the competition over the animals to increasing degrees.
As for a sense of superiority, this is actually a rather stupid tautology. Let me turn it around on you for a second. Every time you make a choice, even if it’s coffee or tea or Coke or Pepsi you are making a value judgement over what you feel is superior to meet your wants and needs at any given time. If you did not constantly and continually make judgements of superiority, you’d be stalled out, left only to the body’s innate reflexes. And let’s not be silly and pretend that it’s non-judgmental to make superiority judgments but not express them (this I find is typical of people who claim to be non-jugmental… they are still judgmental (and not just against judgmentalism!) but they get mad when others express their views).
See, by even participating in your sport and structuring your personal culture around it you are making a superiority value judgement and acting on it existentially. It doesn’t even matter if you make no claims verbally about it.
So I see everyone who does just about anything making the explicit action value statement that what they are doing is superior to other options. Perhaps many people just don’t think or choose to evaluate their actions on a deliberate basis, but I don’t see how this changes my assessment. Even people who passively drift though life and are reactive are making the choice by not choosing something more thoughtful and examined. Heck, even when we make “bad” choices, like ‘it’d be better if I ate a salad instead of this chocolate cake’ you are merely acknowledging that your current choice is sub-optimal based on a certain value system (say health, fitness) but you are using a different value system that you are deeming superior for your current wants (cake tastes better and will make me more happy right now).
That’s a lot of words for saying that ANYONE who does something with thought is explicitly expressing that doing what they are doing is superior to the alternatives.
As for wholly superior in some cosmic sense, I make no claim there. If you want to win ribbons you would not breed the way I breed as my choices do not get rewarded with ribbons. But I’ve explained WHY I breed the way I do and the choices I make and that THOSE values are superior in my view than the values attained by breeding to the prevailing show culture.
Dog shows are judgmental – they are about judging dogs!
The problem there isn’t so much the judgmentalism itself, but the criteria used in making that judgement: bulldogs bred to show standards are not as vigorous as unregistered bulldog types bred for health, longer haired spaniels aren’t better bird dogs and choosing which dogs get to breed by how long their hair is doesn’t select which dogs make the best pets or which dogs have the best health – it is only of use if you plan to kill the dog the next winter and pelt him, or if you have a hair fetish, or if you are a dog groomer who wants to sell puppies who will need professional grooming from your shop.
If we are going to continue to have dog shows, they need to have some minimal test of the dog’s fitness for modern culture. We need dogs who are bred to help the handicapped, dogs bred to be good sniffer dogs to point out guns and explosives, and dogs bred to be good house dogs and companions.
We need dogs to be bred who can communicate to people what the dog is scenting and where the scent comes from. And we need intelligent dogs with an overriding urge to please their people – we want DOGS to have a strong innate NEEDINESS for external validation of their worth – a born in need to please people.
If that seems to conflict with what I said about people entering competitions to get approval, remember that competitions could reward people for being good at something useful, something entertaining, or something harmful to themselves, others, or to our society.
Competition in people isn’t always bad, but what if football games tossed out the scoring system, and gave out just one win to just one player, NOT to a team? And if that win was based only on which player got hurt the most during the game but could still walk out of the field? It would be like a demolition derby for people. It would suck big time. Everyone agree it would suck? Competitions can be good or bad, and breeding dogs to be genetically messed up sucks big time.
We need to breed dogs that can live in our modern world and have a useful place in it – like helping with security, helping the handicapped, or being the best companion they can be.
“A sense of superiority”? It is the dog show people who keep chanting about how much better (superior) their dogs are to mutts, crossbreds, designer dogs, working dogs, pet dogs, street dogs, and ALL other dogs.
BEST of breed, BEST in show, if those aren’t claims of superiority, what is? 1st place blue ribbon, 2nd place red ribbon, 3rd place yellow ribbon, 4th place white ribbon – clearly dog shows are about ranking dogs. About labeling one dog as better than the next.
That wouldn’t be so bad if the dogs actually were healthier, nicer, better pets or better worker than the dogs who lose.
And if it didn’t cause more unfit dogs to be bred, sometimes resulting in the losers being killed because they don’t win at shows and would be unsafe as pets in a home.
It is weird that someone who breeds dogs for dog shows would call someone else out for being into “superiority”. It seems to me that dog show people might have a big hangup about the whole superiority and rank thing. Where some of them project their anxieties about rank onto other people. Funny, a dog show person complaining about OTHER PEOPLE acting superior!
> Border Wars is an attempt to convert the rest of the animal universe to your personal value system.
Not particularly, it’s more about trashing ethical abuses and bogus claims. If this converts people to seeing things more clearly or objectively or questioning things, so be it. But I don’t really rely in the techniques of persuasion, which I find repulsive in many ways. Marketing and coercion are effective but false, manipulative, and play off the sort of non-thinking non-rational things I dislike.
I can think of dozens of ways of manipulating people into believing what I believe using these sort of “hidden persuader” techniques and bogus logical appeals. I choose not to use them because I feel they are intellectually dishonest. For example, and here’s a tame one, I know for a fact that people abuse their DVM degrees to testify publicly about issues that are likely entirely unrelated to their actual coursework and experience as a Vet. But a degree has a persuasive power, namely an appeal to authority, and thus almost every agenda in dogs on either side be it selling dog food or training or any of the other hot button issues will have its share of DVMs chiming in as experts making opinion statements instead of presenting factual arguments.
See in my view, experts should be able to make better arguments not just be relied upon for opinions that can not be substantiated or evaluated objectively.
So I could lie and be anonymous and claim that I’m a Vet, or even a biological scientists or PhD or any of those things just to add credibility to the education posts I make about genetics. They are certainly more technical than most laypeople have comprehension of and up to the quality of what I see being put out by people with specific degrees in those areas. But that would be dishonest and exposure would do more harm.
I could also ghost write for a Vet, get a figure head to make the claims after I write them. Well, again, it would probably be more effective, but I think what I say is objectively good and can be judged in the truth of it, face value, and not as an appeal to a degree.
In the same manner I might take as a strategy the long play where I’d join these organizations, work my way up in them over the years and then exploit my leadership position to expose all of the faults and bring about change. This is likewise and appeal to authority, and any number of people I argue against exploit this. Carmen Battaglia is a good example. Not only does he pretend his PhD is relevant by being very coy about what his degrees are actually in, he exploits his leadership history within the AKC to preach health and training advice for money and esteem to members.
And that’s a rather bland example. I can think of dozens of other ways people use propaganda and persuasion that just don’t appeal to me.
> To assert that “pageant” breeders’ only concerns are physical characteristics, with no regard for health issues, stable temperaments or any of the other attributes you desire, is a remarkable overstatement.
Again you’re twisting. Pageants are only concerned with physical characteristics, that’s what they judge and thus there is no negative feedback and no positive reward for issues of health or temperament. Again, if we were to step back and ask “how would one design a means of objectively evaluating health and temperament of dogs” we would not come up with anything resembling a fancy show.
As to what pageant breeders do, I can not know their hearts, all of them, in detail. Of course I can not speak with utter certainty over what they actually do care about or not. What I speak to is what their actions show and what the culture they have CHOSEN to be a part of promotes.
And this is proven out again and again and again. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. Well, the AKC shows never seem unable to find animals that fit the aesthetic standards, they award ribbons all over the place and the top shows have no shortage of dogs to be rewarded for what they look like and how they “want it” in the ring. They never seem to fail anything. There hasn’t been a year where the top judge says “nope, the standards are not good enough, no Best In Show today folks.”
Scientists and engineers and product evaluators do this all the time.
Oooooo, somebody tapped a raw nerve. How can anyone who enters dogs in show pageants complain about any other group being bullies, or using persuasion, or trying to make everybody view things from a different point of view?
There have been decades and decades where dog show pageant breeders from different parts of the country have parroted the current lines for shows. Most of the lines seemed to me to be the opposite of the truth. For example, people would come from nearby neighborhoods and with friends (because they loved dogs, and this was billed as a dog show) and they would bring folding chairs and sit ringside and shake their head and say “They are ruining dogs”. And these old timers, who had been real dog people for years, would patiently explain what they meant. After awhile, dog pageant people started walking around ring sides ‘informing’ the people watching the dogs “We are improving the breed.”.
More recently you might have heard unbelievable lines like that ALL show dogs are pets and they sleep on the bed with their owners. Crap! Who could sleep with 10, 20, 40 or more dogs on their bed?
Lots of dog breeders have many dogs and the dogs live in crates or chain link kennels. And many of these show dogs travel and live in crates because the matured dogs would kill the other dogs if they could. ALL the dogs loose together in the bedroom? It would be a total Donnybrook. Then dogs would gang up on one another and some dogs would die. Just as likely to say that they all ride unicorns to the dog show.
Again, if pageant breeders want only nice things said about them, they need to start saying only nice things about other types of dog breeders. I’ll even supply some nice lines that show breeders can practice, so that they don’t sound so nasty, controlling, and rejecting. Repeat out loud:
I just love what you are doing with Puggles, your Puggle puppies are so cute, I love the outcrossing for health too.
I love your little boutique kennel with just 3 dogs, you must really get to know your dogs well. And you must have so much more extra time to spend with the puppies! And it’s nice that your 3 dogs don’t get crated.
You’ve been breeding cockapoos for years, and now you have bought a Maltese stud for your cockapoo bitches? What a great idea! I think your maltacockapoos will make wonderful pets.
I think it is great that regular families are returning to dog breeding, after all, it is the parents who best know if their current dog is good with children or not. A breeder whose dogs live in crates can’t really know which of her dogs would be good house dogs.
It really is more fair for each family to have one litter per year than for one breeder to produce 40 litters per year but to force other people to have their dogs spayed so they can’t have any litters of puppies.
Yes, maybe you are right, crossing your over extreme show German Shepherd Dog with a Doberman Pinscher might just even out the extreme traits and make a nice blend. The puppies will probably be cute and grow into handsome animals.
Wow, purebred dog breeders and show dog people usually try to convert people to their view – and not with nice reasoning either. Don’t believe me? Try it yourself, go to a purebred dog breed forum and try to promote a mix of their breed; promote puggles on a purebred pug site, cockapoos on a cocker spaniel site, bullbeagles on an English bulldog site. Most of these people take that purebred belief very seriously.
Please take a moment and review all the Westminster winners I “poke fun at” and you’ll see that it’s not a blanket condemnation of every single one of them, rather I express very clear denunciations of very clear actions or results. Specifically ethical abuses and animals that are the direct product of ethical abuses.
This isn’t silly little “oh wooky duh pah-ghent winnars r dum. Me no wikey!” The issues I present are objectively considered and the application to winning dogs is to show that such results are accepted and rewarded by the culture. Two part process. I don’t just knock winners because they are winners. Gosh I could write a 100 posts a day with material if that were my goal. I could knock all these dogs over why they don’t follow the standard as written, why X dog beat Y dog even though Y dog matches the standard better, blah blah blah.
But I don’t, because I don’t just lambaste winning dogs qua winning. I bash the ethical abuses that still result in winning dogs and even encourage more ethical abuses. To wit, I did a post on the Sterling breeders who bred merle to merle. They are not show breeders nor do they seem to win anything for their efforts. But I still covered them. I still showed the disabled dogs they bred and condemned the practice.
That I also covered the Wyndlair breeders and showed what they did, and how they were greatly rewarded for it shows a rather clear consistency on my part that I condemn in all forms the breeding of merle to merle no matter who is doing it and I do not make allowances for “reputable” “show” breeders as SO MANY others are want to do.
Whenever I cover a non-high-profile abuse I always get the response from show apologists that it’s a “backyard breeder” problem and that “reputable breeders” don’t do that. Every single time. In fact I was just banned from the DOL Great Dane forum for confronting one such comment that made exactly that claim. They’ve banned me without cause and deleted the thread but I have screen caps if you’re interested.
Well, the Sterling story didn’t go viral. The Wyndlair story did. If I had to guess why, it’s because of the association of the issue to the Westminster show which draws attention (and notice just how many dog/news outlets cover that crap, mostly because the market for viewers for dog-related content spike greatly around the show). I’d written about the issue long before the show. Several posts worth. I’d even shopped (not for money, using the term loosely) the story to other dog writers for months before the show, asking them to cover it, knowing that the issue deserved a large platform than my little blog. They all declined.
Well, the story blew up the second that dog won. What was before a “meh” issue that could be written off a something someone else did, something that can be said to be small and not significant suddenly became very interesting to the audience because the ethics collided with the pageantry which makes claims about how wonderful it is and how wonderful the dogs it produces are.
I didn’t feel any different before the show than after. I thought it was unethical and unsupportable before the show as after.
I’d say that the popularity of Pedigree Dogs Exposed is likewise an example of how the issue gets heard much louder when there’s the intersection of the sport and the ethics instead of just the ethics. So if it takes outing show dogs that are suffering to call the greater practice into question, so be it.
But I don’t turn a blind eye to abuses outside the ring.
Reads like “You are a good writer, so go write about some other group, not mine.”
But dog show and purebred breeders nearly have a monopoly, especially in some countries, so their abuses are far reaching.
When i had my own blog, i actual had a woman, said to be known for her love of one purebred dog breed, hang out in front of where i live, follow me, and try to get me to quit writing about harmful mistakes in dog breeding systems, and to write anti-abortion rants instead!
John has no right to try to divert Chris’s writing to horses or adoption or anything else. Talk about trying to convert other to your own point of view!
Heh, that’s a rather poor ad hominem.
You seem to imply that because I’m pro-active about my dog’s emotional well-being that I’m not serious about breeding for temperament? Hardly.
I’m so open about phobia and nervous issues in Border Collies because I think those are marked issues in the breed and they lead directly to welfare issues. Specifically phobia and OCD issues are likely the leading cause of BCs being dumped in shelters, lost stray (as many dogs are on the 4th of July in the USA), and put down for biting or worrying stock or destroying property, etc.
In fact I’m so interested in this that I sent full blood panels and temperament write ups to the lab that was studying phobias in Border Collies. Sadly, I think that lab closed down before publishing results, but it is of great interest to me to identify any possible genetic components to behaviors that are not conducive to health and well-being. And I’m willing to make my dog’s available for the study of the issue.
Not that I think my current crop of dogs represent severe problems in that regard.
I exploit Melatonin and the Thunder Shirt because I’m keenly aware of the progressive nature of noise phobia having seen it progress in my dog Black Jack, now passed. Over his 15 years he became increasingly alarmed by fireworks and close thunder, both of which we had where I was living at the time. Not only does Colorado have some spectacular lightning storms, of which we’ve always enjoyed sitting out on the back patio and seeing flash in the distance, the combination of our altitude, topography, and our thin air makes for some deep and resonant thunder when it’s close and living just down the street from a Country Club that started to put on a rather robust fireworks show at least once every summer, didn’t help.
I can’t say I could give you an objective assessment of my dogs’ levels of noise phobia now because I’ve never let them progress without intervention. But that also means that I’ve never seen a level of phobia that would give me pause about their natural temperament or the means for any other owner to handle the issue without hassle. They have never panicked or been unresponsive to commands or wild-eyed and out of it, as I have seen from other dogs. They have never lashed out, never pissed themselves, never bitten anyone or harmed themselves.
We made the mistake of leaving Black Jack in the basement the year that the Country Club started their show and didn’t realize just how imposing and loud the low but massive fire-works would be. The blasts were enough to blow an eardrum and break a window in the cars at the elementary school parking lot we were watching from (which was just across the street from the CC grounds). Well, we got home to find that Jack had become so fearful he chewed through half of a hollow core door, as I’ve posted photos of, multiple times.
If I weren’t concerned or ashamed of the issue, why would I post photos of the damage my dogs have done because of the stress they experienced because of it? Now I didn’t breed Jack or breed from Jack, nor was I nearly as well read about the breed and genetics then as I am today, but I still keep the notion of noise phobia and the emotional harm it can cause as an issue when I evaluate my stock and other Border Collies.
As to the specifics of my own dogs, which you seem to imply have poor temperaments because I use a thunder shirt, I’m not sure who they are relevant as some sort of hypocrisy cross-examination evidence for any argument I’ve ever made. Nor do I think that me acknowledging the issue in the breed and at some level in my own dogs, translates to the nature of a pageant to assess those traits.
Dublin, the dog pictured in the thunder shirt, actually has a very good but present reaction to close thunder. He assuages his anxiety through the desire to play and be close. When thunder strikes he will snuggle and find any Frisbee-like-object for me to play with him inside. He does not run or bolt, nor is he crippled and stationary, nor does he lose his lunch or control of his bowels. He never gets violent and is always responsive to commands. But it’s clear as day that when it booms outside he goes and gets a Frisbee and plops it in your lap as a means to deal with the anxiety.
In fact, the video and photos of him wearing a thunder shirt outside at the park was part of an experiment of mine to see how reactive Dublin and Mercury were off leash and at that park while it was still storming. I’m FULLY willing to put my dogs to the test over these issues and continually assess their responses.
Now I’m not sure that going to any dog show would put that sort of load-test on my dogs. I have taken Dublin in front of hundreds of people, off leash, with noise and barking dogs and excitement and strange places. He’s trained and competed at Flyball (which brings out many issues with reactive dogs of all sorts) at the stock show in front of a rather sizable audience and he’s competed at dozens of Frisbee competitions, some with huge audiences, and he’s been taken around massive crowds and into very strange places like hospitals and hospice centers with strange noises and smells and people, etc.
The thing thing that I think you’re missing is that I don’t pretend that his performance catching the disc at a competition is indicative of his temperament around people. His temperament around people is indicative of his temperament around people. In fact there are many highly successful handler/dog teams at any of the venues you’d care to talk about that I could point to their on-field success or in-ring success as entirely non-predicative of their dog’s temperaments elsewhere.
I’ve also seen dogs melt down in the ring from stress and still win. In fact when I was exploring the show world first hand with my Celeste, I saw a Border Collie puppy who was such an adolescent it was a joke that this dog could be put up for the highest titles win BoB because he savaged his handler’s pant cuffs and drew a loud laugh from the audience. When they put up the puppy there were cheers and some boos and the Judge even said “I had to! Listen!” as if the lay audience forced his hand. Well, during that and other show weekends, and I did a good faith evaluation of several different show venues to a large 4 day weekend show, the Rocky Mountain Cluster, which is as large as any within thousands of miles, to bullshit little shows with no audiences in Nebraska and Wyoming and New Mexico, I saw a dog that was the #1 of his breed and I think #1 Herding dog at the time, frequently shit himself in the ring. But he had a professional handler and he won, a lot.
Obviously that dog was not being chosen against for awards despite having high ring nerves and losing control of his bowels multiple times.
I know Frisbee dogs who belonged to top handlers who were total assholes. Would blow their anal glands if you entered their tent growling and barking and freaking out. But they performed great on the field. Others who had to be monitored so they wouldn’t run off the field and savage another dog if the handler threw a bad throw. Or dogs that were not only dog aggressive but people aggressive that did just fine when handled and in the middle of a competition.
I’d never say “My dog qualified for World’s in Long Distance Frisbee, therefor he is healthy and doesn’t have cancer, therefor he loves children, therefor he can herd sheep without training, therefor he is not a carrier for a disease, therefor he is not afraid of thunder, therefor he is a natural stud dog with a high sperm count, therefor he has an ideal coat and doesn’t even shed, therefor he’s worth of breeding for that trait alone, therefor, etc. etc. etc.”
No do I think that a particular phobia, even in the rather mild and minor manifestation that I’ve seen in my current dogs, is a universal issue. For example, Dublin engages during storms and wants to play, the other dogs will come over for pets or seek out a safe small place to huddle up in, not really profound reactions at all.
Celeste doesn’t like laser pointers and will go after them, trying to dig them out of the carpet or floor. The other dogs could care less. She’ll also notice strong reflections and shadows, like lights bouncing off of a CD or shiny metal. None of the other dogs notice these things or seem to care about them.
Well, this is a behavior that I am sure I could exploit into a full blown phobia or obsession. I choose not to. And I doubt I’d double down on something like that if it appeared in both dogs I was breeding. Nor am I ashamed of it being in my dogs, as if it’s something I need to hide or gloss over. It’s there and it’s worth nothing in case someone else cares about that quality. I’ve never found it an issue, even in hospital settings or areas with powerful lights that cast shadows when Celeste is asked to perform or be on duty. But at home when a wind chime with jewels cast some sharp focused light on the ground, she would go chase it and try and pounce on it like it was a mouse and she was a fox. Well, I didn’t want to damage her joints so I removed the chime. Problem solved.
It’d be a much bigger problem if the issue were like the similar issue I’ve seen of dogs that will not walk on shiny surfaces or slick surfaces and develop phobias of kitchen floors, etc. Well, that would be a deal breaker for a therapy dog meant to work in hospitals, no? Especially if it was not something that could be effectively trained against (which I’ve seen done but still something a breeder for that task might not want to deal with).
No reason for me to expect that the issue would be solved if my dog won a show CH or an Agility CH or a Frisbee award or a Flyball title. Those things measure what they measure, nothing more. So I don’t pretend that those tests are some universal metric. Apparently you do. Apparently you think that the audience at Westminster is somehow a valid test for the breeding stock therein, despite the fact that most of those dogs already have CH and are likely already bred at least once if not multiple times and should they shit themselves in the ring there it would likely do little or nothing to dissuade their breeders from making a different choice in their breeding program.
I’m very open about issues in my dogs and the dogs I’ve bred, even when it turns out to be nothing. Look up the “When it’s not cancer” post for an example. I’m perfectly willing to talk about health issues if they turn out well or not, should my contribution provide some clarity where I don’t see clarity or information where such things are scarce.
So I think your attempt at an ad hominem fails. I don’t discount my dog’s issues by trying to offset them with awards they’ve won or other non-sequitors. Nor do I lie about them or cover them up, they’re there for you to try and insult me with. Nor do I think they speak against any of the values or ethics I espouse and promote. If the worst thing you can say about my dog is that he wants to play Frisbee because thunder storms make him anxious, I think I’ve done a very good job at selecting stock and looking after their best interest.
Chris, i had a similar problem when i started trying to breed for health and temperament. The purebred stock i found to start with had so many bad traits that if i continued with that purebred breed, my goal would be reduced to: none of the puppies die young, and none of them are inclined to bite.
It took several tries to get dogs that wanted to do things to please people. It is easy to find dogs that enjoy praise and petting. It is harder to find dogs who will consistently work for praise even when off leash or where there are tempting distraction. Harder yet to find dogs who will try to please you even when you are not home.
But i did finally breed what i wanted in a puppy who was jolly, and who from early puppyhood and also in full adulthood would refrain from doing what i’d said “no” to, and would repeat the behaviors i liked. Unfortunately i had to move and give up dog breeding.
So many people love their dog in spite of it being a jerk of a purebred or show bred litter. I like dogs bred to be gentle and pleasing.
I walk none of that back, not one step. I do not in any way want to spend time with a dog who is an asshole, and I see so many people who are either breeders or rescuers making this choice. It boggles my mind. I have a some breeder friends who had a falling out over this issue, specifically that one of them put a CH on a dog who is dog and people aggressive and who has produced offspring that bit children. They took back that offspring dog and kept it. Now they play the crate and rotate game. Not what I want in my dogs.
I’ve seen the dog in question and I would put it down. I would not breed it, would not show it. You can’t walk back the trauma done to that child.
Another, now former, friend rescued a breed that is known for protection work and is becoming more popular. Sadly they also have a suspected genetic rage disorder. The dog was supposed to join their ranks of top performing competitive dogs but since the dog turned out to likewise be an asshole, it never showed up because it was a liability. Well, they thought they could love the aggression out of it and they learned the hard way when it tried to tear the throat out of their other dog leaving their home awash in blood.
They made the right choice to put it down after that, but you can’t take back the trauma that it caused their other dog who needed surgery.
I question the utility of protection and police dogs in general, and certainly in specific to building a breed around what is likely a rage disorder or at least inclusive of a rage disorder that might be confused (or aligned) with gameness.
But for me, for Border Collies, there is zero value in those traits and thus they are anathema for what I want in the breed and for what anyone else should be breeding them for. They do not make good protection dogs, good fighting dogs, or aggressive dogs of any sort.
As for it being all about me, well who else am I making decisions for? See, this probably seems controversial for you because you believe the bullshit about “improving the breed” as if your choices are not selfish but are creating some grand dog that matches some platonic ideal and that in doing so you’re checking off all these other boxes of perfection as well. THAT is the arrogant stance, not mine. I breed dogs FOR ME. And in doing so I align my choices with appropriate qualities other people would want in dogs that I expect them to buy off of me because nature produces more dogs than just my demand.
I don’t breed just to sell puppies. But if I did, I’d do it on the metrics of what make good dogs for the market I’m selling to. I don’t breed for some bullshit goal like “improving the breed” which is just so vague and self congratulatory instead of specific and measurable. I do breed to improve my dogs FOR ME. I don’t claim to breed them to improve them on some universal untouchable standard like show and work people so often do. That’s bullshit. That’s like obscuring your results by over promising your intentions.
I think the other strategy works better. Under promise, over deliver. And evaluate, evaluate, evaluate.
So I do want to improve the breed through improving my own stock. I want to outcross to maintain diversity which improves the breed in a small way by making a more diverse offering of stock for other breeders to see and choose if they so want. By being selfish, and I believe in the Rand definition here, I’m aligning my own values with my actions and this provides value to others whose values are in line with mine, which I think are rather universal.
But yes, it’s about me because I don’t see any reason to blur my own actions by hiding under culture or history or some breed standard. That is rather cowardly. To claim something is ethical or good simply because it’s part of the culture for a few years or many years or because it’s written down on a piece of paper that is venerated by some other small group of people. Those are all cop-outs. Those are putting the religion above the ethics. I don’t need the Prophets or Papacy to tell me what is moral or not, what is ethical or not, based only upon their word as authority, rather I look at the actual issues and objectively determine if they are ethical or not based only on their own merits, not on an appeal to history or written standards or anything else that is exploited by systems that do not build their ethics and results from the ground up but from sources of power and cultural whim.
I write this blog for what I THINK, not as some claim to being a breed warden carrying the shell of history or success within breeder culture as a costume to make what I say seem more important or accurate.
Working and show folks LOVE doing this. “I own 3 sheep therefore everything I say about the dogs is backed by the centuries of history where these dogs worked sheep!” “I am a big wig in the breed club, therefore I speak with the authority of the entire breed!”
I base my arguments off of empirical science and facts because they exist if you believe them or not. And if those facts change, I change my views. And sometimes they do. And that’s enough for me to drop them and move to the more accurate interpretation. I have more interest in the dogs and the breed AS IT IS versus some made up romantic history and social control groups who exploit what it was (or never was) or what we think it was or should be.
That’s fiction, I prefer non-fiction. That’s art, I prefer science. That’s aesthetics, I prefer engineering.
I agree, don’t waste years trying to fix a crazy mean dog. It is unfair to your family, friends, and yourself. And it seldom works. Get a good dog.
Yes, it’s entirely possible that my breeding choices will not prevent me from breeding a shit dog. And I absolutely will put it down instead of breeding from it because it has other traits I like. I am willing to breed away from disease slowly, I don’t ascribe to the “burn it out as fast as possible” methods of removing inbred disease… I think that a little patience and monitoring and testing can help do this without sacrificing genetic diversity.
But I don’t hold the same patience over dogs that are a danger to themselves or other people. Dogs that bite. Dogs that are assholes. DIRT NAP, NOW.
So that Champion Stud Dog I mentioned earlier, I’d put it down today if it were my dog, along with his offspring that bit. Done, gone. Doesn’t matter if I had spent the same money those breeders spent buying it from CH stock nor the thousands they spent putting the CH on him. I’d kill that dog before it killed another dog or a human or caused them harm. And I’d kill it with a clean mind knowing that it was actually a grace even for that dog because living more in a cramped cage than out, not being able to ever be off leash or trusted, getting viciously angry at the presence of any guests or even the attention paid to other dogs, including his son which was the biter, is just not a good way to live.
“Management” can be small and insignificant and can help the dog’s quality of life. Or it can be excessive and a significant detriment. Well, dogs don’t dream of their retirement and obsess over their mortality like we humans do. This is the gift we can give them. When they are sick and have a life sentence from disease, like cancer, we can put them down, kill them, before the disease kills them in a far worse manner.
Well, we can also kill them because their brains are diseased and they can not live calmly and enjoying of stimulus that we can not shelter them from. Other dogs, other people, the world at large.
So if I ever bred a dog that turned vicious I’d have it killed humanely or I’d kill it myself humanely, and notice that I’m not couching this with cute language like “put it to sleep” or “put them down” or “out of their misery” … I’m fully aware of the full extent of the action. The dog goes from alive to dead.
Now the part you seem to miss is that I wouldn’t halt from going there, killing the dog that needed to be killed (call it culled if you wish), because he was a Champion. Because I paid a lot for him. Because I already bred him and don’t want to re-think a past action. Because he wins in some venue that makes me happy and feeds my ego. Because I could avoid making that hard choice by pretending that I could manage the entire world to create a fantasy for the dog to live in. Or manage the dog to keep him away from any and all stimuli that would spark the problem.
I see other people willing to do this with all sorts of dogs, breeders and rescuers. They rationalize it and some might be perfectly able to provide a decent life to those dogs and do the work to manage them and what not. Sure, let them be judged on those fruits.
I do not want that. I do not want to have to crate and rotate because one of my dogs can not live in the community of my other dogs. I’d consider training and re-homing if that were the optimal solution, but not because I’m unwilling to consider killing the dog outright. I do not think that pawning off my problem on to someone else is ethical, and yet I’ve seen any number of examples of it in the dog world.
Ever read any of Jon Katz’s books? Do you think it was ethical to pawn that dog off on an owner who never had a Border Collie before? I don’t. And I’m not surprised that after much turmoil and continued decline that the dog was killed. People love to blame Katz for it, as if they have some great solution to SAVE THE DOG AT ALL COSTS, but I see it as a breeder issue. They took back a dog they bred that failed its first home, did little to nothing to rehabilitate it, and forked it of on an unsuspecting rube. And tragedy ensued. GREAT material for a book, apparently, but not something I’d ever seek to emulate.
The thing you are again missing is that I want to DECREASE MY ODDS of ever producing a dog like that, so I do not place any value higher on my list of sine-qua-non traits for my breeding stock. I don’t offset shitty temperament with their looks or performance or anything else. I’m just not willing to hedge no that issue. I’ll hedge looks and I’ll hedge health even. I’m willing to breed away from disease instead of make some guarantee that I can’t actually uphold and tell my buyers that their dogs will never have X disease, save for the ones I can and do test for that are known to be genetic and have tests. But there are many that do not, so I make no sales tactic guarantees when I can only offer “my parent dogs do not have X issue and have never produced X issue.”
And all things considered I would not feel horrible if I sold a dog that got liver cancer at 10 years old because I had no idea that gene ran in my lines. I’ll certainly add it to things my dogs have produced and would seek more answers, but I’d not think I failed as a breeder because I did not avoid an unknown unknown. I’d feel horrible if there was a temperament issue in a dog that I bred, sold puppies from it knowing this, those puppies bit a kid and then I ignored it, took the dog back, and kept the biter and the father who are both nasty. NO WAY IN HELL would I ever let a frisbee ribbon or a show ribbon or a worked sheep like the devil ribbon make me think that was ok and just a part of doing business. The biter would be dead. The father would be dead. Because it wasn’t some random thing that just happened, blame the kid. It was a pattern of behavior that should be obvious to anyone.
Not okay with me. But apparently OK to someone who places the showing over the dogs. So yeah, I’d absolutely tell Moss that he’s a jerk and a liability and that there’s no more pain after the prick of the needle of the solution at the Vet. MUCH better than leaving Moss in a cage and pretending he doesn’t exist and keeping Moss’ dad as #1 stud because his puppies are cute and win ribbons like their father.
I’ve covered Thoroughbreds and animal agriculture and Fancy Mice, where relevant and will do so again.
The question is, what’s the “positive good” that “offsets” the abuse? See, just because there is some good doesn’t mean you can not achieve the good WITHOUT the elements that create the abuse.
When the two are connected and inseparable we should ALWAYS be asking if the balance is worth it, not just assume that the balance is in favor of the good or if the good is good enough to justify the bad. The debate should never be closed on issues like that.
Well yes, children themselves and parenthood have myriad good aspects, this doesn’t balance the issues in the human baby trade though and they never will. Those issues are not intrinsic often, and thus they should be purged instead of rationalized.
The child trade and the human organ trade are two very good examples of bureaucratic structures which SEEM to be about preserving the overall good and enforce a code of ethics which have huge negative externalities because of the shitty nature of bureaucracies and organizations which lose their focus because overcoming issues is hard.
You can be a radical critic of the adoption industry or the organ donor trade and not wish to do away with surrogate parenting and adoption and organ donation and organ trade or selling or anything like that! And saying LIVERS SAVE LIVES!!! doesn’t absolve anyone from looking at, criticizing, and proposing solutions to those issues. Nor does “KIDS ARE CUTE” absolve us all from reform.
I see the “you don’t talk about all the great things we do” comment often enough. Well it’s a stupid comment because my job, my cause, is not to dispassionately document history or the situation as if I’m a mere chronicler or the arbiter of cosmic justice; my mission is to stop abuse, stop stupid thinking, promote scientific understanding, promote rational thinking, promote breeding methods that are humane and increasing in good qualities and against bad qualities.
You do realize that the enjoyment you’ve taken out of it and the people you’ve met are not necessary and sufficient to justify the hobby? They are not the opposite of mutually exclusive, mutually required perhaps.
It’s just like you’re telling me that your faith-based religion is true because you’ve met good people at church and they are moral.
Can you not be moral without adherence to the specific flavor of religion you belong to? Can you not be a good person without swearing allegiance to the one defined and limiting culture which wants you to do this?
I say you can be perfectly moral and believe in no God, no religion what-so-ever. Just as you can meet great people with great dogs and do right by science, facts, the breed, yourself, etc. without going through the cultural charade of dog shows.
I don’t mind competition. I’m actually a very competitive person and can show you a several page resume of all the various competitive outlets I’ve participated in, from the very objective to the very subjective.
Some forms of competition absolutely bring out the best and give motivation to try harder and do better and give people feedback that is from a valuable perspective.
But that experience doesn’t make me blind to shitty metrics and culturally and historically endorsed stupid forms of competition. Which is what dog pageants are. They are not a good form of competition because their metrics and methods suck. You can’t create a delicious cake out of salt and shit. It’s corrupt because the foundations are broken and out-dated and not objective goods. They are subjective myths and backwards thinking and that’s why the results are just so poor.
This is because of any number of factors in dog shows which just don’t have to be that way and the extent to which apologists use what metrics there are to justify things they do not justify. “Show breeders can’t be unethical because they are show breeders.” I see this argument so often in various forms. Some idiot was just claiming that despite the fact that they don’t know shit about genetics, let alone the specifics of Harlequin Dane breeding, I must be wrong about it all because the Great Dane parent club would never allow such an abuse!
This is circular reasoning to the max. Good breeders form parent clubs, Parent Clubs publish guidelines that must then be good, breeders who follow those good guidelines must also be good breeders. Except there’s no guarantee that good people actually form good guidelines or that those guidelines remain good over time given new information.
This is why the parent club of the Great Danes, in Germany, now bans the breeding of Harlequin to Harlequin. They figured it out. They changed. But the US hasn’t figured this out yet.
Who is in the wrong? Well a circular reasoning idiot would say neither because their rules are being followed and thus they must both be moral.
I don’t believe that and the competition doesn’t select against it. In fact the Dane color families and disallowing the showing of dogs that are going to be produced from that breeding (like plain, non-Harlequin merles) serves to make breeders behave in an immoral and impractical fashion.
I trash show culture because I gave it a good faith effort, I went to dog shows to see what it was about, and I didn’t like what I saw. If I were to build that effort from the ground up it would not look much like what it does. I don’t see the benefits. I don’t see the improvement. I don’t see all the good things that are supposedly supported by the structure and the people doing it.
And when you say you’ve met great people and great dogs, I say that’s IN SPITE of the culture not BECAUSE of the culture.
Chris, very good points, includes some i’ve never read before. I’m glad you are firm about not being distracted into other topics, yet flexible when something rational updates your information. Many of us muddle through trying to improve things but get bogged down by all the weirdness in dog people.
I don’t have a dislike for beauty. I enjoy the look of Border Collies quite a bit and acknowledge that I have “a type” and that said type is profoundly subjective. I don’t feel a need to pretend that what I like is also some practical concern. I see this quite a lot in the show world, the claim that some purely subjective aesthetic is necessary and justified for some perceived benefit. Such talk is horribly dishonest.
Call aesthetics what they are.
But I don’t sacrifice things that are more important to aesthetics. Nor do I think that the prevailing fads are all that great. If you look at what show culture has done, so far, with the Border Collie you should recognize them as they have to a great extent turned them into Shelties!
Shorter legs, more square frames. Smaller heads, shorter muzzles. MUCH more hair. More cube-like in all dimensions instead of the extended and somewhat lurcher like frame. They are shrinking them down and making them more doll like. The arc of this trajectory bends right toward what the Sheltie is now. Heck, some slightly smaller BCs today could easily be confused for slightly larger Shelties.
At what point does this become promotion of a pituitary dwarfism in the breed? At what point are we going to run into issues of too much brain in to little skull? Will we get brachy Border Collies? Toy Border Collies? How much hair is too much? Can we ever have too much hair? Seems not for many breeds.
See I have my preferred type, I just don’t place that as a high value over other concerns. I find Dublin handsome, mostly because he’s a very charming dog to be with and I’ve lost all objectivity to nostalgia and familiarity, but I am not particularly fond of all of his aesthetic qualities. Celeste’s face is much more adorable and she photographs well from almost any angle. Dublin is not nearly so photogenic. Nor does Dublin have a profuse male coat that screams masculinity with a lion-like mane. Didn’t stop me from breeding him for a second. Nor was it a considering factor in which puppy I kept, as of course there’s just no real way of knowing what their adult coat will turn out like when they are so young.
I lucked out in that Mercury has a great combination of this mother’s head and his father’s. A nice large skull to hold those brains, a longer and less cute muzzle than his mother but certainly in proportion and still attractive, well placed eyes that are expressive. Good markings to boot. And a gorgeous coat that is thick in all the right places. If he came out the same as his father but still had his golden personality, I’d keep him and breed on. As luck has it, his mother imprinted a lot of positive aesthetic qualities on him.
But that’s just a bonus. Not the focus of why I want to breed and what I really care about. A factor, but not a major one. I prefer black, but if he were brown I would not crap my pants. I like a good solid tri-color but Celeste doesn’t carry it, not an issue. I like a nice white tipped tail and a full collar but Dublin doesn’t have a large amount of white. It’s just something to remark on, it doesn’t really change my breeding decisions or choice of puppies above other concerns. Just a little bit of aesthetic whimsy.
I can’t think of a single aesthetic trait that I value over a moral issue or ethical issue.
I can say that a nice masculine coat is at times a PRACTICAL issue. A slick/smooth/short haired dog would be more practical in many ways and I hold no animus against stock breeders here who focus on that trait for their cattle and ranch dogs. I can appreciate how that aesthetic concern has practical implications for them. For me, I don’t mind it, but I don’t deny that a nice hairy dog is a luxury and it’s one that I have a limit on the amount of coat from an aesthetic AND practical nature even for me who is willing to allow more coat for looks than ease of ownership would dictate.
I still see that show people go so much further and that this is an issue that can be taken too far and which rules out any number of pet homes from being able to easily take care of the animal if they don’t appreciate what a task that is.
I certainly don’t tell people that the lovely coat they see on my dogs is worry free, hypoallergenic, and that they don’t shed ever ever or that it’s simply a matter of no concern. Heck, I even tell them that my dogs’ coats have changed over their lifetime and conditions. Marked more in Celeste (as I understand is common in many bitches during their cycles, etc) than the others.
But again, these are things to talk about when the big picture things are taken care of. The important questions. These are not nearly as important. Sort of like a metaphor I read recently about how to build a foundation of rocks and gravel and sand. The important thing is to get the boulders right. The big issues. You can mess up on the small issues, but if you mess up a big issue, you have a problem that can ruin the whole effort. Then you place the pebbles, let them fill in around the boulders where they can, and lastly you filter on the sand. Big effort, big concern, big focus for big problems, big challenges, big outcomes. Much less effort and worry for issues which are small and much less important.
Well, for me, aesthetics are lower on the list. They are paramount in the show ring. And subjective. I prefer to cover objective issues, the important issues, first and foremost.
I think that much of the problems in show breeding of dogs, cats, horses, goldfish, is that people start looking for extremes instead of balance. And they judge for conformity, that all the winners should be the same type – especially noticeable when Border Collies first started into the show ring. There was a variety of ears, backs, heads, etc, now there is more conformity but less variety.
Hunting ability is good in hunting dogs, but not to the extend that one should breed to a line of dogs that hunt well for a few years then die young. Balance is desired, but variation away from that balance is needed too.
Interesting you’d mention Arabians. I think that their aesthetics are hideous. I do not find them attractive. I even question the extent of the distortions that appear to be either driven by fad or by the narrow gene pool. I also weep for that gene pool, how very limited it is, how narrow the bottleneck is, how un-outcrossed and seemingly unexamined that culture is.
Not a fan. But of course I’m not as well read on that culture and don’t feel the need to wade into it in specific any more than the issues are universal to all domestic animals, namely inbreeding and population structure and genetic diversity and when these things run up against culture and history and fad breeding and aesthetics. Some of the physical features I find repulsive might be practical. I’d like to see it proven versus just claimed, but I’ll note just how different the horses look compared to the rest of their evolved brethren, so when there is a distortion, I’ll ask why and if it can be justified on objective grounds or just subjective history.
I also question the ability to “preserve the legacy” of anything as if putting an animal in a zoo is preservation or merely breeding it within a close pool is preservation. I don’t think you can preserve anything, save for genetic banking. Everything else is subject to selection and evolution. Mutation. CHANGE. There is no stopping time or preserving a “living fossil” in any sense of that term.
Even the supposed “living fossils” that the media likes to talk about are not living fossils. They merely look substantially like their historical forms, but they are NOT their historical forms. They are not free from the same length of evolution that all other species have undergone. They have simply kept up a semblance of their form that still proved beneficial within their niche.
The supposed niche of the Arabian horse? That’s largely gone now. I don’t believe you can breed an animal designed for the 15th century in the 21st century unless you can perfectly recreate and maintain the conditions of the 15th in the 21st. This is increasingly impossible and impractical.
And this applies as much to Border Collies as it does Bulldogs as Arabian Horses. It’s only different in the extent the selective factors still apply. So for Bulldogs, we no longer ask them to bait bulls. That factor is almost entirely absent. Well the breed can not stay the same if the major selective factor is removed. Border Collies still work stock, but this is 2014, not 1420, so there are major factors that are not the same. Raising stock in Canada is different than any 10 places in the USA is different than the Border Region today, let alone 200 years ago, is different than New Zealand or South Africa or Austalia or France, etc. etc. etc.
Sensitivity to Ivermectin didn’t matter before there was Ivermectin to treat parasites! But look at what that new adaptation will do to Collies. They will be different, if only at that locus or perhaps that entire chromosome, as Ivermectin selected against that gene. Same can be said for any number of other factors. Food, coat, allergens, climate, the sort of stock they are asked to work, where they are asked to work it, etc. etc. etc.
We can not halt history, so to the extent that the environment changes, the selective pressures will change. Like it or not.
And heck, mere accident or selection for a moderate form has lead to greater extreme forms. Take the Arabian “dish” face which I’m told is beautiful. I don’t find it such. And I find extreme dish faces to be downright ugly. I wonder, did the extreme dish faces come from intent to keep pushing down the mid-muzzle or were they for selection of a moderate dish which slowly built up more tandem repeats which eventually lead to severe dishes that were never intended by breeders 50 years ago but which new breeders see as NEW and exciting and different and maybe even aesthetic and beautiful. And thus they didn’t select against them.
They shot for 50% and got 75%.
I think this is the case with many show fuck ups of breeds. They shot for 50% muzzle and got 25% and then 10% and no one seemed to say WTF where did the muzzles go because the change happened gradually, like boiling the living frog in the pot. If you threw the live frog in boiling water, he’d jump right out. But if you put him in and slowly turn up the temp, you can cook him without him putting up a fuss.
Well, I think there needs to be a lot more moderation, slowing, and even turning around in breeding fads. And none of that seems to be rewarded in the ring. Dogs are MORE extreme now than they ever have been.
I whole heatedly agree about the Arab horse.
While yes beauty is in the eye of the beholder the animal involved the breed of horse which is the showing Arab is a complete disaster. So bad is it it is rarely used to refine coarser or heavier horses anymore. It was once (quite long long ago) useful for this purpose.
The overly dished face to me is monstrous, as monstrous as a squashed pugs face, the set of the neck too is all but useless for riding purposes, they are light of bone, small and and and.
But the biggest problem is inbreeding and line breeding for in hand showing purposes coupled with a chronic limited gene pool. This is obviously worse in some countries like America than others but it tends to be across the board with the arab with its closed stud books popular sire syndromes and beauty pageants or shows rather than performance testing under saddle and regular out crossing to other breeds.
Theirs is a shrinking gene pool.
A fact recognised by no other than the Arabs themselves who are trying to recreate the original functional animal or barb, they don’t even compete on pure bred arabs in endurance.
Actually endurance sport is an eye opener of a welfare issue, its so horrific I personally think the sport should be banned from and by the FEI.
“They shot for 50% and got 75%.” Perfectly said and true. When they got more than they bargained for, they should have remembered balance.
But see, you fail again to recognize what I’m actually saying. I don’t make any commands for ALL DOGS. See you can’t call me selfish and breeding for ME in one paragraph and then claim that I’m prescribing that everyone else breed just like me and that I’m in control of “ALL DOGS” or want to micro-manage them in some authoritarian manner.
FAIL.
See, I’m not saying that all breeds must be turned into “couch potato” dogs, heck my dogs are anything but lazy do-nothings. My point is that I don’t want to produce a dog that fails at being a couch potato because it was bred to be a maniac or beauty queen. What the dog does for 1% of its time is not as important to my consideration as what it does with 50% or 80% or 99% of its time.
This is rather like judging the keeping of Killer Whales based on how entertaining the shows are. Well if only the animals lived just at the shows, they’d be very active and fed and interacting and moving about and seemingly happy. But that’s a small fraction of their life. We don’t get to just pretend the rest of it doesn’t exist. Are these animals well cared for when the crowds are not watching? Are they active and joyful the rest of the 99% of their life?
In dogs, it’s not that you can’t go have fun at your beauty competition, but I’d prefer it if you picked flowers or something else that doesn’t suffer due to the extreme selection for fads and arbitrary aesthetic traits. I don’t care if you inbreed petunias or make gross alterations of the proportions of a rose.
But there are aesthetic choices that the fancy has and continues to make with dogs that are MUTUALLY ALIGNED with suffering and dysfunction.
You can not have a Brachy dog without compromising the airway. You can not have a dwarf dog without compromising the joints and cartilage. You can not have a closed inbred gene pool without throwing away wanted and needed genetic diversity, especially in the immune region of the genome.
You can’t have both.
And this is why your comment fails. You assume that you can have all of what I am doing AND MORE!!! You can put a show championship on top of all that with no trade off.
Bullshit. Dogs are not a la carte and the selection for one thing sometimes does select against another mutually exclusive trait or quality. And some qualities are sine-qua-non abuse. They are dysfunction themselves, they can not be unhinged and delinked from malgenics despite the fancy claiming that they are eugenic.
And of course there’s the unintentional distortion that comes from the imperfection of breeding and choice and placing PRIORITY on show over the other qualities.
This should not be a profound concept, but apparently it is. Donald McCaig likes to say “you can not serve two masters” quoting the bible, but this is actually bullshit, too. It incorrectly assumes that you must maximize a variable across only one axis. We don’t have to do this, we of course can make WEIGHTED judgments and choose our selection based upon BALANCE and multiple factors.
For example, cost vs. benefit. We can serve BOTH of those masters, but let’s get rid of the “serve” verb which implies that we have to follow them fully and blindly, and change it to “consider” or “weigh” or “factor in” and we can change “two” to any number.
See this is what I studied at college. Decision analysis under uncertainty and multiple variables. When we have equations to guide us we can SOLVE a system if we have as many independent equations as we have variables. But live is rarely so simple.
And in those cases we have no discrete answers, but we can still find area-specific optimal answers that balance our values with the challenges.
So I can find the best product within a budget based upon putting measures to my values and comparing the discrete options available to me. So we CAN “serve” cost and benefit. One option might be out of my price range entirely, even though it offers the greatest benefit. Well, I can’t just “serve” the master of benefit as any choice would not be the “right” choice to that “master.”
But given the cost structure I might find that there is one example that is the best benefit per cost, and another that gives the most benefit within the budget. Well, is my higher goal efficiency (in which case I could buy the most efficient benefit vs. cost model and spend the excess money elsewhere buying myself more benefits at the same total budge) or I could go with the less efficient but greater total benefit item and have less money left over.
Well, can decide between those two options by putting numbers to it to represent my values. How much do I value being X dollars under budget and how much do I value the increased utility of the more expensive item?
It’s not a simple solution that has the same answer under all circumstances. And complex thinking and evaluation can make us act differently.
So your claim that “Show dogs can do anything your dogs can do–and one thing more” is just bogus. My dogs are not deficient because I see the show ring as a useless measure to assess my values. It’s not a zero sum game or a fixed sum game, but there is a limited budget not matter what you’re dealing with and I put no value in the judging metric of historical culture that created the show ring behavior in humans.
Just because it’s a popular (well, not very popular and increasingly less so) activity whose members CLAIM to be doing so many wonderful things vis-a-vis dogs doesn’t make it so. It’s not an objectively good standard, any more than drowning witches was a good standard of justice.
I don’t even claim that you forfeit all the things I like in dogs by taking one into a show ring. It’s not a mutually exclusive advantage the other way either. What I say is that the metrics of the show ring are uselessly subjective and thus it has little to no to negative value to me in all the things I like. I do not in any way need SOMEONE ELSE to validate what I find beautiful! In fact that’s the stupidest thing ever.
I can enjoy my aesthetics without getting a ribbon for it or trying to convince anyone else, let alone some old breed judge, that what I think is beautiful should be what THEY think is beautiful should be what some committee writes down on a piece of paper is beautiful and then demands other breeders to recreate in my image of beauty!
That’s the worst form of egoism controlling others through bureaucratic authoritarian pressure and control schemes.
Competing over aesthetics is very silly and that’s why almost every system that tries to do such ends up in distortion, excess, regression toward the extremes, politics, and then corruption which sacrifices health and well-being even when that’s their stated goal.
Human body builders are at their least healthy the day of their shows. They take horrible risks and ruin their bodies at the same time they claim to be displaying perfection of health and ability. Because a certain aesthetic has come to represent an actual value, but the two are not intrinsically linked along their entire measures. So yes, muscle tone is better than none, even the display of some veins is better than none showing a healthy level of body fat and a healthy blood supply. But at the extremes you have so little fat you are actually near death and the bulging veins and the muscles they sit on are a product of hormone injections that actually destroy their integrity and ruin multiple organs.
So I have no trouble using multiple metrics and diminishing return calculations in my assessment. Being thin is generally better than being fat, but not at the extremes. Better to be 5 pounds heavy than 50 pounds underweight. Better to have sufficient muscles to move freely and adroitly, but not so many that you can no longer perform basic tasks like walking straight, wiping your own ass, and forcing a level of food consumption and exercise that is counter productive to other body systems.
Dog shows don’t do this. They so often reward the most extreme. The Peke is a perfect example of this. One of the smallest dogs with multiple forms of dwarfism that corrupt their spine, their legs, their joints, their skulls, they are Brachy and their eyes bulge out, but they have PROFUSE hair. Extreme in both respects. They are a useless dog so there’s no working or practical function to balance these concerns against, so it comes down to just pure artistry and aesthetics. And they are ugly as sin to my eyes. But they win and win and win.
There’s not one thing you can say is “improved” about that breed, and yet they are lauded as the most improved of all improvement?
I found him saying, “A show dog can do anything your dogs can do – and one thing more”, sounded so far up his own arse, that the gentleman I presume must wear a mining lamp on his head.
John Frazier your manner in written form is very condescending and in your attempt to discredit Border Wars, you give us a look into the mindset of the stereotypical show breeder in glorious technicolor.
Your first lines infer that Border Wars is the enemy, entrenchment is the biggest problem with show breeders and you dig your trench first as last.
“Micro-manage” perfect description of so much of purebred show breeding.
PERVERSE?
By what means do you feel that word is justified as a criticism against me and this blog? Seriously, do tell.
If I take that word to mean “showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable, often in spite of the consequences” tell me what I propose that is unreasonable, unacceptable, immoral, harmful, or against the best interests of dogs?
Go ahead. I want to hear what thing I suggest that is in any way harmful to dogs. I can’t think of one. Everything I put forward is from an ethical point of view.
I believe in outcrossing because it is superior to the health and well being of dogs. The cost is conformity which is a human concern and has little ethical impact on the welfare of animals.
I believe in open gene pools because it is superior to the health and well being of dogs. The cost is tradition which is a human concern and has little ethical impact on the welfare of animals.
I believe in dogs that have superior temperaments and that quality weighed more heavily than concerns of aesthetics or even work functions. Why? Because the show and working breeders don’t limit their puppies to their own, they sell them to the public, and when you keep one and sell 8, you are existentially MORE in the objective business of creating pets than you are in creating show ring winners and field workers.
You might not CARE about the 8 as much as the 1, but your desires are not what echoes down through history and out through the community.
So anything I write that you consider “unreasonable or unacceptable” you’ll have to defend and define because NOTHING that I propose is in any way meant to harm animals or even harm the people who breed them.
In all ways that I’ve considered people can have what they want and not cause so much damage down stream.
So maybe you mean “contrary to the accepted or expected standard or practice.” Well I do not deny this, but the pejorative nature of the word means that this definition assumes that the accepted standard is ethical and the perverse alternate is not. I claim the exact opposite. I claim objective ethical benefits for my views and objective moral crimes from the standard practice if we take extant show breeding and work breeding as “standard.”
Last, I’ll consider you to mean “against the weight of evidence” and in this I claim superiority. I have a decidedly objective and science based view on dog breeding and continue to check my beliefs against reason and evidence and facts as they develop.
That’s the exact opposite of the “let’s pretend it’s 1780” culture that informs dog shows and working trials.
They are so unwilling to accept the harm they’ve done even when it’s objectively documented. Let alone consider that their culture is out-dated and doesn’t serve the best interests of the greater population or even their own breeds.
Wow Chris, you have great patience in explaining things again and again to slow learners with an emotional block which prevent them from acknowledging what is clearly in front of them.
I enjoyed listening to your post, I am sure that others who drive or have eye strain will appreciate it too. You have a good speaking voice, strong, masculine, and well enunciated. Your voice is easy to understand – your typed post are easy to understand too, so why some breeders don’t get it is beyond me.
Many dog show people don’t like it when anyone calls their pageants “pageants”, they like them to be called a “sport”. I’ve heard this is for insurance reasons.
But then they like genetically unhealthy dogs to be called “healthy”. When will speed reading become an Olympic sport?
You make many good arguments in your responses Christopher, but be more concise next time if possible! I like reading your posts and the comments, but this one was a little too long for me to read completely, even for a line-by-line breakdown type of response.
Yeah, tried being concise, it’s just not going to happen. I don’t think in abbreviated bullet points so it’s hard for me to pare arguments down into them.
Danielle, your comment gave me an idea. What would happen if each of us tried to reduce John and Chris’s comments to one tweet per comment?
Someone once told about how all the students in a class each made a 3 minute clip of Star Wars, with the goal of best representing what the movie was truly about. Then the proff played all of the 3 minute videos for the whole class.
Some student made a 3 minute ‘flash card’ video of Star Wars – they had a still of a starship, a robot, Leia, etc.
Other students showed only clips from Luke’s point of view – for them, Star Wars was about Luke’s journey. Others showed only clips of Leia. One person started his video with the entrance of Darth Vader, ended his video with the death of Darth, and had only Darth Vader clips in his video – for him Star Wars was The Darth Vader Story (I have dated 2 guys who felt this way).
Others felt that one special scene could tell what Star Wars was about. If a person has lost one of their hands, Luke loosing his could be what the movie is about – the rest is just lead up and closing.
One person told me that The One Scene which typifies Star Wars to him, is the scene where Luke regrows his hand in the underwater tube, he said Star Wars is about a future where injured people are made new and continue on as before.
Do each of us take away a different piece of knowledge from this post and from Chris’s comments? Do we all read John’s complaint the same? What about the 6 part videos of PDE? When done watching Pedigree Dogs Exposed, which part sticks in each of our minds?
I suck at being concise too. How could I have said all of that in one tweet without loosing any meaning?
Since it was my comment, I guess I should start trying the concise thing first. Warning, I’m not in the habit of being concise either, do try to improve on my attempts.
After reading John’s comment, without looking back, this is what I remember: (mostly remembering how it made me feel, not what I really read yesterday):
I don’t like Chris, I feel he is my enemy. I breed and show dogs. Hey Chris, why don’t you go write about these other people instead of show breeders like me?
Then there was this confusing bit where it seemed to read that John was trying to say that show breeders were sometimes good people – which is quite true, but not the point. The whole point of this ‘war’ really isn’t about the people themselves, but about the paradigm of using competitions and then only breeding the winners of those competitions.
– ———————- –
Here ends my attempt at being concise. Here begins my reply to John.
John, breeders themselves are not the focus of the desired paradigm shift.
Mostly the focus is on how this paradigm causes inbreeding and therefor a decline in health; and how the competitions are not set up so that the winners are the dogs who are best at the lives or work which their puppies will be sold into, resulting in puppies who are a bad fit into modern homes, families, and canine employment, leading to less than pleased owners, frustrated dogs, and dogs being killed because they are too much bother, or because they are in uncurable suffering.
Another issue is not from the human point of view, but from the canine point of view. The dogs often suffer from being bred for these sort of exhibitions of who owns the most extremely deformed dog, where the merely somewhat short or somewhat ingrown dogs are called “losers”, are devalued, and often killed as “worthless” because they are not extreme enough to win at these freak shows (anyone have a politer name which still describes what is actually being judged for in these breeds?)
This is something which, I feel, should be judged more with the heart than the head.
It is cruel to breed dogs to produce a most deformed winner, then to sell the other puppies in the litter, who will often need expensive surgery to breathe, to unsuspecting pet owners. The breeder often fails to tell the buyers “this is a cute puppy now, but he will need expensive surgery as he grows, are you prepared for that?” So the dog spends years suffering while his adopted family thinks all dogs of his breed are like that and nothing can be done to change that. The cost of the surgery should be prepaid by the breeder prior to the sale of the puppy.
Saying that pro dog people are anti breeder is usually backwards to the truth of the matter. The past 40 or more years is full of show breeders bullying people who want to breed dogs as pets, to be loved and cherished in the home. The past decade of full of organized efforts to completely exterminate the breeding of dogs as companions, to switch to breeed ding only show dogs but palming off show rejected puppies as “pet quality” puppies.
Many regular people have never owned a dog breed for generation for its desire to please people nor bred for a calm stable temperament, or bred to get along well with children or other pets. Many dogs are given up or destroyed because they were never bred to be good house dogs-dog bred to be good in the home, to not bark much, to not destroy furniture because of a nervous desire, to have good bowel and bladder control; instead generation of people have bought dogs only breed from purebred show dogs bred to win in pageants -but whose puppies are mislabeled by the breeder as “pet quality” when they are no such thing;they are merely bred for pageants and side-shows, but not going to be extreme enough to win at that.
That does sound a bit emotional, doesn’t it. Sorry maybe, but decades of abuse from show breeders has left me abused. Left me defensive. Left me a tad hostile, a tad bit crying. It has been like having the hatred of a cult, just because I dared try yo help the dogs and the families who want a nice health pet dog who is bred to be a good house dog and good with a family.
Sorry about the typos, if I go back to correct the typos or to correct the auto-correct, this tablet often freezes the cursor and wants me to cut and paste, strangely, it sometimes doesn’t freeze the cursor and works fine, but since when it does freeze the cursor, I loose the whole comment, I tend to let the errors remain, especially on long moments.
“breeed ding” is obviously “breeding” I tried to remove the extra “e” and then couldn’t get the tablet to give up the copy and paste idea, and go back to regular typing so I could backspace.
The next paragraphs should have “bred” instead of “breed” = Many regular people have never owned a dog who has been bred for generations to please…”
The “yo” is “to”. Perhaps I’ll figure out how to correct the errors without risking the cursor freezing, then again maybe not.
Hi John Frazier,
I felt a bit bad about not being more friendly, so i thought i’d try again – no promises, just look at what happened when i tried to be more concise!
I do love your choice in breeds. Beagles have long been a great choice as family dogs. They are NOT dogs who like to alone – they are pack hounds – and they howl, and they will take themselves on long hikes if loose. But wonderfully friendly dogs, who seem to believe “A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet”.
Breeders of hybrids would often be well advised to use beagles as an outcross; there are many healthy lines of beagles, and to have your dogs get along so well together that they can be kept in single gender packs of 20 dogs – right in your own yard, surely makes them an easy to care for breed – and one where they are usually easy to keep nicely – that is NOT in crates.
Shelties are a good choice for dog lovers who like to groom and train their dogs. Shelties can be groomed into a beautifully coated dog, and their long nose is attention getting. They are one of the easiest dogs to train to do tricks and obey commands. But some Shelties yap most of the time they are alone, will chase cars is let loose, can become nervous and fearful, the coat needs occasional effort to look good, and they can have health problems. Check for good eyes.
I do like your breed choices. But that is part of the problem, i want Beagles to remain healthy, “i love every person and every dog” types. What happens to a breed when shows start rewarding breeders whose dogs are lighter, shorter backed, straighter legged, longer eared – all without even a bit of knowledge if the temperament or health of the breed has changed?
And Shelties? What happens to their breed when shows place the longer haired dogs above the better tempered dogs? How far away from needing thunder shirts and supplements are Shelties?
Can you understand my concern over what is happening to every breed? The dogs are being judge by the wrong criteria! Health and temperament count! Show ribbons don’t make for better pets.
Hi again John Frazier,
Please remember that if Chris, myself, and other pro-dog people seem to disapprove of your dog showing hobby, it is with good reason. But about being insulting? Oh the dog show ladies take the winners cup in that event!
Be honest, how often do you hear dog show people insult people who breed dogs to sell pet puppies, but who never show their dogs? Isn’t it true that most dog show people believe that if a person doesn’t show their dog they should NOT get to breed the dog?
And if it wasn’t kennel owners who created the term “backyard breeder”, then who do you think did? It isn’t so much that the term in itself is an insult, but the way it is said which makes it so. Like when people use slurs like “—!” or “——!”, or whatever type of person one is. Show and kennel people have made the very term for people who breed dogs at home into an insult!
Would it not be perfectly fair if “kennel owner” was said with a slur like “slum lord”?
Wouldn’t turn-about is fair-play make it even, if pet owners started saying “yuk, she is one of those show breeders, she should have to have her dogs all fixed! What is wrong with her, using her dogs like that.” And “Fixed? Show breeders shouldn’t be allowed any dogs, they just don’t understand what really makes a dog good. How can anyone think of their dogs like that?”
You wouldn’t like people saying things like that about other show breeders with you standing there listening.
So what do you say about home breeders, cross-breeders, and people who breed for health and temperament? Do you like the idea of Puggles, Goldendoodles, Cockapoos, and Irman Setherds? (I made the last one up.)
Or are you one of the show people who have been insulting dog breeders who don’t show? Scornful of those who are dog breeders like you, but who are not in your hobby?