Please....anyone....I'd really appreciate feedback.... - Page 2

Excellent points by starrchar. I know breeders with EXCEPTIONAL, V rated, kkl1 dogs who are NOT breeding them because they are getting no calls for puppies!

As for titles, performance titles are VERY important, even for, and especially for, the breeding of family companions! A family companion must be mentally sound, confident without being defensive, stable in public and approachable.  It is IMPOSSIBLE to tell if your dog is these things if you do not get them out there under an unbiased judge. Why not look into some AKC or UKC obedience? Something to get started with. AKC obedience is not exactly a breed test, but it is a test for a "Companion Dog"...which is exactly what you're trying to produce, is it not? And if the US picks up the new SV acceptance of long coats, then next year you may even have the opportunity to obtain a conformation rating on your dogs. I would say an SG, CD, and OFA is not a bad start if you want to breed your dog.

Even the BEST show/working dogs bred to each other can produce dogs that are "just pets". So when you breed two dogs that are "just pets" in the first place, the best your puppies can possibly be is "just pets". Now if a puppiy picks up the least desirable traits if the parents, you are looking at potentially a poorly bred animal. You must ensure that your dogs faults, both physical and mental, are minimal, to reduce their perpetuation in the gene pool.

Bondosmom, you seem to love your long coats, so here's my advice to you. Join USSA and WDA. Encourage them to adopt the new SV long coat policy. You could even help start a long coat club in your area, help organize some the first coated dog events our country will see! Get involved in training your dogs. Shoot to make a difference!

I also notice you really seem to want to breed your male to your female. There is a saying in the horse world: A good stud makes a great gelding. Don't write off the idea of studding your female to an outstanding, titled male. Your male might turn out to be a "nice dog", but if you breed your bitch to a GREAT male, you will be producing puppies who are better quality than their mother, which is every breeders goal. We have an intact male at home, and you wouldn't catch me dead breeding him to my girls. There are tons of stud dogs out there, much, much better than he is. Convenience and sentimentality should play no part in your breeding decisions. Your male may not compliment your female, genetically, physically, or mentally!

KCzaja,

This is what the web and PDB tells me about you.

You have two one year old bitches (sisters yet) and a 4 mo male you are already planning to breed to them(w/o even knowing if he would be appropriate for them which suggests to me you do not really care). You are currently running two ads looking for another male and another female. Since you state "DOES NOT HAVE TO HAVE GREAT PEDIGREE BACKGROUND" your only qualifiers seem to be longcoat, full registration and big and "very reasonably priced - AKA CHEAP ( you note above who could/would pay 1,000 for a dog). Yet this comes from a person who drives a Porsche and has plenty of money to invest in forclosed homes (plural) ( ain't the web great).
 

You already have a website up hawking yourself as a breeder and it comes up #1 on Google when searched which speaks to some marketing knowledge and savy since new website owners do not normally know how to play the traffic game to get a high listing for their site. Your site focuses on big size as if that was the best positive attribute ( it's not).

Your postings show a total lack of knowledge about the breed and no real desire to learn ( since you see nothing wrong with what you are doing and think a LC w/o undercoat is a perfectly fine thing). The posts are all directed at making sure you will produce LC and trying to figure out how you can do that  as quickly as possible w/o having to do any of the heavy work of actually learning about the breed or your individual dogs or actually seeing what they are made of by investing some time and training .

Finally you proclaim you will not be breeding for some time yet you inquire how much you can sell the pups for and how you can OFA a year old bitch.

What does all this tell me - PUPPY MILL in the making nothing more.

This is the part where I will point out to you that if you are serious about dogs than you better have thick skin. We are a passionate group, and most of us who breed with a goal in mind have very strong reseason for beleiving in those goals. Many of us on this board who DO breed to the standard still butt heads with each other.  If you are easily hurt or easily offended, you will run screaming from the dog world and lose all chance to learn and grow.

Lady, I've been trying to educate the likes of you for more than four decades. By now I'm pretty good at reading the tracks in the snow as to who really wants to learn and who is a bs artist. If any one is in doubt as to your status I suggest they review the facts in my post incuding your swift acquirement of multiple dogs without any knowledge of the breed and lines and also take a long hard look at your posts.

Your posts are not seeking to learn about the breed. They are all about this is what I am GOING to do whether it's good for the breed or not, whether its good for the puppies or not and whether its within standard or not. I just want to be insured I will get coats to sell and oh yes how much can I sell them for. You state up front you do not care about learning about the breed or having great pedigrees or producing more than "pets". You are very clear that you are unwilling to put time, money or most of all effort into this venture. You see an empty marketplace in your immediate area and the dollar signs are just dancing in front of your eyes.

If this is not so then I challenge you. Prove me wrong. Agree to come back to us in 3 years without having bred your dogs. The girls will be 4 and the male 3.5. Still plenty of time to breed them. Show us that each one has one of the following titles - Sch1, HGH, Herding Started on sheep ( HSs), FH or TDX ( please note all of these except for the TDX are starting level titles only - so I'm not asking for the tough stuff here ( Sch3, HX, FH2 etc). Tell us where you showed your dogs and what rating they were given and whether you koered them or not. Take a picture of the boxes of catalogs, breed magazines , books etc that you've been reading, learning and studying from in the three years. Be able to tell us why your male is the most appropriate breeding partner for your bitches besides the fact that you own him, he's big and he's a coat.  Tell us what health certifications if any you have obtained on your crew.

I will be happy to make a very big public apology if you do this ( and of course would help you learn along the way) but I'm not holding my breath.

By the way, Clara, and that is how you have signed your name re the veracity of the other information I posted I suggest that omg you might want to run to yahoo screaming because a Clara with the exact same email address as you  gave here has posted want ads wanting to buy foreclosures and at one time owned a Porsche Boxster. Finally lets not be ingenious saying you searched long coats and you're website did not come up. Why not search gsd. The reality is Woodbys plus long coat puts you at #1 position and Woodbys plus gsd puts you at #5 position. Not easy to do on google these days.

bondosmom

If you owned a jet I could care less.  If you bought homes others could not afford then you are helping them reduce their debt and saving a nation.  Now, let's get back to dogs.

If you want to breed then do it.  You have to get started somewhere.  My family bred GSDs when I was a kid.  Most liters turned out okay but we were struck with disease from time to time and the business side of it said put them down.  We lost entire liters from time to time.  We also had to put down breeding females for the same reason.  You need to be ready for some tough calls and it is not easy staying up all night with the dogs.  There are serious behavioral issues you will need to manage to.  The males and females change (like humans) once they breed.  Two dogs that got along great may fight to the death over a pup, area of the home, or something we don't even see.

Unlike your pet or sport dog, you are in it for a different reason.  You are in a business.  I have two dogs that I am itching to breed because of their market value.  My male dog is a direct line dog from Horand von Grafrath.  He is 65 cm, perfectly balanced in chest and length, head ratios perfect, and one of the most powerful dogs I have ever owned.  I am a former college athlete and still in good shape, infrantry experince, and very strong.  This dog tears the ball out of my hands in the two ball drill when in bite targeting.  However, he is merely a BH.  Following true German standards I won't breed him until he is Schh titled and for a male that means Schh 3 in my opinion.  My other dog is a Schh 3 female and from a well known German line.  Right now, I am not sure I have the energy to get him to Schh 3 but I train every day hoping so.  I can't breed according to my own ethics right now.  My user name is called Justice because I love the breed so much I want to see it given due "Justice" per the orignial standard dating back to 1890.

I did not mean to offend you with my comments about breeding shilos.  Here is my point.  A GSD is a working line dog.  Period.  My dogs are not mean because my wife, family, and I won't let them be.  With that said, these dogs would die proctecting our home and I would not want to be the person making the threat.  There is a breed standard under the Schh rules and AKC.  White Shepherds and long hairs are considered faults for example.  Dogs that are too tall, short, etc. are faults too. Why, because there is a breed standard.  A long hair in my opinion looks like a teddy bear and that is fine.

I happen to love long hairs.  I also find the white shepherds cool too.  I just don't want to own one because I don't think it does the breed justice.  There is a market for the dogs but be careful playing in the recessive gene world.  Do some research on the dogs put together to make the breed.  The breed is one of the youngest in the world and recessive genes are why so many certifications are needed in hips, elbows, etc.

Best of luck.

Who PLANS to collect dogs and produce one or two litters a year? Aren't you supposed to wait until you have a great dog and then figure out who you could breed him/her to in order to better the breed? What is the point in this economy of just having litters to have litters, or to make a buck? Pisses me off.