Extra sensory perception - Page 6

 Chaos should not be in the picture if you know your goal (both in life or as breeder), that is my opinion. Or, when chaos does show up, you just deal with it; if you don't know what to do, then maybe breeding wasn't really for you (talking in general terms). When you have your priorities in place, feelings should not interfere. I am saying, know exactly what your purpose is when you breed dogs and take a number of things under consideration before going for it. It took me some good years before I decided I wanted to breed dogs. 

It's easy.. a joy, really.. to have one or two dogs. My advice to anyone would be to leave it at that and not get into breeding. When you get into breeding dogs, you have all sorts of ethical dilemmas to face, and also lots of annoyances and problems. It's not much fun. The puppies are cute and fun, but how long does THAT last? LOL..

I think that the next best thing is to train the dogs. There you can get a lot of satisfaction! And, that is directed, meaningful interaction. You don't have to bring every dog into the house to enjoy it.. which is what I really wanted to say. Yes, you can develop a great relationship with one or two dogs.. unbelievably close and this is a very unique experience. Most people are better off just leaving it at that. When you have more than one or two dogs, it does not get better. It gets real hard, on lots of levels, and very few people can understand the situation. You get generally no vacations, sometimes not much sleep, and it can be a very long term commitment, considering that the life of a dog can be 15 years. This is not something to be gotten into lightly.

A chewed hose or a kennel smeared with feces by a "finger painter" can only be funny once or twice. After that, it's a pain in the ass and it drags on you. Mother Theresa had the patience for that sort of a life of toil and deprivation, but she was not the life of the party. It's not many peoples' idea of fun.. and there are sure easier ways to make money, IF you actually ever DO make money (most breeders don't, or they just don't want to keep books so they don't have to think about how much money they're losing).

Yes, you can definitely keep it light and easy with one or two dogs. If you've never had more than that, you don't understand... trust me.. you don't.

Dani.. Chaos is what life throws at you, NOT what you planned or intended. NOT what you thought something might be. If we WERE really able to be psychic, in a controlled manner (which would be useful), then we would see trouble coming around the corner and be able to dodge it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that.

I said that life and death go together.. also joy and pain.. So does success and failure. There are lots of people who failed several times at endeavors before they finally succeeded. The one consistent thing about them is that they were not quitters. They didn't give up.

I say, "pick your battles". Some things are meant to fail. That's life's way of telling you, "Don't try THAT, again!" LOL

My brother in law asked me the other day, regarding a situation, "If you could snap your fingers, what needs to be done"? Well, if I could snap my fingers, I would not have a problem! The point is that nothing is done so easily, right? The devil is in the details, as the saying goes. You cannot make a complicated situation into an uncomplicated one, just by wishing it so.

Some people call themselves "breeders" and they have one litter every two or three years. I had a kennel. I had to treat breeding as a business... which I would not ever care to do, again. Back then, we were only getting maybe $500 for a good puppy, average. I kid you not! Still doable, but I sure wish we were getting the big prices a lot of breeders are getting, today. Also we have sky high phone bills and many other limiting things. It just made a really lousy business. I knew other people who had kennels, also and most were not very happy people.. Lots of jealousy and enmity going on. Not about happiness, at all.

 

Many years before I thought about breeding dogs, I met a woman who lived in Louisiana who was a breeder.. German lady.. GOOD lady! The rumor was that she had too many dogs. And, she was a trainer.. very serious about it and went a good distance every weekend to go to the club. She had good lines and the whole bit. Like most breeders, she'd breed a litter now and then to help with the food bills. But, by and by, little by little, she ended up with a crowd.

She put it this way.. "It's like being the only nurse in a hospital".. I never forgot that. And, she was absolutely right. But, you know.. We have these dogs just a little while and when they are all gone, people ask, "Did no one ever breed these great dogs or keep them going"? What can you say, then? Obviously, there is a sort of evolutionary process to it. Some lines go by the wayside, as they should and others come to the fore. Then, twenty years later, you cannot find them, either.. Something else is all the rage. So it goes. But, a lot of good lines have passed like so much water under the bridge. Maybe it doesn't matter. It really doesn't, if no one cares.

Personally, I see that breeders do a good work in helping to preserve the dogs for future generations. Many people don't see it that way. To them, a dog is a dog. Purebred dogs and all of these bloodlines don't matter to them.

When you have a breeding program, here is what happens..
You start out with one or two dogs, and everything is fine. Then you get a few more and you feel like you're really rolling. Time passes, and you have a few litters, keep back a few puppies, and now you have these young hopefuls, as well as the original breeding stock. In time, those original dogs become elderly, and you don't want to dump them or have them put to sleep, so you find a place in the kennel for them or try to bring them inside as pets. Then you have a bigger food bill, so you have another litter or two to pay the increasing costs, and maybe the market is soft, so you end up "stuck" with a couple of puppies. You think you'll find homes for them and don't worry about it, but time passes and they stay right there, eating and making work. Next year it's the same thing.. the problem is compounding itself. So, really, you end up with four or five different populations in your kennel.. You have your main dogs, your active breeding stock, the elderly pensioners (who should have earned their retirement) and you have your young hopefuls, and then you have the "leftovers".. the pups you got stuck with, and who never seem to leave. This all adds up fast. And it's a big problem..

It happened to me, and it''s happening to lots of people. I know a cop right now who has a lot of dogs he'd like to give away, if only he could find takers for them. No one wants them. And, they are worthless, for the most part. Two with bad elbows, two with bad hips, and none with any training or socialization. It all seemed so easy when he got into it. This is how it happens with everyone. EXCEPT, perhaps, the smart breeders, who PTS on a regular basis. This is the only way it can be done, really, but a lot of people don't have the stomach to do it. So, they are stuck.

The ones that really get into trouble are the ones who try to "save" lots of bloodlines and acquire / accumulate a large gene pool. Lots of people make this mistake. I tried it, too and it doesn't work. I finally figured out that I could have my cake and eat it too by storing frozen semen, which could last indefinitely. I saved semen on my dogs and gave all the dogs away. I got completely out of it for ten long years. For several of those years, I did have about three dogs and never bred them. People asked me why, and I had the intention to do so at first, but didn't really want to get into all of that, again.

I hav

<continued> I have one very interesting bloodline that I fell into by circumstance with virtually no money invested, and it is a very good line worth doing something with, and really worth preserving. I'm sort of stuck here, now, unable to travel or do other things and the opportunity was there, so I thought I would try to do a philanthropic sort of project. We'll see how it goes.

Taking stock of the situation, I see that this is one of the things I really do know about.. training and raising dogs. I might as well try to do something with it. Selling puppies to the public is something that gives me a bad taste in my mouth, for many reasons. I'll leave that to others to do.

Raising dogs is not a bad thing.. It's just not what most people think it is. I don't see many people who stay with it for very long (I've actually heard that five or six years is average), and I don't know of anyone who considered to start up again, after quitting the first time. My first run was 25 years, followed by a 10 year hiatus. Anything else I do is with eyes wide open and very cautiously.

 Just to be clear on one thing - breeding dogs for a business it's a bad place from a starting point, I am not surprised chaos comes in the picture in that case. You can not price passion!
That's about it from me.

ESP?
Man made term,
man has lost most ability to use his senses so he's easily impressed.

My dog knows things without me knowingly giving any clues, but the clues are there never the less.
I've seen the same behavior in wild animals especially deer.

There are tells everywhere, if only we could see them.
It's our loss.

Moons.

If they do have esp, are they seeing  our minds like a tv, pictures? I think most of us have had something in our lives happpen that makes us question is there something to this?  I do  know I am so very blessed that I had a dog who taught me what the "bonding" was all about.

Right! ESP is not the correct term. dogs are an open channel. It is us that have lost the ability to send and receive this info.
I believe it is not ESP because it is nothing extra but something that lies undiscovered within all. 

There is also a difference between a working bond and a pet bond. Have you ever read the book about the Czech pilot that found the GSD pup? Andis was the dog's name. The name of the book was "One Man and His Dog". It's a great book about a strong bond. 

Dani, "passion" will get you into trouble faster than a zeal for business. "Passion" is like any other feeling.. If it runs you, and you don't have a handle on it, you'll soon get into trouble. I am thinking of some very specific examples, here. You can have a love for the dogs, but hard to combine it with business. When you are in business, you have to make hard decisions.. business decisions. And, you have to know where your bottom line is, on a constant basis. That is, you should be balancing your books and finding out where you are making and losing money, so you can make these decisions.

Not only do you have to make it pay for itself.. The idea of business is to make money. IRS doesn't like "play businesses" and "passive activity" deductions to income. They have rules. And, if you aren't doing SOMETHING to make money at your business, you can end up in trouble. For two or three years, you are allowed to lose money and write off losses. This assumes that you have another source of income, of course, in the mean time.. usually business loans or additional personal income or savings. It would be luckier for dog people if they didn't, and they could not get so far down the road. Many people who try to make their "passion" their business don't make good business decisions, and don't have a handle on their numbers.. They don't know if they are making money or losing it. If they are losing, they can end up too far in trouble to turn it around. You can sink a huge amount of money into dogs.. or anything.. without realizing it.

There are dog breeders who make money. But, they know how to treat their activity as a business and they don't let their feelings, i.e. "passion" guide their decisions.

The problem actually comes because of "passion".. It's really difficult to mix business and passion. I actually sort of detest that word, by the way, but it will suffice for the conversation. Now.. I know of people who can balance both, to a degree, but so far as I can see, anytime you have your feelings and hopes conflicting with your business decisions, you are in trouble. Breeding / raising dogs is something a lot of people are deeply invested in, emotionally. I was. After losing our only child, it was the only place I knew to put myself, to where I was able to escape the grief. I guess that this level of emotion might qualify as "passion", no? 

Seems to me that so many people are like this.. They see a postcard or picture book of someplace.. maybe Norway, and say, "Yup.. I've been there". Trust me.. If you haven't been there, you don't know. I have been there, and that's why I warn people to be careful. I have experience, and experience beats armchair opinions, every time. The fact is that lots of businesses of all kinds fail, even with good business plans and guidance. Lots of unexpected things, such as downward business cycles, loss of contracts, etc. can come up, and the business operator has no control over these things. That's the chaos factor mentioned earlier. It's always hard on owners when businesses fail. I remember my grandfather basically gave up on trying after he lost the walnut ranch in the Great Depression. But, I'd rather lose any other kind of business with inanimate inventory than a kennel or ranch with living inventory. There were actually a lot of people deeply invested in the horse business before Henry Ford came up with an assembly line for automobiles. They were suddenly out of business and millions of horses went to slaughter as they were replaced. Watch "Seabiscuit". This is the profile of his trainer character..