What constitutes a "Valuable Breeding Animal" (Female)? - Page 2

What constitutes a valuable breeding female depends on what you are breeding for. First you start with a pedigree, the pedigree gives you a snipit into what previous breeders were trying to accomplish, drives, looks, color and so on. You then look into the health aspect hips, elbows and so on. After all that you have to really consider the actual female herself does she have the actual traits that you want to reproduce in her puppies. Before you breed make sure you take an honest look at the female, not through the eyes of seeing your companion laying on your bed, but with clear vision and forsight. Once you hostly pass all those hurdles you then breed her to a male that posesses the traights. Once the puppies are born you evaluate them and wait and see how they turn out.

Titles are important but make sure they are the right kind of titles if you want to produce police dogs you look for breeding stock that have a track record for breeding police dogs. If you want to produce show dogs you then breed to stock that win in  the ring and so on. but you should never look pass stability, and sound character of the dog.  

A valuable breeding animal is one that furthers the goals of the breeder, whatever they are. I would say that anyone breeding without h/e certification needs to reassess their goals (or at least set a few) for the GSD.

jmo,
Rik

Interesting responses. 

This is actually sort of an off shoot of the other threads that talk about show lines with good protection and so forth. 

In my way of thinking, the breeding females should not only have the physically sound traits you want in a dog (OFA's and so forth).. but also the traits the breed is known for. 

Of course, training and handling do have influence and cannot be ignored. 

Last and NOT least is the pet dog that is so "wonderful" and that you love that you just "must" have puppies from her... NO....



 
 

Rass,
you brought up a couple of things I would like to comment on in your posts.

First off the American market,
Most dogs by the numbers bred in this country either come from back yard pets or commercial puppy mills with no regard for the BREED STANDARDS.
By the numbers I consider this to be true.

Training, handling, showing, traits the breed is known for,
Performance, this is a working breed and I would guess most people if they were honest would admit to loosely interpreting the breed standards.
How can the dog work without the training and how does one define the traits without putting them to the various test and evaluation over time.
I see too many people breeding two year old dogs just as soon as they have an OFA and a CGC purely for the money.

Brand recognition,
Too many people buy a titled dog from what they consider top kennels and think the dog will produce offspring of the same quality.
I am guilty of this to some degree myself but it is folly.
It takes years to see what is produced from a given pair and only time can prove results.
And how many of these top dogs actually hold to the original standards especially when the judges themselves deviate from the standards.

And my final pet peeve,
People who keep dogs as possessions only for the purpose of breeding or to boost their own ego's instead of raising a dog for what it was meant to be.
This has nothing to do with your post but my own opinion.
Money takes away the real purpose of the breed which is to serve man, to work, protect, and become a valued member of ones family while having a full happy and productive life.
Not kept in a kennel or crate and become an object.

Breed worthy,
If one was to be honest, one out of a thousand might be truly breed worthy, but this is not the way of it is it?
In the end, it is in the eye of the beholder and again I am guilty of this myself.
Since i can not truly trust breeders or judges opinions I trust in my own and in doing so I too am a part of a great problem.

Standards are there for a reason,
when so many talk of improving the breed, how many actually do it?

Moons.

Titles to me are only as important as allowing you to know  what your buying from a pedigree. I judge a female or a male to be vauable by what they pass on to their pups and the pups are winning or working to the standard consistantly litter after litter. Of course the dog itself must pass the genetic tests and be sound themselves. Ones that are exceptional are dogs that can be bred to just about any dog and they still can produce excellent puppies . Those are pretty rare. But Ive seen a few over the years.

Im guessing your looking at a female in your scenero? I would say too risky if your intent is to show this dog. Then again we all know that show puppies who have what it takes to go all the way, we'll be lucky to have one or two in the litter. If this IS your situation, take someone with you that is very knowledgeable in show lines to evaluate the litter for you. I would never buy online for something like. Go in person. We all know famous dogs produce pet puppies all the time. It takes just as much money to raise a pet puppy as a show puppy. The only difference is when the dog is an adult you wont get any return on a pet other than love.

I picked my puppy (currently 6-months old) from a Dam and Sire who were not titled.  But all four of the grandparents had top titles and/or were service dogs (Czech working line GSDs).  No complaints yet from me. 

Buying a puppy is a crap shoot at best.  You can do all the analysis you want at 7-8 weeks of age but there is absolutely no guarantee on how the pup will turn out as it matures. 

Many a time, a top titled male (who gets to breed the most) might be producing less-than-stellar pups but his litter-brother, with little to no titles against his name, might be the one truly producing the future greats.  Phenotype vs Genotype etc.

PS:  "Titles" to me is just an indication of the trainability of the sire/dam and one hopes that the same trainability is passed onto their pups.  Other than that, titles to me are meaningless, since I don't value a Schutzhund title or some other similar title, one little bit, to be quite honest.

If I understand correctly, the implications of breeding (quote: if you considered "a bitch that is too young to OFA, untitled, with a good pedigree but out of an untitled Mother (as in not breed surveyed, no SchH 1 etc. but OFA'd good) by a world class sire a "Valuable breeding animal?")  this would only narrow your puppy buyers to either pet, guide, sar, security or police depending on the temperament of the pups.  More than likely sport and show aficionados will not be interested.

Pristine health with clearances to go with;  biddability, trainability, a breeder that you can trust and work with in the event there becomes a problem later down the road;  and first and foremost the termperament has to be impecible, both sides for several generations.  Now you have something.  Titles can be baught.  Titles do not change the genetics of the dog/bitch, however, nice to have but not mandatory.  Good luck in your search,  Nan