Extra sensory perception - Page 7

By the way, I have absolutely no issues with people who treat dog breeding / training as a business. That's "The American Way". Very often these people will do a BETTER job than the person who is too emotionally invested or making decisions (or non-decisions, default-decisions) based on wishful thinking and blind hope, or even fearful of criticism. Everything comes down to a bottom line. For anyone who is putting all of their productive time and energy into dogs, they simply MUST make money at it. It's not easy, either.

The sport and the dogs do need some people who can make it a successful business. It cannot all be for hobby people. In my case, I think that there were a lot of contributing factors (as there usually are), but part of it was my inability to make the leap from "passion" to "business decisions". I did not start out with the idea to make lots of money with dogs. In fact, I was turning down huge overtime on a regular basis just to do this (after the dogs were gone, I made OVER $7,000 take home in two weeks, one paycheck, because I was free to work for once!). So much for the "greedy breeder" principle, so often pandered by the animal rights activists. I WAS trying too hard to be "ethical" and sensitive with regards to other peoples' idea.. no euthanasia, for example. That is not possible, whether you run a shelter or a self-supporting kennel. And, that sort of thinking also contributed to my problems. Bottom line is that if you are running a business, YOU are the one who must make the decisions and deal with the results of those decisions. It's nobody else's concern. WAY too many hand-wringers out there, and it's just too easy to get sucked into that sort of thinking.

I see that many people say we should not be breeding more litters, yadda, yadda.. Well, there is absolutely NO WAY to guarantee that everything will work out in a perfect fashion. There will be troubles and disappointments, along the way. But, if you look at the state of things, today, there are a lot of terrific dogs out there and the breed is prospering, overall. All of that could disappear in a few years if most people decided that dog breeding was immoral, unethical, or otherwise not worth trying. I have my own personal misgivings, but I can't see ditching the whole thing to satisfy the whiners and hand-wringers.