Building on a Solid Foundation
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By William Given
I believe the vast majority of highly successful breeders would agree that the real cornerstone of a breeding program is a good brood bitch, and that the right bitch will be the single most important purchase that, over time, will dictate the success or failure of a breeding program. Why is this? The answer is simple. A bitch may only produce six litters, eight to ten litters in a very busy lifetime. Compare this to a stud dog’s ability to sire two to four times that in a year. Her influence on her breed is softer and takes significantly longer to evaluate than that of a stud dog. It is also true that she will likely never achieve the fame and glory of a dog that can be used at stud while simultaneously carrying on with a brilliant show career.
The Perfect Brood Bitch
Out of all the nice dogs and puppies that will come and go throughout your time as an owner and breeder, your foundation bitch will be the one that gives you your winners, your best advertising, and keeps reproducing herself year after year. She is the one that gives your line its own particular look.
Genetics aside, most breeders would agree that on a practical level the bitch is responsible for 60% (some suggest 75%) of the resulting puppies’ conformation quality, overall soundness, temperament and showability. Whole dynasties can be and have been built around the progeny and descendants of a single bitch. That is why she is quite literally called a foundation bitch. She is the one who built your kennel and will keep it alive through even the leanest years.
There is rarely a price high enough to buy this great brood bitch from the fortunate person who found her as an eight-week-old puppy and has cared for and cherished her for all her years. The discovery of one or two beautiful young bitches that will establish your kennel’s breeding program as a predictable and successful entity thus becomes your first practical priority.
It’s Not That Simple
Logic suggests that this should not be all that difficult. You simply find a bitch that epitomizes all the best attributes of her breed, buy her, and the rest is history, right? It is rarely that straightforward, however; and the dog game is littered with failed breeders who erroneously believed that a successful program could be built by buying up the daughters of top winners and breeding them to the most popular stud dogs of the month. In reality, the prettiest bitches are not necessarily the best producers, and some exceptionally lovely bitches never produce a puppy as nice as themselves. Other little Plain Janes consistently produce better than themselves. And, the full sister of a ranked brood bitch may not produce offspring of equal quality.
Some bitches have great looking puppies no matter to which stud dog they are bred. Some do well only when bred with a specific stud dog or bloodline. Occasionally, some bitches are written off early as poor producers simply because they have never been bred to the right stud dog. Others will simply never experience any real measure of success in the whelping box, ever.
This does not mean that they are unworthy bitches and lack quality or breeding. Just as the vast majority of male puppies will never mature to be stud dog quality, not all female puppies are going to become brood bitch material. While it is always worthwhile to breed high quality bitches a couple of times to see if they pass on their conformation, it is not a catastrophe if they do not. These bitches will give their owners years of companionship and competitive success. They will have far more success as outstanding competitors in the show ring than they would as second-rate producers.
Love at First Sight
The perfect brood bitch obviously begins with superior conformation and breed type. But before that, there is the importance of what we will call “love at first sight.” Love at first sight is, I believe, a matter of instinct or intuition, or maybe both. If you are not immediately attracted to the bitch that you are looking at, you should probably not purchase her. Even if she is drop-dead gorgeous and just had a nice class win at her National Specialty, you may never fully appreciate her if you were not instantly struck by her beauty in the show ring or in the field.
You may find as you watch endless puppies and bitches move in well-filled classes that your eye keeps returning to one that no one else seems to have even noticed. You may even try to make a concerted effort to look away, but you keep going back. Maybe there is a gentle honesty about her, a glint of humor in her eyes, or a certain intelligence you find highly attractive. Pay attention to this gut feeling. Whatever it is that draws you to her, is likely a quality that is really important to your feelings of what the cornerstone of your breeding program should comprise. It is wise to give her a second look no matter where she ends up in the class placements.
Assessing Brood Bitch Potential
Every breeder will have a slightly different blueprint in mind when describing the perfect brood bitch. But generally speaking, a good prospective brood bitch must demonstrate the qualities that are essential to your breed’s standard, be sound overall, of good temperament and free from genetic weaknesses. The commonly heard refrain is, “She is too crazy to stay on the table or her allergies keep her from showing well, so we will just breed her.” This is a terrible recipe for breeding successful show dogs. It is even worse when speaking of dogs, which are universally valued for their health, temperament and freedom from genetic defect.
If everything else about a bitch warrants her becoming a good breeding prospect, the effects of living with a head that is a bit plain, or with bone that is a little light, or a back that could be a tad more level, is not going to equal failure in the whelping box. Any one of these weaknesses, if it is minor, will be lessened by choosing a stud dog to breed her with that is highly favored for his correct head, substantial bone, or rock solid topline. But in a business already fraught with risk, it hardly seems worth the trouble to start out with too many concessions in basic conformation in the hope that some stud dog will perform a miracle.
Is She CornerStone Material?
Ideally, your foundation bitch should not only be a superior bitch with regard to conformation, she should also be as well-bred as you can possibly afford. This absolutely does not mean popularly bred. Fame and fads sway the sport of purebred dogs as erringly as they do any other, and today’s hottest stud dog could just as easily become tomorrow’s untouchable. There is no question that certain bloodlines within any breed are known for passing along certain desirable traits.
Great producers frequently tend to run in families. If you find yourself consistently drawn to certain individual bitches, a look at the female line will probably uncover either a common grand dam or at the very least a common female ancestor in the fourth generation whose breed characteristics have proven themselves to be very prepotent. Some investigation will reveal which bitches consistently pass on the traits you want. If you are in the position of buying a young bitch, try to get one from a bitch that produces the kind of offspring you would like to breed and raise yourself. Always look at the grand dam, many breeders maintain that more often than not their puppies resemble their grandparents more closely then than they do their parents.
Another reason to buy a young bitch from proven female lines is that many of the traits we most desire in our brood bitches are non-quantifiable. The ideal brood bitch is easy to breed, easy to carry and easy to whelp. She feeds her puppies well and has good maternal instincts that include being protective of her puppies without being overly aggressive toward her human family. Thankfully, most bitches enjoy raising their puppies, but the canine world still has its share of bitches with fertility problems and poor mothering skills. You will not know any of this about your chosen bitch, unfortunately, until she has actually produced a litter. If you examine her dam’s and grand dam’s breeding histories and find no reproductive or behavioral problems, you will probably be relatively safe.
A bitch with a winning show record will always be a strong selling point for her puppies until a few of these are old enough to carry the torch for their siblings. These bitches are frequently very expensive, so the next best thing is to find a younger full- or half-sister of a bitch whose bloodline and show record you admire. Although it can be frustrating having to wait for a young bitch to mature to breeding age, you can use the time to good advantage by showing her to her championship and possibly performance titles so that by the time you choose to retire her to the whelping box she will have a successful show record of her own.
It is sometimes possible to find an older bitch whose owner has already kept good daughters to carry the bloodline into the next generation of an established breeding program. When convincing the owner of the strength of your good intentions, it will be helpful to have an idea of which stud dog you would like to breed to your bitch. Maybe you have access to a stud dog that the owner would have loved to have used if he had been available. If you happen to own a very nice stud dog yourself, another successful option is to lease the bitch you covet for a certain number of breeding seasons, while keeping one or two of the best puppies from each litter.
If you feel confident in your instincts that something else will work, by all means take the chance, but back it up with thorough study to ensure the odds are in your favor. The research involved may sound like it is more trouble than it is worth, but compared to the trouble you are going to put into breeding, whelping, feeding, handling and marketing, it is well worth the effort. And there is nothing more discouraging than starting off with sincere enthusiasm and being faced with the difficulty of trying to sell disappointing puppies.
Address Potential Concerns
Finally, have your brood bitch prospect examined thoroughly by your veterinarian not only for basic health and fitness, and freedom from disease, but for any potential breeding problems. A veterinary exam will make sure that her reproductive tract and ovaries are normal for her age and stage of development. In an older bitch that’s been bred before, a thorough veterinary exam is a must. Nothing is more discouraging than purchasing or leasing a nice brood bitch, only to discover that the bitch’s uterus is so scarred from infection or whelping difficulties that her chances of maintaining a pregnancy are tenuous at best. Try to get a complete medical and breeding history on the bitch to see whether she has had any problems showing heat, conceiving and carrying a litter to term. These are necessary attributes for any brood bitch and all of these are legitimate concerns for any breeder.
Sometimes, despite your best information and experience, you are going to wind up with a bitch that just simply doesn’t fit in your breeding program. When this happens, you must be realistic. Cut your losses and sell her. If you are like most breeders, you are short on time, money and space, and the bitch will be a constant financial and emotional drain.
There is incredible satisfaction in seeing a good bitch’s look stamped on her offspring and watching their successes in the show ring mount as they mature. The pleasure is made more personal by the fact that each of your foundation bitch’s progeny is a special edition. Of course, the better the puppies are, the more credit the sire will likely get. However, the breeder knows down deep that the youngsters are so very successful because of the quality of the lovely bitch playing with the children in the back yard. She will prove her value many times over throughout the course of her life.
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Posted by ralbee
on Nov 15 2015. Filed under Current Articles, Editorial, Featured.
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