Preservation Breeders – Inspired Mentoring

By Peri Norman

John Buddie’s Breeder Wisdom on Facebook are the highlight of my day. John is a generous and caring mentor because of his intuitive way of asking questions instead of presenting information. Whether the post consists of pic- tures of impactful dogs of the past or a discussion about enhance- ment, his respectful way of asking the question encourages thoughtful opinions. In a recent post, John shared a letter from one of his mentors and talked about how his perception of the same written words had changed over the years. The discussion that followed revealed that many of us have had discouraging and limited mentor relationships that seem to leave both sides dissatisfied or worse. Thinking about that conversation lead me to research information on mentoring in different situations; adult and at-risk child, business leaders and younger cohorts, women in business and life coach relationships. The differing scenarios have distinct attributes and concerns, but there were pieces of each that are useful to our purposes as dog breeders and fanciers.

“THE GOAL OF MENTORING IS TO INSPIRE.” – DR. ROBERT NISHIKAWA

We live in a world where many people no longer value what we do and what we believe in. There is nothing more important for us to accomplish as mentors than to inspire those whose lives we touch. Many ancient breeds of dogs are hanging on to their very existence by a thread. Other breeds, although large in numbers, have become so homozygous that their effective population size is below the 100 animals considered to make up a sustainable population. Technology is progressing rapidly and the breeding practices we used successfully in years past are being replaced as new in- formation becomes available. In the midst of this changing environment, which can be quite discouraging and confusing for us old-timers, our most valuable resource are the enthusiastic new breeders and fanciers joining our ranks. A successful mentoring relationship is a two way street. When we inspire and encourage other breeders to embrace our mutual challenges in a positive way, we benefit from their perspective as well. We need new people to step up and prepare to take over the care and keeping of our breeds and sport. That cannot be accomplished by a rote dissemination of rules, like standards on the chalkboard in school, but by imbuing them with the passion that caused us to invest our lives in the pur- suit of excellent dogs.

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Posted by Alex on Oct 26 2017. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.