The Future of Show Breeders
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By Dr. Gerry Meisels
There is nothing that gives my wife Sylvia and me as much sustained pleasure as having a newborn puppy in our hands, and all that follows: see the puppies nurse and be cleaned lovingly by their dam, observe and record their growth, watch them romp, get their kisses on my nose, evaluate them again and again with a dream of great future contribution, work with them to train them for their potential careers in the conformation show ring, and take them to their first few shows. I don’t like the 12th week when all but one (or at times two) must be placed, but we make sure they go to good homes where their life will likely be much better than if we had kept them. Later on there is very special pride and a gratifying reward when we finish the grown-up puppy from the Bred by Exhibitor classes and get our special AKC and parent club’s recognition medallions. Some lucky years we even earn the parent club’s plaques for most BBE wins in a year. I think we are typical of most dedicated show breeders. Breeding can give wonderful satisfaction, but it takes an up-front investment to get there, it does not just fall into one’s lap.
The work we do to bring us these rewards can be daunting and exhausting. It begins with finding the best stud regardless of cost and distance, a stud that suits our bitch’s phenotype and genotype – we spend many hours pouring over pedigrees, looking at photos, and looking at our personal observation notes if we have seen the stud ourselves. We try to get to our national specialties because that is where we can usually see the best dogs of our breed. Beginning about two months later, we anxiously observe the bitch every couple of hours and start taking her temperature. When it drops below 99, we stay with her around the clock until the great moment arrives, most often at 2 o’clock in the morning. We’ll know about how many puppies to expect from the ultrasound taken a couple of weeks earlier, but it is not a very reliable count. If all goes well, we breathe a sigh of relief, weigh the puppies, and finally bed down next to the bitch and puppies. Heaven help us if it doesn’t go so well; we wind up at the emergency vet clinic and watch the C-section. For the next few days, we don’t get too much sleep because we check on the puppies and weigh them every couple of hours, alternating shifts between us. Hard as all that may seem, there is also satisfaction in it as it develops a closeness with the bitch that is in itself rewarding.
Our investment of time and money far exceeds the fiscal return of selling a few puppies. We like to joke that in a good year we lose only $10,000. In our crassly materialistic society, does this mean that show breeders will die out in a few years as age takes its toll on the currently active ones? I think not, because there is something other than money and work-avoidance that drives people to become exhibitors and then show breeders. When I ask around, I find that very few people got into breeding and showing dogs because that is what they set out to do from the beginning. The general impression I get from this very unscientific survey is that it takes a number of steps to gradually move puppy buyers from pet to showing to breeding. The breeder from whom we bought our first dog after we were married a year sold us a very good pet and then supported, encouraged, and mentored us. Her opinion was if you want to draw someone into the sport, sell them a good dog and help them all you can. She certainly did. The step from exhibitor to breeder usually comes after the new exhibitors have developed a taste for showing and have become just a little addicted to it. That is, they have been bitten by the show bug and have experienced the pride and joy of finishing a dog they bred. The bottom line is that they understand that there is ample non-monetary return on the hard work invested in breeding.
There is another much less common class of show breeders: well-heeled aficionados who love a breed but turn the work of breeding, whelping, raising, nurturing, training and showing over to a professional (usually a handler), perhaps taking the dog into the family home after its show career has ended. They miss the best part of breeding, watching puppies grow, romp and play. There are variants of this patrician approach to breeding, such as the owner hiring a full-time assistant or even staff who do all the work on the owner’s premises. If we were to rely on those alone, our shows would greatly shrink in size and we would turn the clock back to the founding days of conformation competition. Our conformation shows and our purebred dogs would soon become viewed as a luxury of the well-to-do, and the concept that showing purebred dogs as a family activity, already at some risk, would fade away over time.
There can be no doubt that show breeders are at the core of the sport: without breeders there are no dogs to be shown. It is pretty clear that there is a concern about the next generation of show breeders in several quarters. What can be done to encourage the entry of pet owners into the show scene and breeding? Many parent clubs as well as AKC provide special recognition for dogs that have been finished from the BBE classes; the goal is clearly to encourage breeders. Curiously, the establishment of the owner-handler competition may have unintentionally become counterproductive to achieving that goal. The goal of the owner-handler series is to encourage and attract amateur-exhibitors who have a difficult time competing successfully with professional handlers. Regulations that require the NOHS competition to be offered if there is to be any other non-regular BIS competition has led to the decline of best BBE In Show competitions: there is too much additional work and judging time if both are offered.
Breeders are the essential underpinning of conformation shows. There are no data that shed light on whether their number is declining or whether the nature of their effort is changing. But if breeders may be as much at risk as owner-handlers, then it would be prudent to encourage and support them now. Much of this is up to our central leadership, the American Kennel Club that has already addressed another goal with the NOHS competition. AKC should now find ways to address the other goal as well. Perhaps a good start would be the creation of BBE BIS competition that includes specials, and establish a ranking system similar to that for the NOHS and regular competitions. Clubs could then be allowed to offer either one or both, and the clubs and exhibitors could then “vote with their feet.”
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Posted by ralbee
on May 18 2015. Filed under Current Articles, Editorial, Featured.
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