NRhodes

Then why not just call them a substandard breeder?

Oh I agree with what you're saying about Diane. Was just picking someone because out of the references in the last two pages of this topic that breeders shouldn't make money or that breeders who do are just greedy selfish sorts, Diane was actually a breeder. I've been seeing it everywhere, said by breeders of all sorts of dogs, where when they're explaining how or why they are a good breeder they throw that part about "I don't make money!" in there. There are lots of people, like the group I started this thread because of, who will insist breeders make oodles of money selling dogs. So if "good breeders" don't make money then anyone who does make money raising dogs is a "bad breeder" automatically? I'm not just talking about breeders of herding dogs but of all dogs. Is this actually a fact or a notion that's been introduced to our society by the growing influence of the animal rights movement? Personally, I think this is something like the term "puppy mill," which was created by animal rights to describe "bad breeders" and eventually all breeders. Have an article: http://thecavalrygroup.blogspot.com/2012/08/that-which-we-call-puppy-mill-by-any.html The Calvary Group is a pretty neat thing by the way, some people here might be interested in reading up on them. http://thecavalrygroup.com/

The whole line of thought Julie is talking about here, and people like mum24dog has expressed as their opinion, is rather confounding to me. Basically what I'm reading is dogs shouldn't be bred because even good breeders will have dogs that aren't up to snuff but breeders shouldn't put those dogs down but rescues don't want to mop up the excess? Maybe I'm not wording that well but hope you get what I'm saying. And apparently one of the main criteria for being a good breeder is that you make no money and go in the hole doing it? Even Diane seems to qualify herself with the no money thing.

That's what I thought also.

There are actually several of these 'hate breeders' groups on Facebook. The one that I posted on is just the one with the most members, having over one thousand.

That was actually the question of my first post on their group, where would working dogs come from if there were no breeders and I listed various types of working dogs. Their response was a chorus of "rescue." So I asked again if there are no breeders, you advocate all dogs should be spayed and neutered, where do we get working dogs from, where do we get any dogs from? They told me I didn't understand them and that I should go visit a shelter and see all the dogs die. So I asked about the "no-kill" shelter movement and snagged a few links from sites talking about shelters that have successfully switched to no-kill and various programs for reducing the numbers of dogs euthanized. They told me the no-kill shelter design allowed for 10% of dogs to be euthanized and was no good because dogs still died and the only way to stop it was get rid of breeders. So that's when I brought up numbers to show that things have been improving by quite a lot and aren't so doom and gloom as they say and that obviously things are working to curb the numbers of dogs being euthanized. I already told you how that went over hahaha. From the responses I got they really didn't seem to care about finding a solution to there being stray and unwanted dogs, their plan seemed to be that there should be no dogs at all.

Yeah, I'm just wondering how widespread and accepted this hate thing is.

So I encountered something on the internet this evening that quite set me aback. Wanted to ask some questions about it and I know the BC boards has a healthy population of both rescuers and breeders and owners. What I was linked to was a hate group on Facebook created by rescuers to proclaim the utter evils of dog breeders. Among other things their posts say over and over that breeders are animal abusers, that all dogs should be spayed or neutered, and that shelters are overflowing with dogs being euthanized in endless numbers. When I asked questions, no they did not want to discuss ideas on educating owners, owners were not the problem, only breeders were the problem. I used the numbers that HSUS uses on their website to claim that we have a pet over population problem (so I'd guess possibly exaggerated?) to show them that actually despite the rise in the number of dogs and cats in the US the numbers of animals euthanized in shelters has actually dropped steadily to an all time low. Quoting myself: They told me I was a liar and that my numbers were all wrong' date=' they were too low. I asked them what the actual numbers were. They told me they didn't have to prove themselves and banned me from posting on the page. I can still read it however. The group moderator repeatedly posted a picture stating the numbers of dogs killed in shelters yearly, guess what, they were the same exact numbers I had used to figure the percentages above....... Some quotes from the page: These here were in response to someone saying that their father went and bought a dog from a responsible breeder: Then there are countless posts on there of dogs in shelters and all the people cooing over them and about how much they love these dogs. But then they go on to say all dogs should be spayed and neutered. Do they not realize that if all dogs are spayed and neutered there will be no more dogs at all? Is this a common thing or is this some kind of crazy cult I ran into? I don't really have any experience of rescue groups outside of the people's whose posts I've read here on the BC Boards.

Thought this was a great response from Amanda, just wanted to bump it haha. Never let a young pup fail, helping him will also help his trust in you, eventually that pup will have to face challenges, but not until after you've given him some tools and experience for him to use to succeed.

Thanks Julie, I'll email them after work. The one dog is maybe an aussie cross, The dog looks like a border collie but he has a half tail. So either someone did a terrible job of docking it, it got hurt, or the dog has the natural bob tail gene in there somewhere lol. The dog was found wandering on the ranch last year, none of the neighbors would claim him so it's assumed he was dumped off by someone. He seems pretty young. Second dog is probably about five years old, he's been at the ranch two years, a lady at the vet clinic in town owned him. She thought he nipped her daughter (the way the story was relayed to me it didn't sound like the lady was really sure he nipped the kid or not and the rancher seems to think the lady just wanted rid of the dog) so asked the rancher if he'd take him until she had a better way to keep him kenneled at her house. lol and like I said, that's been two years ago. Third dog is a little female, might be around two years old, that came here last year after the owner passed away and the family didn't want to keep the dog.

What people or groups would be good contacts for rescuers in central OK? I have a friend who's had a couple dogs pawned off on him because people knew he had herding dogs (he has some dogs he uses to work his cattle and sheep with). One dog was just dumped off here. And while he doesn't mind feeding them, it's kind of a shame for these guys to just spend the rest of their lives sitting in kennels. There are three dogs, all three very sweet and friendly.

Yes the registry is closed. I would suppose the main reason being the man who started the HTC is up into his 80s and no longer raising and training dogs, his son who helped him with the project has passed away, and he is not able to control what would be used as foundation dogs. So with the idea of protecting his vision of what he thought the dogs should be he is preventing everyone and his brother from crossing up some dogs and calling them HTC. Probably a good idea. Tho I still run across breeder ads on various sites or craigslist of people advertising crossbred dogs and calling them HTC because they have some of the base breeds in there used to start the HTC... altho they have no actual HTC blood in them. So unless a dog or pup comes with a set of papers from the HTC Association you can't always go by what people tell you.

No you can't, you can only get appendix papers on pups out of parents who are both registered with the Hangin' Tree Cowdog Association. On one hand when you look at the majority of dog's close up pedigrees a lot of them appear very close, when you go back farther (three generations or more of pedigrees of dogs still living. I can't think offhand of any dog still living with a foundation ancestor closer) you find dogs of different breeds (and different lines within those breeds) which makes the genetics much more diverse than they originally appear. So it's really hard to say whether we will eventually get "too inbred" or whether we can continue to call it line breeding (if you've heard that saying) LOL.

There is no discrimination against solid color dogs vs. merled dogs. But the gene pool is extremely small compared to that of the border collie. Pretty much every good dog I can breed to is related in some way to each other or to the bitches I own. So when you take into consideration I can drive 3.5 hours to breed to an extremely nice (merle) dog, or 9 hours to breed to a pretty nice black dog (did this once, pups produced were very inconsistent workers), or 12 hours to an extremely nice (old) black and white dog that hasn't managed to sire a litter in years (tried this once while I was out there for a trial anyway, dog didn't get the bitch bred), or 18 hours to a really nice b&w son of the aforementioned dog (I am going to do this breeding next year...I'm moving 12 hours closer in a few months). And I can keep naming dogs at these distances and farther away. I suppose you could say I should invest in having semen shipped but I haven't had much luck on that so far. Spent a lot of money on that all down the drain. A merle to merle cross will still produce solid colored pups as well so you're not necessarily breeding yourself into a bottle neck of only having merles. I almost always choose a solid colored pup to keep as my own (and I always keep one more pups from every litter) simply because of the color deal and not having to mess with merle in as much as it limits breeding possibilities down the line (I wouldn't ever want to keep a MM dog or bitch as a breeding prospect unless they were extremely nice) but I'll not cross it off as a possibility. Like I described in a previous post it's possible to take a MM dog, breed to solid color, you get all Mm puppies out of that (100%), you take that and breed to mm or Mm and you'll wind up with solid color pups again. I'm planning on getting a pup, and would already have it if the breeding had took, out of Katy which is a female I raised and is owned by a friend. Katy is MM, the planned sire is mm, so all pups will be merle but Mm. The last litter I raised out of Queen (the red mm sister to Katy) I wound up with a merle pup that I kept because all she had was two and both merle. So sometimes your choices are limited.

I'll gamble on it for a cross that produces good working dogs.