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To breed or not to breed, that is the question...

36K views 228 replies 71 participants last post by  ADogCalledQuest 
#1 ·
Hello all,

I have a question that I wanted to ask to see people's take on it. I personally, strongly disagree with buying from a breeder. I feel like every time a dog is bought from a breeder, a shelter dog loses their chance. However; I am open minded and would like to know people's arguments for breeding or buying from breeders. So the real question is:
is there ever a time when it's okay to buy from a breeder? And if so what are the circumstances that. Led you to this?why did you feel like there was no other option?and for the people who disagree with buying from a breeder, what are your reasons? I know how I feel, but at the same time I will try to be non judgemental and to learn from everyone's comments and their reasons. Thank you all for participating.
 
#185 ·
I have had both as well and my next dogs will be from rescue - not because I have anything against breeders - but simply because I am personally beyond the place in my life where I want to do the "puppy thing" all over again - in fact, I think I'll be looking for a senior (or two) to love next time! :)
 
#186 ·
I think this could be turned into a monthly topic from the looks of it lol...This is the hard question because it is such a polarizing topic. This is my take on it. I'm going to do WHATEVER I want regardless of what other people say or feel. I've had bad experiences with both breeders (and ones that when I joined this board had such a "great" reputation, yeah ok), and rescues (gotta love when you live in a country that anyone can have a kid, but I have to sell my soul to adopt a dog). So, in short, do what makes YOU happy. If you want to breed, then I hope you do so with the correct knowledge and care it takes to do so. If you want to adopt from a rescue group, go ahead, you can now tell everyone how you saved a life. Point is, who cares what everyone's opinion is? It's all about your judgment and what you feel is best. But make a decision that is best not just for yourself, but your dog also.
 
#189 ·
Most of the rescues I've come to know must of had a people problem as their reason for surrender, nothing wrong with the temperament. Too many people go into dog ownership with rose colored glasses. Once they find out there's work involved they bail, not the dogs fault.
 
#190 ·
If you want a very specific type of GSD behaviour - and absolutely expect it if the pup is to remain with your family, then yea - don't ever consider a rescue or an adoption of an older pup. I don't think that some have the patience or understanding that an older dog requires. For the more flexible - thanks for giving another chance and it's great to read all the success stories!
 
#206 ·
If you want a very specific type of GSD behaviour - and absolutely expect it if the pup is to remain with your family, then yea - don't ever consider a rescue or an adoption of an older pup. I don't think that some have the patience or understanding that an older dog requires.
I would absolutely agree with this.

The farther in I got with my puppy, the more I realized that I need a high level of control. I can deal with it when my puppy goes off script, but her breeder wrote the screenplay and I'm the director. Puppy is not. I do not think I am the right personality type for teasing out problem behaviors or doing any level of rehabbing. So I couldn't agree with you more.
 
#191 ·
Like Sabis already mentioned - this is an OLD thread, so I wasn't going to bother responding. But, wow, I just have to. My Annie was a 2 year old shelter dog. She was brought directly from the shelter into our home, with three young kids. She was wonderful.

Annie was completely housebroken, not destructive and adored the kids. There was nothing hard about her. She was my first GSD, but not my first dog. 99.9 percent of dog ownership is common sense, IMO. I agree with Nigel. I'd say it this way. Rescue dogs aren't bad. They just had bad owners.
 
#195 ·
Oh right i see, certain people have rescue dogs so therefore my preference to not have unknown quantities around my family cuts to the bone.

Instead of accepting my opinion though, it's better to accuse me of being a 'troll' because you don't like what i say despite the fact that i've been totally courteous with everyone.

And no, i'm not the return of whoever that person is. Mods can check IP addresses, don't you know.
 
#203 ·
I have a rescue dog that was given up because he was snapping at the kids. He has never once showed that behavior in my home, in fact he adores kids and would do anything for them. That same dog let 3 mentally challenged kids not only approach him, but he laid down so that they could hug him. When I tried moving him he wouldn't move, he wanted to stay with those kids.,my other rescue let a 10 yr old with autism/bi-polar hug and squeeze her neck. She didn't like it and I stepped in, but the kid wouldn't stop. My dog wriggled away from her and went across the room. No teeth, no growling-she simply left the situation.

So I guess it all depends on the owner, training, and genetics(which I don't know of in either case).

I expect no less from my dogs and they know it. I also expect kids to be controlled by their parents, but I know that isn't going to ever happen. A kid should NEVER be allowed to pull a dogs tail or ears. Shame on anyone who allows this or thinks it's funny.
 
#205 ·
I don't believe in putting children in cages, but if one of mine had ever purposely hurt the dog, he would have red marks on his backside. I do believe in spanking. Being a parent, I understand that things happen. Accidents are one thing. My dogs have always been very forgiving of accidents. When my kids were young, they were always closely monitored with the dog, not just for their own safety, but for the dogs' as well.
 
#207 · (Edited)
I will add that we bought Nara from a breeder at 7 or 8 weeks old. Paw Paw came to us as a rescue at 8 months old. Beowulf was an abused, starved and neglected 14-week old, and Kaze was a tormented (trained/exercised with laser light pointers causing OCD) 2.5-year old. Nara is the only one of the pack that has zero quirks or issues. She was raised and loved from the earliest age in our home with our training and lifestyle, and overall she has been the best overall dog when it comes to personality and temperament. Maybe it's due to her pedigree, as it's far superior to our other dogs. Not sure what plays into this more: bloodlines/genetics, or coming to us earlier than the other guys, and also being with loving breeders her first 7-8 weeks of life instead of coming from an abusive situation. Maybe both?!

We've raised 3 (soon to be 4) young children (10-yr old who was 2 when we brought Nara home, 7-yr old, and a 4-yr old) around all of these dogs despite whatever issues and quirks each dog has. Like others have said, you have to train the children AND dogs to respect and know each other's limits and boundaries. ALL of our children are excellent around dogs, both our own and any neighbor's or stranger's dogs, or even loose dogs that we see roaming the neighborhood. We're the family that will get these dogs to come to us and then we bring them in our house or backyard until its owners can be found and reunited.

I was very much against "cage training" when we first got Nara, until I came on here to research and learn more from the very knowledgeable GSD lovers and owners. I didn't want to put my dog in JAIL, but I soon wised up and realized that the benefits outweigh all else, for both the dog AND the humans. Now we have 4 big crates, one for each dog, and the doors are always left open. They chose to go in them at will, and can come and go as they please.
 
#208 ·
Question on breeding- opinion

ok folks question for you. I just finished having a heated discussion with my sister.

She also has a gsd. a long coat. She wants to breed hers. Personally i think the only reason to breed is to better the breed. There are too many dogs in shelters, especially shepherds. Her dogs has papers but she never got them. Her dog in inbred. Its father is also its grandfather. Per SV standards that is a no no. I agree that its messed up.Its doggy incest. She wants to get another dog from someone giving it away who supposedly has papers but she hasn't seen them , and thinks that having two young dogs under a year one boy and one girl will be easy. i told her i tough it would e difficult especially since she hates noise. She basically called me a few choice names and said there was nothing wrong with what she wants to do.

I think if she wants to breed she should get her dogs papers, and enter her into competitions and make sure she is good enough to better the breed, and thats not even taking into account the inbred thing. She things the shows are stupid and titles mean nothing. She is convince that her puppies would all find loving homes and nothing bad would happen. I know that isn't always the case. Especially since she herself got rid of her first shepherd because she couldn't handle it.

I know there is no use trying to convince her, but it drives me crazy. Yet she insists on going over it again and again. Am i stupid in my thinking? Because i can't see it from her view. IT just seems elfish and narrow-minded for her to think that it is ok. Oh and her last shepherd i paid for all of it vetting for 6 years before we got into a fight and didn't talk for over a year and guess what.... her dog died. Coincidence, i don't think so.

Anyone have any thoughts on the subject? Am i just a Bit**?
 
#209 ·
ok folks question for you. I just finished having a heated discussion with my sister.

She also has a gsd. a long coat. She wants to breed hers. Personally i think the only reason to breed is to better the breed. There are too many dogs in shelters, especially shepherds. Her dogs has papers but she never got them. Her dog in inbred. Its father is also its grandfather. Per SV standards that is a no no. I agree that its messed up.Its doggy incest. She wants to get another dog from someone giving it away who supposedly has papers but she hasn't seen them , and thinks that having two young dogs under a year one boy and one girl will be easy. i told her i tough it would e difficult especially since she hates noise. She basically called me a few choice names and said there was nothing wrong with what she wants to do.

I think if she wants to breed she should get her dogs papers, and enter her into competitions and make sure she is good enough to better the breed, and thats not even taking into account the inbred thing. She things the shows are stupid and titles mean nothing. She is convince that her puppies would all find loving homes and nothing bad would happen. I know that isn't always the case. Especially since she herself got rid of her first shepherd because she couldn't handle it.

I know there is no use trying to convince her, but it drives me crazy. Yet she insists on going over it again and again. Am i stupid in my thinking? Because i can't see it from her view. IT just seems elfish and narrow-minded for her to think that it is ok. Oh and her last shepherd i paid for all of it vetting for 6 years before we got into a fight and didn't talk for over a year and guess what.... her dog died. Coincidence, i don't think so.

Anyone have any thoughts on the subject? Am i just a Bit**?

I think that sometimes we allow things that we care about to come into the way of family.

First of all, if she breeds two unpapered dogs, most of them will find homes, and none of them will have two heads. The sun will come up tomorrow, and it won't be the end of the world.

There are so many people breeding GSDs that one more is just another drop in the bucket so to speak.

But that doesn't mean that your arguments aren't right. What it means is that you have to win your sister over, carefully.

I mean, if her bitch was certainly going to die, if she did this, it would be much easier to convince her not to do this. If the puppies were extremely likely to have serious deformities, it would be easier to convince her.

Some people just want to have puppies. And if the dogs do not have papers, then papers are stupid. If their dogs aren't show dogs, then showing dogs is stupid. It is next to impossible to convince someone who just wants to make puppies that it is a bad idea.

If she already had the bitch, and thought the world of her you could maybe tell her of someone that you were reading about that lost her bitch when pregnant.

But the chances are still good that she will not have serious complications. And she doesn't have the bitch yet, so she doesn't think the world of her, so that argument is a hard sell.

I guess you just have to be delicate in how you approach it. Win her over. You can catch more bees with honey...
 
#215 ·
A friend just went through this with her daughter and son in law. Nice enough dog but no health clearances, no showing of any kind - nada and probably a sire with similar "background" (aka none). Emergency C section, some pups died, one is with my friend, they still have four and have "lowered the price" -- they were evidently asking 1k for these pups.... BUT the good news is that this turned out not to be a money maker. It turned out to be expensive and time consuming and heart-breaking.

If the OPs sister keeps insisting on going over this, hang up or walk out. Just say "I am not talking about this anymore. If you say anything more I will hang up/leave" She is not listening so quit hearing her. When things go badly wrong, I would pull out the "told you so" card. Enough is enough.
 
#218 ·
Thank you all for your comments. I am fed up with her. I know I won't change her mind but I tried. Knowing her she does thing i will end up paying the vet bills for her dog/puppies. She thinks i am made of money since I don't have kids. I wish there was an easy answer. It had me up all night and was still irritated by it this morning. I mean i understand her want to have puppies etc, i get it. They are cute. But I just can't justify it. **** i still feel guilty buying my girl instead of getting another shelter dog. i have 2 shelter mutts and 4 shelter cats. But this time I wanted something specific and none of the shelters had what i wanted or wouldn't adopt to someone out of state, for obvious reasons. I wish she wasn't so selfish.

And I am not a troll, no clue who that Lycos (sp)? is you are talking about. I just needed to vent and make sure Im not crazy. She has a way of turning things around and making me feel like I am wrong when I know I am not.
 
#219 ·
Cut her off. Think of it like training a dog - every time you give in and fix her mistakes, she learns that she can get away with it. In a way you're conditioning her to continue making those bad mistakes, just like feeding a dog that's begging at the table. Make it clear that if she does this, she's 100% on her own, in absolutely every sense (with regards to the puppies/dogs). Don't let her guilt trip you. Some people need to learn the hard way.
 
#221 ·
I believe in giving a shelter dog a second chance I give to the ASPCA monthly.
But when you have a goal in mind as far as where you want to go with your dog you have to have a good start the right dog.
Being born and raised in Germany I grew up with German Shepherds my Grandfather used to breed them when I was a child I loved his dogs.
But I have to say there is a lot of garbage being breed and that is sad my Shepherd I imported him made it to 17 and no issues health wise.
I have seen some of the things that people offer as German Shepherd and I am not talking reputable breeders but people who look to make a buck and puppy mills.
Having said that if you know what you want from your dog than you know where to look.
 
#222 ·
I believe in giving a shelter dog a second chance I give to the ASPCA monthly.
How much of your donation goes to really help the animals? While I commend you for helping financially, the ASPCA and HSUS are paying out huge administrative salaries. I'd rather give funds to the small local shelters or rescues that put it right into helping the animals in my community.
 
#224 · (Edited)
I agree about keeping money local to donate to your local shelters and rescues. Every time we see their commercial with the sad music, DH and I say, "Wow, what clean, large cages. That's a really nice shelter. Imagine pulling clean dogs from that kind of facility. Must be nice." Compared to the broken down, decrepit, filthy, over-croweded southern shelters we visit, where nearly every dog is covered in its own urine and feces....That one in that sad commercial looks like a pet spa to those of us visiting unfunded public shelters.

That said, it simply isn'ttrue that the ASPCA gives no money to other shelters. They have a robust grant program for shelters. They've funded an enormous number of transports of dogs from our local southern shelters up north. They also fund community speutering programs. You can find their grant program on their "Pro" site for shelters at the bottom:

ASPCA Professional | ASPCA Professional

They report as follows:

  • Since 2008, over $89 million has been granted
  • This is nearly 8,200 grants to date (as of September 30, 2015)
  • In 2014, the ASPCA awarded nearly 1,300 grants totaling $14.4 million to 850 organizations
The other big thing the ASPA does for other shelters is research into shelter protocol guidance. They're really the only one doing that kind of research. Some of it is helpful to shelter managers who literally have no idea how to run a shelter, manage disease, or disinfect properly. They are essentially the protocol-making body for most public shelters, since nobody else is doing it.

Some of their other work is less helpful. Their behaviorist/statistician makes my brain hurt. They developed the (badly designed) temperament test nearly all shelters use, and have online training for shelter employees to use it. They also research into adoption policies and are strongly advocating for open adoptions (= not saying "no" to anybody who wants a dog), adopting pets as gifts, etc. They claim this is data-driven, by looking at outcomes in shelters where this has been done, and that the outcomes are just as good as shelters who have adoption standards. To my thinking, their data-crunching is full of data-set bias, from what I can tell, selecting data that will omit all the problems. I keep telling them they're externalizing the costs of failed shelter adoptions to private rescues who have to deal with the messes the shelters create with these policies....and they keep ignoring me. I regularly post comments on their blog to point out the statistical errors, data bias, and outright falsehoods in her posts, and they never respond. I've even linked to pictures of the state of some of these "shelter adopted dogs" a year later--emaciated, demodex infested, HW positive when we got them from their previous "shelter adopters." Those pictures get ignored too.
 
#225 ·
Some of their other work is less helpful. Their behaviorist/statistician makes my brain hurt. They developed the (badly designed) temperament test nearly all shelters use, and have online training for shelter employees to use it. They also research into adoption policies and are strongly advocating for open adoptions (= not saying "no" to anybody who wants a dog), adopting pets as gifts, etc. They claim this is data-driven, by looking at outcomes in shelters where this has been done, and that the outcomes are just as good as shelters who have adoption standards. To my thinking, their data-crunching is full of data-set bias, from what I can tell, selecting data that will omit all the problems.
As someone with an academic background in research methodology, this makes my brain sad.
 
#227 ·
In an ideal world, there would be no shelter dogs. It would be cool if no one bought a dog until all shelter dogs had homes, right? Maybe someday, our entire country will get on board and declare a moratorium on breeding until all rescue dogs are neutered and have a home. I doubt it, but it could happen.

But until irresponsible breeding ends, it is wrong to expect people to get shelter/rescue dogs when they have specific needs and wants in a dog. For one thing, about 80% of the shelter dogs I see are short-haired dogs that look like they have hound or pit bull in their DNA. Those are specific types bred for specific purposes, and they do not make the right pet for many families. My sister has Coonhounds and does Coonhound and Bloodhound rescue. She cannot have small animals in her home--they will kill them (cats, bunnies, etc). That's ok with her, but it would not work for a lot of folks and would lead to the euthanizing of small animals that can't be placed in homes with some types of dogs.

Shelter and rescue dogs do not fit into every home. Many people get a puppy rather than an adult dog b/c they want to make sure it is safe with their family. An adult dog can have habits that do not fit with the family's life style and/or problem behaviors the family is not equipped to correct. How much time do folks need to spend trying to find a dog that is a right fit? And what about numerous placements for a dog that don't work out? That's not good for them, either.

Irresponsible breeding--not responsible breeding--is the problem.
 
#228 ·
My broken record is "people spend more time researching their next car or vacation than they do their next pet. The car will sit in the driveway a few years. The vacation will last a week. The dog will be sleeping on their couch for a decade, maybe more!"

Educated people would put mills out of business. They would be less likely to take home a shelter dog that didn't match their life. But people chose emotionally way to often, and that is how many place raise money...give bucks and you'll feel less guilty.

Which reminds me, our local shelter was looking for a new director. I hope they find someone wise. It's not an easy position.
 
#229 ·
I will never regret owning well bred animals, or doing my best to produce them. They are one of the finest joys in life. When I see someone starting out on the wrong foot, I generally try to give any help and advice I can, with no judgement. They'll do it anyway. Cherish the chance to be kind and educate :)
 
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