Feedback on Canine Cash Crop
(Page 5 of 6)
September/October 1972
By the Mother Earth News editors
In her list of expenses she does not mention paying a stud fee. This must mean that she does not pay one, which leads me to conclude that propinquity is her single most important criterion for choosing a mate for her bitch. The best stud dogs of any breed command a sizable stud fee, at least $100 . . . often more. It is worthwhile going to these dogs, for they are usually most typical of their breed . . . but they often live far away. You would be lucky to find one within a day's drive. So add traveling expenses in your car, or airfare for your bitch, usually from $20 to $100 for the round trip,
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And so I assume that Dorothy Lockard is not breeding her bitch to the dog most suited to her, and this kind of indiscriminate breeding can in a few short generations undo everything the former breeders achieved. In other words, as organic gardeners would say, she is mining the soil, not adding anything to it, This is a bad thing to do, no matter whether you are taking timber out of the forests, growing corn in Iowa, or simply breeding cocker spaniels,
Most MOTHER readers are too young to remember cocker spaniels of the '30's and '40's, the little family dog, merry, gentle, friendly, stable, soured, everyone's favorite, and it deserved to be. Then the special curse of popularity caught up with it, and everyone bred his pet cocker to the petcocker down the street. The breed became a fear-biter, impossible to train because everytime you spoke crossly to one it would piddle from sheer terror.. Then suddenly among the pet buying public cockers were anathema. Conscientious breeders have, over the years, reestablished a strain of good-looking stable cockers, but it has taken many years to undo the harm. Poodles are now going through the same troubles. Time was when every poodle from the ugliest long-backed pop-eyed pet to the most elegant show animal had the same responsive, stable, gay intelligence. No more. And we all know what has happened to the German shepherd.
So if you wish to start a canine crop, I and other breeders will welcome you if you are conscientious. Here are some rules to follow if you want to live in peace with yourself:
1. Acquire the best looking, most typical bitch of her breed that you can afford. Choose not the breed you believe will sell the most readily, but one you most admire. Like everything else, dog breeding is too much work to do otherwise.
2. Learn something about your breed, its history, its purposes, and the best specimens of the past and present.
3. Study the laws of canine genetics and sincerely try to apply them.
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