330 – Breeding Rules from John Buddie, Tartanside Collies
Breeding Rules from John Buddie, Tartanside Collies
John Buddie has spent a lifetime with Collies. His Tartanside family of dogs is world-famous and widely respected. His Breeding Rules are a distillation of more than 50 years of experience and success. This is part one of a two-part series.
Buddie’s original breed mentor gave him much of the knowledge he continues to share today.
“This was mentorship in the days of letter writing, plus weekends spent doing kennel chores, brushing dogs, really hands on work,” Buddie said. “When I asked a question, she would ask me a question to make me think.”
Spoon-feeding someone an answer doesn’t have the same impact as helping someone come to their own conclusion, Buddie observed.
Buddie’s “rules” are guidelines that are applicable across breeds and generations.
*Leave the sport/breed no worse than you found it
Show respect for the lines and breeders who came before by preserving that quality.
*The number of champions finished/ribbons earned is not the measure of a breeder
“There have been many important contributing breeders who changed the face of a breed who bred on a small scale,” Buddie said. “For every record achieved there will always be someone who can break that record.”
*Learn to read a pedigree
Research, look to breeders of the past, learn what they accomplished and how.
*Look to the grandparents
Most top producing dogs are just carrying the pedigree forward. Top sires, often the strength comes from dam side.
“I’ve had great success using the Maternal grandsire effect, in other words breed a quality bitch to her maternal grandsire,” Buddie said.
*You can never outrun a problem
“It’s a lot easier to rid yourself of problems with testing now. But you have to admit the problem and deal with it. It can mean scrapping a couple generations of breedings to clear it out. But you have to protect your breeding program as a whole.”
*Learn to see quality in other people’s dogs
“We make evaluations of dogs when we’re competitors… when you’re judging you realize you weren’t as open-minded as you thought you were.”
*Attend national to see dogs that you wouldn’t see any other time
Join us next week for the continuation of this fabulous conversation.
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Loved this and I totally agree with the newcomers of today don’t do the pedigree research they need to be doing! I see so many in my breed, breeding to a dog because of its record, either show or field, without any knowledge or consideration about what dogs are behind those dogs, some good and some not. Plus so many are breeding to the same dogs, in concerned it will cause a serious bottleneck in the breed with no where to go without finding those dogs repeated over and over again. Too many people jump into breeding and showing without having a mentor to help guide them and I believe this may be part of the problem. Great show today!