700 — Laura On: Re-imagining Dog Shows and Dog Breeding
Episode 700: Re-imagining Dog Shows and Dog Breeding
It’s become a tradition here at Pure Dog Talk to celebrate the important milestones. Episode 700 feels surreal to me! Since November of 2016, NINE years, I’ve been hopping in the van with you guys for your road trips, joining you on the treadmill and the lawnmower, at the grooming table and discussions around the dinner table. Crazy talk!
But, here we are. This year we even kicked off a new adventure with the Marty and Laura Show, reaching out to the general public, your puppy buyers and your cousin’s uncle’s girlfriend with trusted, knowledgeable information on all things pet health.
We’ve also developed the Pedigrees to Pups Seminar series and are actively in process of making those available as courses on demand.
I’ve got a new audio book about to hit the shelves and a long list of really excellent conversations upcoming. So the future looks bright in podcastlandia.
I’m just a little concerned I’m going to be talking to myself here eventually. As I watch the sport of dog shows dwindle, litter registrations drop off and dog breeders retire, age out, drop out and give up, it gives me pause for our future.
I had a call recently from a long time judge who shared my concerns about the “future of the sport.” It’s not a new conversation. It’s been around for at least the last 25 years. And we’re still here chugging along. A little more spread thin with lots and lots and lots of small shows. A little greyer and gimpier. My friend discussed various initiatives from AKC that she thinks are to blame. But honestly I think it’s simple.
Dog shows are expensive. Breeding dogs is ridiculously expensive. And really hard. You get the tremendous highs but those heartbreaking lows are really hard to take. Those of us who have dedicated our lives to this can’t understand why people don’t want to abuse their bodies, emotions and wallets for the chance at creating that one big winner.
But a thing one of my guests said recently has really stuck with me. In his book Familiaris, David Wroblewski touches on a theme that I think we need to let roll around in our minds for a while.
His fictional dog breeder character describes the importance of creating something lasting and beautiful in the world. The idea of pursuing one impossible thing. That dog breeding is something like a “great quest” and gives our lives purpose.
So here’s my pitch.
We need MORE dog breeders, not fewer. But we need more GOOD dog breeders. People who put the dogs not the profit margin first. Not saying making money is a sin. It isn’t. But when you center the dogs, the breed and the buyers, you might not retire a billionaire, but you won’t go broke either. We’ve spent a good bit of time this year on providing content that helps people understand HOW to do this and do it well. That’s a big part of why we created the Pedigrees to Pups seminars. We had Matt Stelter on to talk about website and content creation. We talked to my friend BB who started a YouTube channel with his Brittany litter.
My challenge, dear listeners, is to extend your involvement. If you haven’t yet, consider working with your breeder to whelp and raise a litter under their guidance. Decide that ribbons get dusty, but building a strong family of dogs who will go on to bring joy to hundreds maybe even thousands of people over multiple decades is a vision worth having. It is a lifetime project that is WORTH your time, your effort, your investment, your blood, sweat and tears.
Because I promise you, when you start walking toward the end of your path, and you look back at your “body of work” with pride and love and the extended family of puppy buyers going back decades, it IS worthy of your effort.
Building something lasting doesn’t have to be a bridge out of concrete. It can be as real and as warm as the trusting gaze of an old friend looking out at you from the eyes of a new puppy.
We don’t have to buy the propaganda that PETA has sold us. We don’t have to hide our dogs and our passion. We don’t have to accept that the general public has zero concept of animal husbandry. WE can be the difference. We can use our voices to educate. If you aren’t comfortable speaking yourself, share resources like this one or the marty and laura show. AKC has resources. Our world is *drowning* in information that isn’t getting to the audience that needs to hear it. Preaching to the choir ain’t going to fix it y’all.
We don’t have to accept anti breeder legislation. WE can introduce ourselves as subject matter experts and be the ones the lawmakers call when in doubt. WE do have the power of our own destinies. Somehow, we have allowed those to be stolen from us by slick slogans and people who have never bred a litter of puppies in their lives telling us how to do what we do. And I don’t mean AKC. I mean YOU. Literally, you. Our numbers may not be legion, but our passion is.
It is long past time that we stand proud with that in our communities.
So, do a quick check on your heart. Are you showing that gorgeous bitch to her triple quintuple grand champion platinum? How about you breed her? Or at least support someone in the trenches who is doing the work and buy a new dog. And yes, you can find someone to sell you a good dog. I promise. If you’re struggling, email me. I’ll help.
We need you guys, All y’all, to hang with it. To dream. To plan. To get knocked down and *get back up again*! No matter what tragedy, what horror, what sadness or betrayal, it’s a safe bet you aren’t alone.
Surround yourself with positive people who find constructive ways to improve instead of finding other people to blame. Find your tribe. If you haven’t already, I invite you to join ours. The Pure Dog Talk Patrons community is deep and rich with support and knowledge and camaraderie. Stop by the website and click the Patrons tab to join us.
Everyone starts somewhere and certainly I’m no exception.
Nine years ago I didn’t know what a podcast even was. Mary kept pushing me to host this thing and I just was baffled. I googled and poked around and most of them were booooooring things about stuff I couldn’t understand.
Then I ran across a name I knew! Back in the Seattle days, I was running the Human Rights Watch Film Festival and one of our sponsors was The Stranger, a sort of alternative newspaper. The primary reason it was semi famous was one columnist, a dude I knew to wave at by the name of Dan Savage and his, mmm, quirky sex advice column called Savage Love. And there it was! The Savage Love podcast!
He had *500* episodes at the time and I figured I’d make it a goal to surpass that…. I’m past that now, but I haven’t quite managed to eclipse the kinky sex pod, so I guess we’ll just have to keep trying! And that’s kind of a circular way of making my point … Keep going, find a way to motivate yourself and keep going some more.
While you’re at it, help me beat Savage Love! Like, share, review and subscribe.
Talk ON. Peace….
563 – New Tufts University Course: Breeders Teaching Veterinary Students
New Tufts University Course: Breeders Teaching Veterinary Students
Gale Golden and Susan Patterson join host Laura Reeves for a conversation about the new and exciting AKC Tufts Whelping Program that provides information to veterinary students about dog breeders.
Golden, the AKC coordinator for the program, said that the growing difficulties with finding breeder-friendly veterinarians was a huge concern for her.
“As breeders, we’ve faced many challenges and still face many challenges continuing our right to breed dogs here in the United States,” Golden said. “And one of the biggest challenges has been not only the lack of veterinary care, but the lack of understanding of the purebred, responsible dog breeder and how we work and operate. And that has led to, in some instances, lesser care breeders have available to them or even, in emergency situations, outcomes that weren’t the desired outcomes.”
Change the Conversation
Patterson, who has worked with a similar program at the Ohio State University, noted that “we need to change the conversation at the vet school level. How do we show that students, who most likely have never whelped a litter, will never do anything but triage, what a responsible breeder does, what their parameters are, how they make their choices, and how do they whelp their puppies.
“So, we are going directly to the students, who have some pre-formed opinions, but they have no experience. And we are sharing super transparently all the good, the bad, the ugly. We’ve worked with (the staff advisor) to develop what they call a selective, which in normal academic terms would be called an elective. They get to choose. And so, this last semester we had three students, this semester will have five.
“The other thing we’ve done that I think has added tremendously is we’ve not just focused on these students, but we have opened up our monthly roundtables to all interested vet students and we have brought in veterinarians. We had them in the classroom and we did have a virtual crop and dock just because of timing.
Talk About the Hard Things
“So, we’ve addressed the hard things. We’ve talked about what it takes to produce a puppy that is going to be healthy. And why we do the testing, why we make the choices, why temperament and different breeds. And so they’ve been able to ask us really hard questions. And I think the interaction has been very positive.”
“The total lack of understanding of what a purebred dog was and how they came to be and why they came to be” was an “aha” moment for Golden. She noted that one of the important topics covered in the course is the breed standard. “What is the breed standard and how did it come to be. The fact that they didn’t know was a real aha for me.
“The other thing I don’t feel like they really understood was how we preserve a breed. And as I’m sure most everyone here knows, French Bulldogs have been just bombarded with every kind of influence from outside the breed gene pool there could be. And it’s like a breed being attacked on steroids, you know, from fluffy to pink. It all exists. One of the scary statistics for this breed is last year there were 32,000 Frenchie litters registered with the AKC. 294 were parent club members, 294 out of 32,000. And since DNA really can’t accurately show us exactly what’s behind a dog, after a few generations of breeding to Frenchies, it looks like it’s a purebred Frenchie.
“Another aha for me was the health testing process, the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, that it exists. What kind of data was there, who loads that data and that it is a partnership with veterinarians and breeders that actually populates that database and how we use it to make improvements. So those things were major ahas for me.
“The preservation message, however, is one that resonates for us. We don’t tell our own story. You know, we’re kind of invisible. There might be 90,000 of us in Massachusetts playing dog sports, but I find out legislatively many times we’re invisible. You know, the fact that we let other people tell our story is a problem.”
504 – Dog Trainers and Dog Breeders Working Together
Dog Trainers and Dog Breeders Working Together
Kayley Paylor and her Azawakh.
Kayley Paylor, like many professional dog trainers, started in her profession after acquiring a rescue dog that had issues. She became a huge advocate for the predictability and reliability of well-bred purebred dogs as a result. Paylor joins host Laura Reeves to tackle the “elephant in the room” when it comes to dog breeders and dog trainers working together.
“It’s one of those issues where you don’t even realize that that type of (animal rights) agenda is sneaking in because the line between animal welfare and animal rights activists is a tough one,” Paylor said. “People who love their dogs and want the best for their dogs and trainers who want the best for dogs, it’s really easy to lose track of what is actually best for them in the long term. Are we going to let them suffer with mental issues when we could just clarify the issue immediately with a consequence once that is appropriate.
“So, what I tend to see and what I ran into is, again, really well-intentioned individuals who get a rescue as their first dog. Mine had health problems, as is unfortunately common, and I didn’t know that going into it. Epilepsy, dental issues, that type of thing. And some behavioral issues that come with, certainly, genetic temperament issues, but also just they didn’t have a breeder that cared about the puppy, that gave them the solid foundation.
“I dug into the behavioral issues and what I started to see, when I went through my apprenticeship, … I saw all of these incredible women who had these purebred dogs that were predictable. That you could understand exactly what was going to happen. And so I started to understand ‘oh, OK, you understand exactly what you’re going to get when you get that dog.’ I was lucky and I wasn’t the only one. All of my colleagues that came in at the same time as I did all came from a rescue background.
“All of my colleagues went that way, where we started with rescues and ended up with purebred dogs. Because if you rescue dogs, you have to understand you’re not getting anything predictable. You don’t know the background.
“From a breeder perspective, I do wish that breeders had a little bit more trust in trainers … but it’s just a breakdown in communication. Neither of them see all the good that the other one can do because of the bad in both communities.
“It’s just about getting those well-bred dogs in front of trainers. Even if you know what you’re doing. Even if you think you know what you’re doing, taking them to a puppy group class for puppy play.
“On both sides of the issue let’s just say R+ versus a balanced perspective, you’re going to get people who understand dogs and their different needs and their different drives, and you’re going to get people who don’t.”
Listen to the entire episode above and hear Paylor’s insights on finding a good fit for a trainer to work with, training insights and so much more.