07/13/2026
The Onus of Being a Dog Breeder
I've been wrestling with this topic in various forms for quite a while, but have been unsure how to approach it. It may spark some debate, but what I truly hope is that it inspires us to all hit 'pause' before participating in gossip or finger-pointing and instead engage in thoughtful consideration of the complexities and risks that people deal with every single time they do a breeding.
Most of all, we need to stop shaming other breeders when something undesirable crops up. We need to stop assuming 'they should have known'. We need to realize that every breeder hopes and plans for the best. We need to understand that genetics can be a tricky beast over which we have less control than we'd like to. We can't select traits from an a la carte list; they come as a package, with all the good, bad, and in-between bundled together -- and many times we can't even see all that's on the menu. We need to practice grace and let others make their own best decisions, given what they know.
When my husband and I began in breeding, terms like 'dominant', 'simple recessive' and 'polygenetic' were known, but we didn't have genetic testing that could be done by a simple cheek swab that let you identify some of those genes. Every breeding was essentially a test breeding.
While today we have the convenience of genetic testing, it's still not particularly helpful with genes that are polygenetic (innate temperament, for example), or that can be turned on or off by other genes, or that are influenced by environmental factors such as nutrition and toxins. Or especially for traits for which the genes have not yet been identified. I frequently see many stud dog or bitch owners looking for or touting a 'clean genetic panel'. Sometimes they're just looking for a non-carrier of a specific trait, but at other times I wonder if they mean a non-carrier of *anything*, which would narrow the gene pool considerably.
Genetic tests are great tools. I use them myself. Sometimes only breed-specific tests are run, or ones where a certain trait is of concern in a line. AKC offers a broad panel, so it covers all breeds. My latest reports from them were *14 pages long*! That means they contain a lot of tests for genes I wasn't familiar with in our breed. Here's a tip: the more you test for (and the more info you have), the more likely you are to find... something. We use those tests because we want simpler, more straightforward answers in an increasingly complicated world. They're helpful, but they shouldn't be the only things we consider. Not every trait can be measured by a cheek swab, blood test, or X-ray.
When we started breeding almost forty years ago, pretty much the only tests we did on our dogs were OFA for hips and an eye exam. Now we have even more info to go on, but sometimes I think that has shifted our focus from bigger picture concerns to more detailed ones that we can easily read on paper. Again, great info to have, but what matters in the grand scheme of things? If you have the healthiest dogs in the world, does it matter if they're extremely nervous and not trustworthy in public? Yes.
Another thing that has changed in those few decades is the existence of the internet. It is sooo easy to disseminate information nowadays -- we can pass along PDFs of test results -- but it's also easier to spread gossip. If you've ever done the telephone game as a kid where you whisper something from person to person and see what gets conveyed by the end, you know how easily things can get twisted, omitted, added, or exaggerated. If one person in that chain changed the information, intentionally or not, then what reached the end wasn't anything remotely like what tidbit there was in the beginning.
I have seen breeders or dogs get maligned on social media, yet when I checked with people I knew and trusted, the real story was vastly different. When our community sounds like an episode of Mean Girls, why would any newcomer want to get involved and take on the responsibility of preserving our chosen breed? Why would even some of the most conscientious, knowledgeable ones want to continue?
When people partake of gossip by passing it along, they may believe they're doing a service by warning others away from a certain dog, kennel, or breeder. But it also makes the gossiper feel superior in some ways and then helps them bond with the listener. After all, they would never have bred to *that* dog or taken *that* risk... When you hear information secondhand (or third, etc.), don't assume it's completely accurate. It may be. It may not be.
Crap can happen even when the research has been done to the best of your ability, tests have been run, the parents are exceptional representatives of the breed in multiple ways, and everything looks great on paper.
I twist myself in knots every time I consider breeding one of our girls. Am I making the right choice? Do I know enough? Will the right homes come along? It's exhausting when you care. Whenever someone inquires about using one of our boys, I'm both honored and worried about the same things. I love my breed, have chosen the dogs and crosses we've done in an attempt to bring out the best qualities, and am grateful when I can pair up an owner with their heart dog to form a team that goes on to accomplish great things. But... there is always a risk. Always. It scares the crap out of me every time. Yet there is no reward without risk.
In our attempt to avoid a risk, however, we can throw out the baby with the bathwater. There is science in breeding, but a lot of it is luck, too. Kind of like sticking your hand in the Scrabble bag to draw out your seven letters. Sometimes you get the perfect letters to create a word that lands you on triple word score. Sometimes you get all vowels, or all the high-scoring consonants but you can't use them to make a word in English.
So each time I consider a breeding, I use all those tests as tools, but I keep in mind the big picture, like temperament, overall longevity in the lines, whelping ability and litter size, breed type and athleticism, and trainability/talent.
If breeding the next great dog was as easy as ticking boxes on paper, we'd all be getting perfect results, but that doesn't happen, does it? There are no guarantees, even if we've done everything advised for our breed. In short, it ain't easy and takes faith and courage.
The responsibility is enormous. Yes, be aware of potential risks, but also don't overlook all the positives a dog or its lines may contribute. If we're always running away from things without having a plan for what we're running towards, then we'll lack direction and our results will seem inconsistent, at best.
I feel like I've been all over the board with this post. I'm still not sure I've said it right. There's so much more I could say, but I might only cloud my main points, which are these: Breeding is complicated. It's hard and means accepting risks, both known and unknown. There's a lot to consider and every breeder has different priorities, thus making what's right for one breeder not suitable for another. Maybe we should all be a little less judgmental and a lot more supportive.
