This story applies to every future dog owner.
Not all dogs of the same breed are created equal. Let’s say you want a Golden Retriever. The choices are lines (families of dogs) are vast. There are Golden Retrievers lines purposefully bred for many generations to achieve goals. These lines are either bred to hunt birds or service dogs for people with disabilities or conformation show (beauty pageants) or obedience and agility competition. All these lines of dogs are purposefully bred for decades of generations to be be the best at their jobs.
To be a good hunting dog one of the requirements is strong ‘prey drive’ to hunt. The dog is best if it has a natural desire to fetch (chase movement and bring back a dead bird that fell from the sky… or a ball). Fetching is very much genetic. By breeding two parents who naturally want to fetch the probability is that most the puppies will love to fetch. Lines are developed by breeders only choosing parent dogs who possess the genetic traits that breeder desires for their line.
Option 1: Let’s say you are shopping for a dog to take duck hunting. One option is to look for a local back yard breeder with puppies who are ready now and the cheapest you can find. The breeder you found in your city owns just the two parents and keeps them as pets. You are told the dad has hunting in his line. They are happy dogs and all the puppies look great. You go pick out your favorite puppy from the litter and begin training “Uno”. You’ll soon find that Uno only wants to chase a ball 3 times and gets distracted. You thought all Retrievers naturally love to swim. Uno only likes to get his legs in the water to drink and refuses to swim. Uno is skittish of the gun sound and try as you may with all the best advice from hunting dog trainers, the problem only gets worse. Uno becomes your pet and it is round two of shopping for a new hunting dog.
Option 2: This time you research and find a few breeders within a days drive who breed litters from hunting parents. Each breeder has waiting lists and it will be 6-12 months before you’ll be able to bring a puppy home. You place a deposit and 6 months later it is puppy pick up day! The breeder has chosen 3 of the 10 puppies as best choices for you to decide between. All the puppies in the litter were temperament tested by a professional hunting trainer. The top three are have no sound sensitivity, are obsessed with fetching, have pain tolerance off the charts, and passed all the other tests with A+ results. You pick out your puppy “Dos”. Right away Dos is super easy to train to pick up the dummy ducks. He never tires of fetching and is obsessed with swimming! Dos never flinches when he hears gun shots. At a year of age you have a wonderfully trained hunting dog. Dos is your buddy for the next 10 hunting seasons.
Do you choose Uno or Dos?
I wrote this article to explain the importance of choosing the correct breeder when looking for a Golden Retriever. These principles apply to every person looking for their next best friend. Dogs are the product of their genetics. Breeders are producing good or bad traits, no matter what they attempt or ignorantly succeed in doing. As a future owner of a dog, all these principles apply to you.
