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Date Posted: 13:11:06 03/26/10 Fri
Author: Norman Epstein
Subject: Re: Sports for breeding purposes
In reply to: RW 's message, "Sports for breeding purposes" on 20:33:18 03/25/10 Thu

I have read all of the posts on this subject and mine for what they’re worth are as follows. When any type of training or methods used to quantity traits is being discussed we must not fall in the trap of using the red herring of absolutes when it is not about absolutes it’s about probabilities. Sure a weaker example can succeed in a sport but that is not the point. The point is, do most succeed and history says most don’t. That is why the working German Shepherd Dog measured by the sport of Schutzhund is by far the most used service dog in the world even though they only consist of only 3% of the total GSD population. Jenny wrote

“the dogs seem to need higher levels of drive to succeed at the top echelon than perhaps would make them a good all round family/companion dog. Maybe I'm wrong there and I do stand to be corrected by those who know better than I “

Well Jenny in some instances you are correct but in many instances you are wrong. For example most K-9 police dogs which also require a high degree of drive live in the home of their handler with his or her family. Again the probability of the dog living with his handler in their home has more to do with the breed, than its drive. Jenny goes on to write,

“I'm hesitant about putting very driven dogs to other very driven dogs in a breeding program for fear of going over the top”.

You have every right to be concerned but how is a breeder going to determine the degree of those drives if not measured by a template. Moreover drive is not just one trait but umbrella of many traits that if effective must work in concert with each other. What the sport tries to do is lay bare the subtly of all of these drives in order for the breeder to not overload any one, which is what you want. The result being a better balanced dog. Look there are many great personal protection trainers and dogs but that community is fraught with different methods producing different results all being touted as the best and few of these methods or dogs are ever measured by anyone except their breeder/trainer and if you think the politics is bad in the world of Schutzhund you haven’t visited the world of personal protection trainers and breeders. To think that it isn’t overflowing with ego’s attitudes, opinions, infighting and dog politics is to admit you have never read the posts on their forums.

Now your question, should sport alone be used to identify breed stock. No one thing should ever be used because identifying breed stock is far to complex to only use one method, but it’s certainly better than taking the word of a well crafted web site or breeder who know more about producing over sized lumps than they do about what phenotype and genotype is best for a working breed, such as the Boerboel. These breeders will fight to the end not to have such a breed specific test for the Boerboel because it would help identify the crap they have been bragging about all of these years.
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