Are the Kennel Club/Breeders shooting themselves in the foot?

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Aperchristmas

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This is a musing thread more than anything else so feel free to ignore.

We have recently got a new puppy - a KC registered Cocker dog. He is beautiful, naughty and just gorgeous. However, one of the terms of sale was that we could never breed from him, I remember having the same terms with previous dogs. So it seems that the vast majority of pedigree dogs that we buy can't be bred. Now this does not matter to us - we don't want to breed, and if we did, we would probably breed a bitch so we could have the fun of puppies. However, we were thinking that maybe this is one of the causes of all these "designer cross-breeds" that breeders and the KC so hate. If you can't register your purebred pups, their value diminishes greatly - so why not breed with another dog to have pups that are both commercially viable and a bit 'different'. There are no KC registration fees and no questions as to why they are unregistered. So it seems that this policy is depriving the KC of money and indirectly could be encouraging indiscriminate breeding.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that breeders should let their pups breed with no restrictions, but you have to admit that this blanket policy is probably at least partly producing the effects that pedigree breeders are trying to escape and discredit. Like I said, we have no desire to breed at all - but I'm starting to understand why so many people are moving away from the KC - it is far too exclusive.

Could any more experienced people shed some light on this?
 
I don't think it makes much difference, often when/if someone does want to breed from a dog at a later date the breeders will lift the clause IF the dog is of good enough quality-to my mind though it further reduces the gene pool and I don't agree with the KC and their breed standards
 
Agree, endorsements can be lifted.

Think of it from the breeder's point of view - everyone thinks their dog is 'lovely'.
If a dog is sold as a pet and has less than ideal conformation or character, and the new owners breed it, for example, without health tests or to a dodgy mate, if the pups come out pink with yellow spots, the breeder's kennel name is on the pedigree. So it is their name/reputation at stake.
So better to sell the whole litter with restrictions and then lift them on an individual basis.

PS the KC don't set the breed standards, it's the FCI who do that.
 
CaveCanem said:
Agree, endorsements can be lifted.

Think of it from the breeder's point of view - everyone thinks their dog is 'lovely'.
If a dog is sold as a pet and has less than ideal conformation or character, and the new owners breed it, for example, without health tests or to a dodgy mate, if the pups come out pink with yellow spots, the breeder's kennel name is on the pedigree. So it is their name/reputation at stake.
So better to sell the whole litter with restrictions and then lift them on an individual basis.

PS the KC don't set the breed standards, it's the FCI who do that.
Click to expand...

then it is the FCI I have an issue with, shall have to remember their name
 
Any FCI member kennel clubs or breed clubs will use FCI breed standards. I don't have a problem with the standards themselves, just the human interpretation of them.

As another example of why breeders place restrictions, imagine a dog with poor conformation and a terrible character, which has been implicated in producing epilepsy or hip dysplasia or some other condition, who has bitten someone (for example!!), and imagine that you surfed the dog's pedigree and found a dog from a kennel who breeds to the standard and rigorously health tests and works or shows their dogs, is present in the pedigree, because they sold it, someone bred it, and it appears among several other generations of unknown or unhealthy dogs, with their kennel name on it? Not 'Famous Blue Boy' or 'Daisy of the Hills'. Then because their kennel name is used, they are implicated in dodgy breeding.
 
I suggest you go on to YouTube and do a search for "Pedigree Dogs Exposed". The documentary is highly critical of selective breeding for fancy points for the show bench, especially of inbreeding. That argument has been used to support cross breeding in the belief that the opposite of inbreeding (called "outbreeding") must therefore be beneficial.

The fact is, garbage in, garbage out applies but the nonsense has encouraged a market in these mongrels -- and as you say no involvement with the KC and all their expensive fees has created a sort of inverted snobbery.

At the moment, owning a dog is a fad and I don't believe it will last -- which will be a good thing for everyone, including the dogs.
 
I am by no means a fan of the KC, and think they shoot themselves in the foot frequently (most recently with their changes to the ABS), but in this case I don't agree. I have been putting endorsements on my pups registrations for as long as I can remember, yet doodles and all the other crosses are comparatively recent thing.
Most breeders do not place endorsement as a blanket "never to be bred" from policy. I used to explain to people about the endorsement and say if they did feel they wanted to breed to get all necessary health tests done and if these had good results and the dog was of sufficient merit to breed from, then I would lift the endorsement.
 
MurphysMinder said:
I am by no means a fan of the KC, and think they shoot themselves in the foot frequently (most recently with their changes to the ABS), but in this case I don't agree. I have been putting endorsements on my pups registrations for as long as I can remember, yet doodles and all the other crosses are comparatively recent thing.
Most breeders do not place endorsement as a blanket "never to be bred" from policy. I used to explain to people about the endorsement and say if they did feel they wanted to breed to get all necessary health tests done and if these had good results and the dog was of sufficient merit to breed from, then I would lift the endorsement.
Click to expand...

Tried that. They just get papers from elsewhere and use them. There are more tricks and dodges in dog breeding than you could possibly imagine and I think I've encountered most of them. Just take a closer look at a KC certified pedigree - "We cannot guarantee the veracity of this pedigree as it is compiled from information suppled by the breeder". or words to that effect!
 
Oh yes those who want to will always find a way round. I am pretty sure no one did that with my pups (kept in touch with most, and I did lift endorsements on one or two. However did have someone who used our dog at stud once, and must have copied details and signatures on to at least one other blank form as someone contacted us who believed they had bought a pup by our dog, but it was 12 months later! The KC needless to say weren't interested and wouldn't remove the registration from the second litter :(
 
By the way I agree that we shouldn't be using every puppy to breed from and that we should strive to create the healthiest dogs. But you have to admit that pedigree has not achieved that, in fact in many cases it has done quite the opposite and created dogs suitable for showing but that have serious health problems and conformation defects - not unlike the modern Falabella horse. I'm just not sure you can blame people for finding alternatives, even if they may be slightly misplaced. (for example, has anyone met a well behaved Labradoodle? Every one I've met has had their owner cooing "oh isn't he lovely" as he bowls over a small child!)
Obviously this isn't the only reason for these new crossbreeds, I was just musing and wondering what the KC and breeders could do to discourage this kind of breeding.
 
I'm not sure how it works in the UK but over here the entire litter can be signed off with the KC if the breeder decides none are suitable for breeding on. So the buyers of these puppies know that they will never get KC papers for any offspring their dog may produce years down the line. Our KC requires full breeding rights from both dam and sire to be able to register litters with them. What happens over here is some people still mate their dogs with another of the same breed and sell at a cheaper price because they cannot KC register them. They advertise them as purebred dogs, papers of parents can be seen, but pups have no papers. I see much more of this happening here than pups of designer matches.

I have breeding rights on my young bitch and my problem is finding a stud dog who is of a similar calibre to her who also has full breeding rights. I've found only one who is good enough in my mind and he's 2,500kms away so it looks like AI will be the way I go. KC allows AI over here.
 
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