I've had dogs since I was too young to remember. Back in the '70's and '80's my brother and I would have 15 or 20 any given time, mostly foxhounds but also a few coonhounds and beagles. Got older and got into retrievers. Now I'm down to 3, two housedogs, Papillons, and one working dog, Chesapeak, said retriever boarded with my son at the moment (who was a military dog handler for ten years and keeps him tuned up for me.) A couple of views I have on this business of dogs....stay away from high-energy bird-dog breeds and such if you want a house pet unless you have the time and energy work with them DAILY. Stay away from hounds . Hounds aren't bred to be pliable. They're bred to work largely independently and on instinct. To train a dog you have to be smarter than the dog. A lot of people can train labs, and goldens, not so many Chessies . . Stay away from popular breeds unless you're willing to really do your homework and learn a bit about the breed and the breeders. A breed gets popular and every quick buck artist with a backyard starts cranking out puppies and foolish people start buying them with the idea that one "purebred dog" is as good as another. I want a breeder who is active in the breed, be it hunt tests, obedience trials, whatever. I want to see a wall covered with ribbons. To me, somebody who can only talk about a litter's ancestry and nothing else is a backyard breeder, not a professional. Right now, I would estimate, not one "breeder" in twenty that is selling labs or golden retrievers is any good. I want to know how many times that bitch has been bred to that dog and what the results were of THAT PARTICULAR CROSS. You can take a bitch with a 4 generation pedigree showing nothing but champions of one kind or another and breed her to a dog with a similar pedigree and for reasons of genetics or whatever it might be the worse damn cross ever. Get a breed that has been developed to do what you want the dog to do. If you want a retriever, get a retriever. If you want to hunt coons, get a coonhound. If you want a housepet, get a housepet breed. Also, learn a little bit about the breed standard and get a puppy from a cross that produces dogs that conform to the breed standard. That's not some kind of hoity-toity thing for dog show people. There are reasons those standards were developed. Dogs that deviate too far from them are more likely to have orthopedic problems and other health issues that tag along with poor genetics. I cringe when I hear people talk about their "hundred-pound lab" or their "95 pound German Shepherd." Those are just disasters waiting to happen. A friend had just gotten a Golden Retriever puppy. He was telling me, "The breeder said he should hit 100 pounds." That should be eough to make someone turn around and run, when the so-called "breeder" is predicting his puppies will run a third heavier than they're supposed to. Enough of my rant...didn't mean to get so wound up, but it's late and I'm old and crotchety...and I get sick and tired of all the nonsense you hear about dogs...this is the United States of America. Everybody and their cousin Elrod is a dog expert. Good night.
