Is breeding for mental traits better than breeding only for physical?
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More so, to some!! As a strictly pet poodle owner (not a dog show person) temperament/mental quality is much more important to me than physical traits (although my girl is calm, sweet, smart AND beautiful! Can't beat a combination like that!) :lol:
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Could not agree more. Hopefully most breeders are doing it with both aspects in mind, but with all the pressure to have the perfect dog conformationally, I think a lot of times the disposition and sound mental qualities are forgotten along the way. Perfect head, perfect angulation, perfect chest, perfect feet, perfect ear set, perfect colour, perfect chest, perfect topline, perfect tail set....to me none of it matters a bit if the dog behaves like the tasmanian devil. For me, temperament and fabulous health are the priorities, and I have happened to be blessed with great looking dogs in the process. I know what I need to do to assure the conformation continually improves, but without health and temperament, what would be the point?
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Once again I have to say that I couldn't agree with you more. Temperament and health are the most important things (Nobody should have to undergo the heartbreak of losing a pet before they live to a ripe old age)! Beauty is wonderful but not at the expense of the other things.
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I think this sounds like an excuse to breed an ugly dog!
My Sabrina is a cute, stylish, typey breed Champion yet she got her Open Obedience title with all 1st place finishes (scores in the mid 190s). Given her work ethic, I truly believe that she would have been an OTCH dog if she had lived with someone else.
You have to balance the whole picture... don't breed an ugly, poorly put together dog just because they have a UD and don't breed a psycho, nut job just because they have a pretty head.
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I think what the author is saying is that you can't have it all. You have to give up a quality in something in order to have what's most important to you. Being that there is no perfect dog out there no matter how hard people try to make one.
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I disagree w/ it completely. They aren't "incompatable." I've met show dogs that have good temperments. It may be harder to produce the total package, but who said breeding is supposed to be easy? Conformation isn't just about pretty show dogs, it's about preserving the breed. And a poorly put together dog w/ bad movement is probably more likely to have orthepedic problems. Honestly that sounds like a statement made by someone who is making excuses for not showing themselves or is alltogether anti-breeding/anti-purebred.
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Did you get it from this? URL http://www.poodlehistory.org/PSHOW.HTM
"For a coherent (very rare: many otherwise lucid people are rendered incohate by the subject!) criticism of breeding dogs "for" conformation exhibition, see: Konrad Lorenz, Man Meets Dog (NY: Kodansha, 1994; first published in German in 1953, first American edition 1955), ch. 9, pp. 92-98, "An Appeal to Dog Breeders" which develops the thesis that it "is a sad but undeniable fact that breeding to a strict standard of physical points is incompatible with breeding for mental qualities..." After dryly observing that he doesn't know a single intellectual man who looks like Adonis, the author states that it is possible for breeders to compromise in choice of physical and mental properties, but conformation competition inevitably involves the danger of exaggeration "of all those points which characterize a breed...." a statement with which Poodle-fanciers must fervently agree. While you have this wonderful book in your hands, see pp. 141-3 for references to the Poodle, "rightly famed for his sagacity" and "extraordinary 'humanness.'"
"For a coherent (very rare: many otherwise lucid people are rendered incohate by the subject!) criticism of breeding dogs "for" conformation exhibition, see: Konrad Lorenz, Man Meets Dog (NY: Kodansha, 1994; first published in German in 1953, first American edition 1955), ch. 9, pp. 92-98, "An Appeal to Dog Breeders" which develops the thesis that it "is a sad but undeniable fact that breeding to a strict standard of physical points is incompatible with breeding for mental qualities..." After dryly observing that he doesn't know a single intellectual man who looks like Adonis, the author states that it is possible for breeders to compromise in choice of physical and mental properties, but conformation competition inevitably involves the danger of exaggeration "of all those points which characterize a breed...." a statement with which Poodle-fanciers must fervently agree. While you have this wonderful book in your hands, see pp. 141-3 for references to the Poodle, "rightly famed for his sagacity" and "extraordinary 'humanness.'"
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As it states in Breed type "Unfortunately, type and (especially) style are vulnerable to fashion." Take a look at the poodle on the front cover of Poodle Variety's Stud issue. It has NO front!!! This is a very unstructurely sound dog, it would have problems with weaving polls because it has no chest.
Also stated in this article; "...these days, many Poodles which are successful in the breed ring do not adhere to the breed standard in a matter essential to soundness: they are "too straight in front"; judges' eyes have become so acclimatized to this great fault that it has become part of the style they're looking for." This is a shame that we have made an unstructurely sound dog just to get the "poodle-ly" quality.
Also stated in this article; "...these days, many Poodles which are successful in the breed ring do not adhere to the breed standard in a matter essential to soundness: they are "too straight in front"; judges' eyes have become so acclimatized to this great fault that it has become part of the style they're looking for." This is a shame that we have made an unstructurely sound dog just to get the "poodle-ly" quality.
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I got it from here. http://www.stonedance.ca/images/Showdogs-.pdf
I felt like this was a well thought out informative article. That part just stood out to me and I wanted to see what others thought about it.
I felt like this was a well thought out informative article. That part just stood out to me and I wanted to see what others thought about it.
I have to say that it is possible absolutely 
!!!
I have met Ch poodles that were "complete package" 100 % !!!! And I think that they were than even superior in temperament to a "regular great temperament poodle" since their life was not actually easy - show dogs have to put up with a LOT on the road and during endless grooming sessions and also sometimes living with handlers and sometime different handlers and so on.
When I see retired Ch with fantastic temperament I have than special admiration for that dog !!!
Unfortunately - some breeders really do get "star-struck" and put temperament in the second plane, BUT, it always hunts them back at the end and they HAVE to take care of it or they would end up with pretty dog that is impossible to show due to major temperamental flows !!!! There is nothing worse for a breeder than investing huge amount of money into a puppy that acts crazy in the ring :fish: or is terribly shy or aggressive , and than even if finished nobody wants to breed to that dog !
So, at the end, it does balance itself out , I think....
I can speak only from my personal experience, of course ...
!!!I have met Ch poodles that were "complete package" 100 % !!!! And I think that they were than even superior in temperament to a "regular great temperament poodle" since their life was not actually easy - show dogs have to put up with a LOT on the road and during endless grooming sessions and also sometimes living with handlers and sometime different handlers and so on.
When I see retired Ch with fantastic temperament I have than special admiration for that dog !!!
Unfortunately - some breeders really do get "star-struck" and put temperament in the second plane, BUT, it always hunts them back at the end and they HAVE to take care of it or they would end up with pretty dog that is impossible to show due to major temperamental flows !!!! There is nothing worse for a breeder than investing huge amount of money into a puppy that acts crazy in the ring :fish: or is terribly shy or aggressive , and than even if finished nobody wants to breed to that dog !
So, at the end, it does balance itself out , I think....
I can speak only from my personal experience, of course ...
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Temerament
YES!!I feel personally temperament is one of the MOST important,along with Health and Conformation. What good is the most beautiful correct dog in the world when it is a nightmare to live with. All 3 components go together,for when you loose one you loose the soundness of your dog. Moxie
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I agree 100 % stars. Show folks do follow trends they tend to breed to what is "Winning", which is a shame it truly is.. I try to breed for the total dog Health, Temperment conformation and color in that order.... As most dogs DO go into pet homes and very few are being shown, this is just the law of averages... Health Temperment and are of the utmost importance and breeding sound dogs is a given....So stars is correct when the ring is full of incorrect dogs and the judges are NOT breeder judges and have no idea what they are looking at. So they put up who is behind the lead .. IMHO.. That is
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The truly bad part of it all is that they win because the judges follow trends. So if it's the trend to have the perfect head and crappy front, that's what the breeders will follow to win. Some where along the way it became about winning instead of having a quality working poodle.I agree 100 % stars. Show folks do follow trends they tend to breed to what is "Winning", which is a shame it truly is.. I try to breed for the total dog Health, Temperment conformation and color in that order.... As most dogs DO go into pet homes and very few are being shown, this is just the law of averages... Health Temperment and are of the utmost importance and breeding sound dogs is a given....So stars is correct when the ring is full of incorrect dogs and the judges are NOT breeder judges and have no idea what they are looking at. So they put up who is behind the lead .. IMHO.. That is
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Absolutely. And so it goes. Someone that knows structure and the correct conformation of a dog is who you want to mentor with Kpoos...
I personally saw the Irish Setter undergo a transformation right before my eyes , Ending up with with a very long giraffe neck and over extended (angulated if you will ) rear. the irish setter now has cottony coat with a silvery head and has to be hand stripped much like a cocker spaniel... All due to a trend. They have lost sight of a very important thing. The hunting dog aspect. Are we doing the same in poodles? I personally like a solid dog with no extremes.. So I guess that I am an exception to that rule... I like a good solid working dog that can go all day, and do what it was bred to do .. I liked it in Setters and would not compromise , and I like it in poodles and as before I will not compromise...
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Well, for one thing a poodle would sink like a weight to the bottom of a lake if it went into water in show coat. That hair would weigh it down and it wouldn't be able to swim. If you've read that article that Roxy posted about poodles' structure in agility (it basically compares to a border collie's structure) you can see that the dog that would be best in the show ring in a pretty coat is the worst dog for the agility ring and if I can remember correctly, it couldn't even swim. The dog that looks like it wouldn't win squat in a conformation ring is as fast and agile as the border collie in agility. The ideal is the overall dog but I am not sure that's always what's important to everyone. I can't lump everyone in the same catagory because some really do want that but often times it's about winning so breeds are changed so drastically for that. The border collie is a good example.
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Well, us humans, and what WE find appealing or attractive can screw things up really bad. If you watch that BBC show about UKKC breed standards and what it is doing to breeds, it is so clear that WE are monkeying around making the breeds what WE want them to be, not taking into mind what it may do the the dogs over time. GSDs tend to walk to their pasterns rather than their feet, their skeleton is so different that now it has that stretched out look like you see when they are stacked in the ring. Short nosed breeds like Pugs and Bostons have many more breathing disorders than they used to. The photos they show in the series of dogs from the 1930`s, who were meeting the breed standarrds then, do not look at all like their successors. Almost every litter of Bulldogs has to be whelped by caesarean section and that was not always the case because their look has been altered and their heads are too big for their mothers to birth them freely.. They have been breeding Cavalier King Charles Spaniels for narrower skulls, and now they have an inherent disorder in some bloodlines where the brain is too large for the skulls, causing agony and repeptitive behaviours like running in circles or chewing their feet incessantly. This is all the fault of human beings and what they want to see these breeds look like. In the United Kingdom, the experts are saying if the kennel club and breed clubs don`t change the breed standards, purebred dogs aare going to become extinct. I think it is a pity and crime and it is all the fault of human beings and what they perceive as appealing.
We do the same thing to human females. In the 50`s, voluptuous women were the norm....Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, Susan Hayward were all buxom and beautiful, but now if you are 5`10 and weight 130 pounds (gasp!!!) you are considered FAT!!! We have a new generation of teen and pre-teen girls with eating disorders, trying to whiddle their waistlines to meet the standards the magazines are saying is perfection in the female form.
Most of the Standard Poodles I see today don`t look a lot like the Standard Poodles of yesteryear. Their muzzles are shorter, they are broader skulled and heavier across the cheek bones. They are tiny compared to the Spoos of the 60`s AND 70`S, likely to make them more appealing to apartment dwellers and seniors, who would find the smaller size easier to handle. (There have been many posts on here from newbies whose adult Standards are about 18`inches tall). The Spoos I grew up with were about 24 inches at the shoulder and had a different loook about them.
Sorry for the tirade, but it really upsets me when I see some of this stuff. If Bulldogs were MEANT to be delivered by C-section, they would have been extinct long ago. But because medical intervention is easily accessed now, and it is what WE want, it seems its okay. GRRRRRR!!!!
We do the same thing to human females. In the 50`s, voluptuous women were the norm....Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, Susan Hayward were all buxom and beautiful, but now if you are 5`10 and weight 130 pounds (gasp!!!) you are considered FAT!!! We have a new generation of teen and pre-teen girls with eating disorders, trying to whiddle their waistlines to meet the standards the magazines are saying is perfection in the female form.
Most of the Standard Poodles I see today don`t look a lot like the Standard Poodles of yesteryear. Their muzzles are shorter, they are broader skulled and heavier across the cheek bones. They are tiny compared to the Spoos of the 60`s AND 70`S, likely to make them more appealing to apartment dwellers and seniors, who would find the smaller size easier to handle. (There have been many posts on here from newbies whose adult Standards are about 18`inches tall). The Spoos I grew up with were about 24 inches at the shoulder and had a different loook about them.
Sorry for the tirade, but it really upsets me when I see some of this stuff. If Bulldogs were MEANT to be delivered by C-section, they would have been extinct long ago. But because medical intervention is easily accessed now, and it is what WE want, it seems its okay. GRRRRRR!!!!
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Not in my yard we arent.. Pretty broad there Arreau ...So again I say someone that KNOWS structure is who you mentor with .. Period. I was lucky enough to mentor with some of the top AKC judges in the country . They taught me movement they taught me balance and structure. Learn your standard Read your standard adhere to the standard and do the right thing..
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All in one or nothing ..
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