The Challenge of Rescue

I have been studying dogs now for fourteen years.

I started my observations with a background in behavioral ecology, which has given me a different persepctive to dog ownership than most pet owners, though I was what I would consider a callow novice at the beginning of my study.

Most recently, I had the astonishingly deep and almost spiritual experience of bringing a planned litter of puppies to fruition with my mated pair (yes, in my observations I have found that some dogs, particularly more primitive breed dogs, can pair bond), Yasna a Karelian Bear Dog and Goober, an Australian Cattle dog.

Why did I do this breeding - when the world is chock full of rescue dogs?

First and foremost, because the world needs strong, intelligent, stable dogs. The smartest male of the litter - though he's been a challenging dog to manage because of his athleticism and determination - now has a versatile force fetch and can accomplish such tasks as turning on and off a faucet for his owner, who is dedicatedly training him to be a service dog. Bless them, the hardest puppies often turn out to be brilliantly capable working dogs and they have worked harder than any novice owner I've ever encountered.

All of the puppies from that breeding were stellar. I raised them all to 10+ weeks in the familial pack environment. I chose to use the parents that I both own because inbreeding depression is so severe in purebred dogs that I am an enormous advocate for deliberate crossbreeding projects. Both parents are stable, intelligent, kind, and controlled working dogs who prove their merit daily. All of the dogs involved love children, none have obsessions or untoward aggression, and all are shining examples of good canine citizens.

I did this because the future of good dogs requires good dogs to be created - and good dogs come from good dogs.

It is a crying shame that the creation of dogs has been villanized as a practice wholesale, rather than the nuanced assessment of selection criterion that shoud be the norm.

Plenty of monsters are bred, I won't deny that. Largely because of terrible criterion for breeding, hinging on money or accolades in abstract competitions.

My criterion for breeding a dog is first that they pose no threat to human beings under normal, competent handling. Their responsiveness and trainability is paramount. Their physical soundness is critical. A solid temperament, genetic diversity - you know, all the things that aren't even thought about in most breedings.

Most of the dogs who would make excellent breeding prospects are owned by people who very diligently and out of thebest intentions, remove them from the population by sterilizing them.

So we are left with random bred dogs, poorly bred dogs, or a tiny niche number ofwell bred, planned dogs. Of those three categories, the last typically do not end up in shelters and rescue.

This means that most families are pulling dogs from an inherently risky population.

Rescues typically do a decent job of separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of adoptable dogs but shelters reallycan't in most cases.

Owners must be cognizant and honest with themselves about the tradeoffs inherent in this system. It's a very rare gem that is a $25 shelter dog who doesn't need significant remedial investment in effort after adoption.

I'm not here to discourage rescue or shelter adoption, I'm just here to tell people to be realistic.

There's typically an inverse relationship between initial cost and overall effort with dogs.

Be willing to do the work.