My husband and I are ready to put together the pieces we've been building seperately over the years. Its been a slow process with no clear focus until now. Its hard to say why we've chosen yorkies... When I lived with my parents we had a tiny yorkie girl that was such a joy. My grandmother (who raised me) has always had such a love for yorkies and passed that on to me. In my last marriage I had large dogs (Weimaraners)... when my husband and I decided to go ahead and pursue breeding/showing the discussion kept leading us to yorkies, it just feels right... almost like its what we're supposed to do.
Neither of us have ever bred dogs before. We've both wanted to and been very interested in genetics and standards. He is an engineer and is wired to want to understand and perfect something. We dont want to breed for money but more for... this is hard to put into words... but for a goal. Each time we breed it should be for a goal of improving. We know it takes many years of experience and perfecting but we want to create champions.
I've always tended to be very critical of breeders because the majority of breeders out there are doing it for the wrong reasons. I have to bite my tongue around family and friends that want to breed their family dog to "see her puppies" and "show the kids how puppies grow" and "because she deserves it" when that family dog has skin problems or eye problems or temperament problems. I dont understand how people can be so... well, you guys know what I'm saying. Why are people like that? Dont they understand what they're doing? I'm guessing they DONT understand because their intenetions are not bad. Its very frustrating to me. In the end I know that its not BREEDING thats bad - breeding can be just as GOOD as it is BAD when done the right way. I'm not doing a bad thing if I'm breeding for the right reasons and in the right ways. The right reason is to improve the breed by conforming to standard - the right way is by making educated decisions in our breeding program.
The pieces we have right now:
-a personal desire to hold myself to a high standard when it comes to the care of my dogs and the outcomes of my breeding program.
-I've worked in animal hospitals and managed a pet store. This brings a bank of knowledge on the medical and routine care of animals along with experience with all ages of dogs and pregnant mothers and what can go wrong.
-My uncle has been breeding and showing champion dogs for decades.
-Made a website for a breeder that is heavily interested in genetics, I learned a lot from her labradoodle program.
-Ashley, the yorkie family dog
-countless books and websites that we've been pouring over that relate to standard, genetics, puppies, whelping, pregnancy...
-rescue involvement (weimaraner and springer spaniel).
-and now this forum, a wealth of information on all subjects specific to the Yorkie.
The next step is to make contacts and visit with and speak to people. We've got a lists of dates for shows we're going to go to and we're going to start visiting breeders. The visiting part is probably just going to fire us up even more. Pull out the local paper and there are TONS of yorkies for sale... I can only imagine what people are breeding because "Fifi deserves to have puppies and I want the kids to see the birth".
A take home message from a statistics class years ago... the best way to minimize "error" is to have the most reliable "measurement". By joining this forum and making reliable contacts we stand to minimize the mistakes we make over the process. We want to learn and are open to any and all suggestions!
Here is a big thank you ahead of time for everyone that helps us along the way.
~Angela |