Quote:
Originally Posted by diane boden  First sorry if this turns out to be a long post.
After years of being out of the ring I'm now comfortable enough [financially] to be ready to return to my favorite hobby. My dilema is choosing which of two breeders to approach for mu future show/brood, as it would be neccessary for her to be a nice duel purpose bitch.
Breeder 1 has bred champions and has very pretty dogs, but has not shown for many years though still breeds to the standard and is whom I got my very first show girl off. He's recently introduced new blood into his line which has improved for me the coat quality on his line, but not the ears which are a little large, something I noticed on the line he introduced.
Breeder 2 is still very much in the showring, has produced many champions but of course like most lines has the odd fault, personally I think they tend to lighten too quickly .
I've owned dogs from both lines previously and used studs. I'm in the uk so I'm aware things are done a little differently over here as we dont tend to have mentors though both breeders were happy to give me advice in the past, so we tend to take on potentials as pups and see how it goes. Just wondered what you guys would do. |
I wasn't going to respond to this post b/c you are in the UK. But you asked what people would do as you wondered. There's no harm in answering you based on this preface. You just want an opinion, right?
It sounds like you are trying to decide which breeder to pick from based on the following:
1) Not in ring recently but nice line. You like smaller ears. Has better color than the other breeder.
2) Doing well in the ring now. Has a tendency to loose color early or may not have great color in line that is causing this.
You are trying to choose who to get your next bitch from b/c you want to show her as a foundation bitch.
You don't like big ears (who does?) but if you're looking for a foundation bitch what is the most important thing to you? You go down the list. How important are those ears? Lets see, ears over coat? That's a no brainer for me. I can't tell someone else what to do w/o seeing a bitch. You can breed bad ears out quicker than color/quality of coat in. Good coat quality is one of the most important aspects of the breed.
It's ok that breeder one isn't showing much these days. You will finish her or hire a handler.
You are asking about preferences. Everyone has theirs. I prefer small ears too. Just hope you don't get some really big Dumbo ears in your line. It can happen. You may be the lucky one. But never pick small ears over quality of coat, no matter how hard it is. Do you know how may great ones have big ears? Many of them do.