Drago vom Patriot - Page 7

OK... in acceptance of an offline request I shall state my observation again:

It is important for people to distinguish between Breeding Criteria and IPO Sport scoring criteria... especially at the highest levels of the sport.

Today's high level IPO sport demands a level of precision and compliance on the part of a dog that did not exist maybe 10-15-20 years ago. As a result the scores achieved at the highest level of the sport increasingly reflect a greater contribution coming from the skill of the handler.... Sure every top scoring dog at the highest arenas of IPO sport are very very good ... they have to be to get to that point.... but not every top score is entirely representative of the dogs own contribution to that achievement.

Now when selecting a breeding prospect, in addition to criteria of anatomy etc, the search is also on for certain characteristics such as dominance, power, aggression and threat confrontation with confidence and fearlessness. Now dogs that usually possess these sought after characteristics are often harder to train to the levels of precision and compliance demanded in today's high level IPO arena. So they tend to score a little lower overall.

Now say 10-15 years ago when the same level of precision and control was not expected then the top scoring dogs in high-level IPO were indeed also the dogs that were sought after as the breeding prospect. This has resulted in the less informed spectator coming to believe that the top scores are indeed reflective of the best breeding prospect... this assumption is flawed when taken by itself in isolation.

Now there are those rare dogs who in addition to scoring at the top level also possess in abundance those qualities sought by breeders... but for the large part these dogs are the canine equivalent of the equine Holy Grail of the Triple Crown winner (though fortunately the canine examples are somewhat more common in my opinion).

It should also be remembered that it costs about $30,000/- or more to train, title and show a dog at the highest levels of the sport... and it costs even more to win. Few handlers command those kind of resources and hence many a good dog may never get to be shown at the highest levels of the sport.

Therefore many discerning breeders make their breeding choices based upon personal observation of the prospects at the training field which in my opinion allows better assessments of breeding worth divorced from the hype and hoopla of high level performance.

Therefore many discerning breeders make their breeding choices based upon personal observation of the prospects at the training field which in my opinion allows better assessments of breeding worth divorced from the hype and hoopla of high level performance.  

So...then why bother to title dogs, if a "discerning" breeder makes his choice by observing the most worthy dogs while on the training field and if admittedly, the dogs that make it to the podium are not the best breeding prospects?

Not that I am arguing with this because I have preached the same thing here many times and I stated that titles do not get passed on in a breeding. I have forever believed that the dogs that cannot be titled make the best breeding prospects.

You are crazy, Hired!

The dogs you like ( and I like them, too, as you know ) are NOT the "best breeding prospects" for the breed as a whole.
Titling is important, because people who are forced to title their dogs ARE FORCED TO TRAIN.
Humans are lazy, no breeding rules = no titling = no training - without training no evaluation.

Susie, I could be crazy or just a genius when it comes to some things, but, if I need to "force" someone to train, its not worth it. One of my friends just did a breeding in Belgium, Malinois, with a male that will NEVER be titled, but, my God what dog.

"My God what a dog" - this does tell me that you SAW THIS DOG EITHER IN TRAINING OR AT WORK...
I really don´t know how often I wrote this sentence: It´s not about titling, it´s about training...

Better then that Susie, I had the "misfortune" of taking a few bites off this dog. Training we can do all day long, the titling part, you can have.

Love it, sorry...

No, its fine, humor is good for the soul!  

People need to take the entire post that I wrote when discussing this.... example the act of titling a dog is an important part of breeding suitability evaluation... BUT IT IS ONLY A PART... NOT THE WHOLE!.... so also with score evaluations and so on and so on..... By keeping a proper perspective of all these varied parts a sum total of the whole picture of a breeding prospect can be assembled.... but of this picture the most valuable in my opinion is the ability of the breeder to evaluate his/her breeding prospect on its own turf, the training field.... this is where you get to see the dog in its jammies so to speak without the pimping and polishing that goes into showing on the Friday Happy hour social....