This article first appeared in the AKC Gazette.
Written by Marianne Sullivan
An oft heard adage starting out in Collies is “find the best bitch money can buy.” More advice follows when there’s a litter—choose a bitch. This dictum is applied to novice or the established equally. In fact, I know only one contemporary small kennel breeder who liked the boys and the majority in her kennel were boys.
Decades ago large kennels often kept as many males as females, so there were lots of stud dogs in the family to choose from. One top kennel in its hay day would have three or four nationally recognized dogs. While visiting once, a person called and asked the owner if, after evaluating her bitch, would they pick a stud dog for her? Now we are lucky if a kennel has even one.
Have you had trouble finding a mate for your girl? You are not alone. Twenty years ago I bred to dogs who left few sons to carry on (in our geographic area) and some of these same breeders went out of dogs entirely. In our Mid Atlantic area the number of breeders has dwindled significantly, never mind keep a stud dog. Making your dog available to others takes time and effort. Other reasons for the dearth of stud dogs could be fertility, health issues, nothing as good as the sire, or just a pain to manage. Or they kept a girl.
One clue to this problem is at the dog shows. More bitches are shown than dogs, we know this from the AKC point scale. And if you ask people they’ll tell you that the quality in bitches is much deeper than it is in dogs. Entries of dogs versus bitches has always been lower in the classes and also typically in the specials class.
How often have you heard or commented that you wished you could breed your bitch to another bitch? How often at a show have you found the bitches to be so much better? It might be worthwhile to speculate as to why that is.
In choosing a stud dog we look at the individual, the pedigree, the offspring, the temperament and health and the family to see if it matches our criteria. With most hobby breeders/exhibitors it’s more cost effective and easier to shop for a stud dog rather than keep one. But that pool is shrinking, one by one we eliminate prospects and the choices narrow. It’s not to say there aren’t nice dogs, there are, but you get into the dilemma of everyone breeding to a shrinking gene pool.
In “the old days” I would make a list of dogs I was interested in and have a pro and con column for each one. Lists that included five or six now have one or two. Is it really that bad? Am I harder to please or is there a problem here? Are there so few good stud dogs out there? What really is the question or the problem? And the elephant in the room is when you do find a dog, the first question is “Is he fertile?”
Do we have nice males in the litter and not keep them, harking back to that early advice to keep the girls? It might take the boys longer to mature and we don’t want to wait. To keep a male is work, there’s testing, screening, breeding; all big responsibilities. If we have a nice male it’s important to show or advertise for people to see and keep him in mind. Out of sight is often out of mind. Another bias to fight is automatically going to the familiar kennels and names. What does Joe Famous Kennel have? There might be a pretty dog out there we never considered from someone who does not promote. People want to see offspring, too. If you have ever been the owner of a beautiful bitch and asked yourself, “Now who do I take her to?” you know the struggle is real.
