@tanza:
My dogs are not in the house 22/7 nor are my litters raised in a kennel… nor are any of them crated during the day and they are not in wire runs or raised on concrete runs/pea gravel.... so before you throw out comments that indicate that is how I breed/raise puppies, best you find the facts.
Really? You mean the way you keep throwing out crappy comments about Sarah? You mean you don't like it when people who don't know you and have never seen your home make wild speculations about how you might keep your dogs? Huh. Imagine that.
But then I am lucky that I can set up my home in a manner that does not include kennel runs or having to keep them in crates when we are at work…. nor do I want to. I only breed when I am going to keep a puppy in 99% of the cases... and they all live as family pets first, in the house with their humans.
That's not "luck", that's a choice. Sarah works at home running a small, beautiful, biodiverse, homestead-type farm, specifically for genetic preservation of critically endangered domestic animals. She spends all day with her animals, while you are at work. Your dogs are a hobby when you have spare time for them. Hers are an integral part of her life.
What you do with your dogs is fine, I'm not knocking it for you and your puppy buyers. There is room for everyone and I firmly believe people should have a world of choice in dogs. But you're acting like your super-privileged Western life, where your few dogs exist as ornaments around your hobby-time schedule is the only humane, or even desirable option. And that you "only breed for yourself" is… what, supposed to be... admirable? So what? We have retailers posing as "rescue" groups importing puppies from second- and third-world nations, more than a quarter million a year at the CDC's last reporting, to fill the demand for pet dogs in this country. Why is it admirable that you hoard your dogs' genetics?
And seriously? I am Bottlenecking the gene pool? How do you figure that? If you research their pedigrees, their breedings are to the same dogs over and over and crossed back on the same lines over and over. They breed at least 2 to 3 litters a year… how is that not "for profit"?
Seriously. You are advocating removing healthy animals from your gene pool for reasons that are absolutely not genetically-linked. You also advocate removing sound animals from your gene pool because they're not the preferred color, even though they are authentic to the actual Congolese dogs and the standard does not prohibit them. That is an absolutely arbitrary choking of your available genetic material, and not wise.
Why not repeat successful breedings? What's wrong with reproducing lovely dogs? What's wrong with line-breeding to strengthen desired traits? Do you think African village dogs had semen flown in from other villages so they could be outcrossed to a dozen different lines? Her dogs are structurally correct, healthy, brainy, drivey, and beautifully socialized. They are great pets.
Do the math, tanza. If it costs you $900 per puppy to raise a puppy, and you sell your puppies for an average of $900, it doesn't matter whether you sell one puppy or ten thousand, you'll still be breaking even. And there you go with another arbitrary standard. Is three litters of papillons with three puppies each, more, or less scumbaggy than one litter of GSDs of fifteen pups?
And anyway, WHO CARES if anyone breeds "for profit"? What's wrong with a skilled practitioner getting paid for fine work? I would MUCH rather see someone turning a profit and be able to reserve money for emergencies and be able to continually reinvest in and improve their program, than see someone living like a martyr, constantly in the red, and sometimes having to cut corners to keep everyone fed. That "professionalism is a dirty word" mantra does NOTHING but feed the anti-dog-breeder rhetoric of the radical animal abolitionists who think you are ALL scum for exploiting your dogs.
I think it is great that they at least DNA test for Fanconi… but what about other testing, take out hips... what about DNA testing for PRA? PRA is long known as a late onset problem in our breed that causes late onset blindness? And Thyroid issues has long been know also as a problem in Basenjis? "IF" there was a DNA test for hips, would you then say it should be done?
WHEN there is a direct DNA test reasonably available, sure, though at the tiny percentage in which it exists in Basenjis, I still wouldn't call someone a scumbag for choosing not to, if in thirty years they'd never had a single complaint about hips. Her older dogs have all been screened for PRA, and none were affected. Considering that "late onset blindness", according to the BTCA is: "…if the dog lives long enough, ... can lead to blindness." and "most changes were characterized as PRA suspicious rather than PRA affected. Not all of those dogs have hereditary eye disease, as retinal changes may be acquired or may be due to other disorders."
"It is not currently known if Basenji PRA is one disease or more than one. Mode of inheritance is presently unknown."
"Basenjis can also have some unusual, but benign, forms of retinal pigmentation that can easily be confused with PRA or retinal degeneration. Both false positives and false negatives are common with Basenji PRA." Early onset symptoms are classified as either "rare" or "extremely rare" by the BTCA.
Got that? From the BTCA's website, you MIGHT see daytime affected symptoms IF THE DOG LIVES LONG ENOUGH. But there's currently no way to know if it's one of several types of PRA or maybe just normal retinal aging that all dogs everywhere experience. This is ANOTHER issue that you are blowing way out of proportion. You have no idea how many forms of PRA exist, or even if all the cases of extremely elderly dogs that have night blindness are "PRA", and false positives and negatives are common. Why EVER would you skewer someone for choosing to wait for further developments before using such a tool as a basis for culling their breeding program?
The intergrity of my gene pool is not in question… and I don't breed year after year after year. Has nothing to do with hatred of anyone it has to do with the breed and improving the breed, not just breeding to sell puppies.
AGAIN, what is wrong with "selling puppies", if those puppies are structurally correct, healthy, happy, typey, well-socialized animals? Should people not be able to buy puppies except scrambling for your precious few hobby cast-offs, once a decade, for which they will have to take time off work and an airplane ride?
And AGAIN with the self-aggrandizing. Improve the breed, huh? You are already selecting against traits exhibited by the Congolese dogs. How ever did they survive for 13,000+ years without you?
By the way, this is not just a post about this particular kennel and their breeding practices, but it is a post to any/all kennels that breed in this manner. Has nothing to do with what are being charged for a puppy… there are any number of kennels that are not responsible IMO that charge way more then I do for my puppies... and please take into account the area of the country before claiming that our puppy price is outrageous... things are way more expensive on the West Coast compaired to NC... so I don't just look at the price... has way more to do with it than price.
I didn't claim that your prices are "outrageous". I just said they're higher than what a lot of people would be able to pay for a family pet. Which is, of course, fine, since I'm pro-choice like that, but your bizarro contention that her charging less for her dogs means she's a profiteer (about the most bizarre backward logic I've seen yet) was very strange. If people want a good family pet, and don't want to pay for the overhead of costly dog hobby stuff and all the over-screening you do, they should know that there are plenty of choices out there for breeders who won't charge a full month's wages to support your occasional dabbling in hobby breeding. Sarah's been breeding great family pets for several decades, and has it down to an art and science. Her dogs are delightful. She's a pro.
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