I've just watched a programme about a woman in Canada that breeds red and apricot standard poodles.
She doesn't show she says she believes in 'home dogs' not 'show dogs', although she wanted recognition from the Poodle Club of Canada which she has got.

She owns three entire males which she uses with her many females, she has 16 dogs in total, she says this gives her a bigger genetic pool.

The dogs look very healthy and happy and she certainly has all of the kit and time when one of her bitches give birth, she seems to know what she is doing.

Question
Is she what would be deemed as a BYB over here?

No, she'd be a commercial breeder.

Did you notice where she said that MOST breeders don't use stud dogs any more they use AI at a veterinary surgery ..... she was being held up as a fabulous breeder .....

Umm worried about "ooh we don't lose to many pups".  If she didn't stick them in an incubator and let them spend the time with their mother would she lose even less??

Yesterday's was brilliant so was really looking forward to tonights, what a let down.  I suppose in Canada though due to the distance to travel many will do AI.

As I say yesterday's was brilliant.  It was all about a breeder of NSDTR's who worked them.  Really made me want to do more with my dogs.

AI is very big all round in the US and Canada.   They don't use the vet they all do it themselves.      I know about 15 of them that all do it.    It is creeping into the uk to I have heard. 

Could anyone tell me what channel this programme is on ?

Re the st poodle breeder, I guess it all depends on what her motives for breeding are - to continually improve her lines regarding health, temperament, confirmation etc or whether to gain financially ?
I think you can still be dedicated to your breed and breed purely for the love of the breed and to strive to strengthen your lines (on all aspects) even if you don't actively show but you would need a lot of guidance from someone who does. Not showing doesn't necessarily make you a byb. That said, I would expect such a person to at least go out to stud and use a successful show dog from healthy lines. The fact that she keeps her own does make me a bit suspicious as does the number of dogs she has ! I would also be interested to know how frequently she breeds.

Its on Sky Real Lives channel 243, Virgin 281. Not sure about times, possibly about 3.30?
It was interesting to see the Poodle lady vaccinate her pups before they went off with their new owners. The dogs all seemed well behaved & all piled into a car to go off for an ice cream!
The one earlier in the week about a chihuahua was odd. The owner thought that if her dog could make the grade in agility/obedience he would be highly thought of for a stud dog & the owner had visited another breeder & picked out a suitable wife. Mmmm, if only it were that simple.

Thanks for that, I will check it out, sounds interesting !

> No, she'd be a commercial breeder.

But surely a commercial breeder is just a 'glammed up' BYB?

I can see that there is a difference between the likes of this lady and somebody that just lets their bitch get mated with 'anything' to produce pups, but both are still just producing pups for sale.

>both are still just producing pups for sale.

Playing devil's advocate, so is everyone else who doesn't keep all the pups their bitch produces.

  hmmm!!

So do you think that what this woman does is acceptable?

I can understand why show breeders don't keep every pup, after all they're looking for that 'special' one, but this lady is not looking to produce show dogs although I would imagine that she feels she is producing good strong healthy dogs that are good examples of what she believes the standard should be.

>So do you think that what this woman does is acceptable?

No, because I don't think commercial breeding is acceptable per se. But that's just my personal opinion.

>good examples of what she believes the standard should be.

That says it all really, doesn't it? Not what the standard actually is, nor has her breeding stock assessed to make sure her judgment  of their merits isn't going astray.

> Playing devil's advocate, so is everyone else who doesn't keep all the pups their bitch produces.

but if I'm reading this correctly you're sort of implying that show breeders that don't keep all pups they produce are also 'just producing pups for sale'

> nor has her breeding stock assessed to make sure her judgment  of their merits isn't going astray.

I sort of got the impression that because the Poodle Club of Canada had recognised her it suggested that they deemed her dogs to be of good standard, if that is the case and the standard is good is it still unacceptable for her to breed?

>if I'm reading this correctly you're sort of implying that show breeders that don't keep all pups they produce are also 'just producing pups for sale'

No, what I'm saying is that as a rule show breeders have another aim - they want to improve their own lines, so they generally want to keep a puppy or two from the litter themselves; rather different to breeding a litter (or lots of litters) with the sole intention of selling them all.

>the Poodle Club of Canada had recognised her it suggested that they deemed her dogs to be of good standard,

No, I doubt if there's any connection between being acknowledged by a club and producing quality animals. There's certainly no such connection in this country; I don't know of anyone whose animals have been inspected to assure their membership.

She didn't even take her dogs to be viewed to the show where two people proposed her.  I think the one guy knew her but not sure that the other one did.

Didn't here anything about health tests and she mentioned that she wanted her dogs to live the natural way and to be gundogs, but I didn't even see one step a paw into the lake she had, nor see any working.  The NSDTR one was much better.

> I sort of got the impression that because the Poodle Club of Canada had recognised her it suggested that they deemed her dogs to be of good standard, if that is the case and the standard is good is it still unacceptable for her to breed?

In fairness, surely the Poodle Club of Canada hadn't 'recognised' her though, as such - just accepted her as a member when nominated by two members. Most breed clubs here require far less of their members, in my breed at least.

That said, although I also don't agree with commercial breeding, there wasn't much else in that programme that I could complain about and Joe Public would no doubt think it all fabulous and would strengthen the argument that show breeders do things wrong and 'pet' breeders do it right. Fabulous temperaments from what we saw and well reared puppies.

Difficult to say what I thought of it really, given that commercial breeding so much more mainstream in the US (or that's my perception), so wouldn't be the stigma that we'd attach here.

I shall try and find other programmes in the series to watch.

M

My Hubby had a quick look at her site and he is not really that clued up he said it was a puppy shop.

I think if I am right the Canadian club accepts you as a probabtionary member. I joined and I sure that is what they did although it was a while back.. someone else may know.