How & When do you evaluate your litter?

[Janice McGerr]

Next step.

We have picked the stud dog.

After a what seams a very long 60 days or so.

You have done many readings on temperature. Stayed up all night thinking this is the night and she does nothing until you have crashed on the sofa (meaning of bitch).:eek:

You have made every pup fell they are God :D, now all this time you are watching personalities, temperaments, and teaching them to stand so you can do your evaluation when the time comes.

When do you do the evaluation and what do you look for?

[Minka]

Janice - your supposed to list your methedology as well

[Janice McGerr]

I like watching them from the get go, who is the most out going, driven and how they move.

Just for those of you that want to know I end up picking the one I think I can finish and future breeding stock, not the one I think is the best show dog! I do not have the funds or time for the best show machine and I like to give them a chance and it is not with me. I end up with the beautiful bone heads ( and i know this when I pick them).:eek::o

Minka, I will get to that in time.

[Elaine]

This is a simply fabulous question Janice.

We like to get a jump start on the whole evaluating process, so Arthur brings scope home from the hospital and we check out the puppies in utero. We look for conformation, movement and whether or not they use their ears in a free stack.



:cool:
Okay, so maybe that’s not funny, it was when Arthur said it


Here are my thoughts about evaluating litters:

Humans are assessments machines. Most breeders are scrutinizing puppies from day one. I’ve heard breeders crow about the puppies thigh muscles at day one… and about top lines.. at day one. I’ve heard some breeders gush about how square their puppies are… on day one. I've probably done that myself... it is easy for a breeder to get very drawn into their litters, see all sorts of quality that may or may not be there, and loose all objectivity about the litter. After all, we love these guys or we wouldn't be breeding. If you breed a litter, it's gonna happen, you're gonna fall head-over-heels in love with your puppies. The trick it to remain objective. If you loose your objectivity you're on the fast track to mediocrity. Frankly,I am not convinced that what you see on day one will be there at 4 weeks, much less at 4 months or four years.

When evaluating any litter, you have to keep in mind the breeding combination and what are typical development patterns for the particular pedigree. Do they go long, do they get high in the rear, do their croups take a while to develop? Or are they perfect little packages every step of the way?

In my experience, some things change, and some do not. Heads and expressions can change. Length to height proportions can change (depending on the pedigree), and the impression of length of leg can change. Angulation can become less extreme, a rise in the back (not the loin) can level out. I have seen heavy boned animals at maturity that did not appear to have such heavy bone at say 8 weeks. Front assemblies do not change, I have never see smoothly laid on shoulders go rough. I have never seen round eye become almond shaped, I have never seen long sloping shoulders get short and up right. I have never seen poor loin connections improve much. and I have never seen a poor tails set get better (but oddly, I have seen good tails sets go wrong). I have never seen a pigeon breasted animal develop a full forechest.

Without any question, the Kafka puppies developed very differently from the Trotyl litter. Kafka kids were very uniform and never went through odd growth spurts. One advantage of this is that they were much easier to evaluate accurately, much earlier on. In contrast, some of the Trotyl kids went through all sorts of stages. We used to joke that Warkant went through so many stages as he matured, if we’d sold him as a puppy he'd have been retuned every other week. What we noticed in the Trotyl - Brentina litter is that the puppies who favored Brentina (and her sire’s side of the pedigree) grew more uniformly, as perfect little packages and the puppies who favored Trotyl grew in stages. Some things, like croups can take a long time to come around.

Getting back to how we evaluate the puppies, I make notes about the puppies on the chart where I am also recording their weight and what they are eating. Usually my notes have to do with personality traits that I see, but I might comment in a general way about bone or length of neck.

I like to play with the puppies from very early on... tickling up their tails... setting them four square... I take note of what I feel and of how easy it is to set a puppy. I never force a puppy, never. I want to see what they can do on their own.

At about 5 weeks I will start to play with them on a table in front of a mirror. We like to take stacked photos at regular intervals from about 6 weeks on, although we never do more than simply "ask" the puppy to stand. If they are not able or not interested in stacking we simply end the session on a positive note and go to another puppy.

When I evaluate puppies that we are considering keeping, I am looking first and foremost for outstanding attributes that reflect improvements over sire and dam. I look at the total package, so I also want a smoothly put together square puppy with good bone and substance, who has confidence to say, "Look at me, I'm a star." I am looking for an overall picture of balance. When we do a breeding we have in mind a set of attributes we hope to get from the sire / dam combination. If I see that puppy then great, that is what I did the breeding for. But I try to be flexible. We may not have gotten what we intended, but we may have gotten something even better than we’d dreamed of, and I try to appreciate that puppy as well.

At about eight weeks we pretty much know what we have, and what we want to keep to go forward with. For me personally the puppy must have good breed and sex type. Bitches should look like bitches and dogs should look like stallions. Dobermans should look like they can do the job the breed was developed for, they should look and act like GUARD DOGS (not Poodles, large Fox Terriers or Weimaraners). I want a well set up neck, with nice length and a strong arch, which must flow smoothly into well laid-back shoulders. The dog should have a good front assembly, it must be square, with a strong level topline, a good tail set, and it must have good bone. I do not get all spooled up about movement in a 8 week old puppy. I look to see that the dog comes and goes cleanly, but I do not expect to see the dog lift and carry his /her topline at 8 weeks. That comes later, with proper diet and exercise.

AS we all know, breeders can not keep entire litters. Doing so is not fair to us or to the dogs. We sometimes see something very nice in a litter that we will let go, simply because one can not do justice to each and every puppy and we trust and respect the person [people] the dog is going to. In general though, if we have high expectations for a puppy we try to keep it until it is well on its way to fulfilling those expectations before we let the puppy go, unless we find a home that has our same goals. ANY breeder will tell you that the best possible situation is to find like-minded people you can trust, who share your goals for an individual puppy. Without any question, the best feeling in the world as a breeder is knowing that your puppy is in a one-on-one situation where they are allowed to shine and soar.