Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Controversial Pups

Our Asian dogs are capable of causing fits among more conventional dog breeders. Lately cyber attacks and threats were unleashed against litters by Vladimir Beregovoy and Jes and Brett at Demonpuppy's Wicked Awesome Dog and Art Blog. Jess explains in great detail:

"...it is so incredibly disappointing for me to find out that an acquaintance of mine, Vladimir Beregovoy, has actually been the target of a campaign of intimidation by the so-called fancy. This occurred on a mailing list that I am on. I saw a conspiracy among several people to bring pressure to bear on this man, to get his dogs taken away from him, seemingly through any means necessary, by members of the fancy. Don't think I'm exaggerating. I read the messages myself, and I'm being pretty restrained in my analysis. I was, to put it bluntly, gobsmacked.

"So what caused this brouhaha? Did he beat his dogs, starve them, make them live without shelter in the snow?

"Nope. He allowed his healthy Saluki bitch to whelp in her wooden dog house. Horrors! Worse, she removed the blanket so the pups were on bare wood. Could it be possible that the bitch knows best? After all, the weather is warm, there's no danger of the pups getting chilled. They are sheltered from the sun and rain, and their mother is there to clean them, feed them and keep them warm if they need it. But no! A truly responsible breeder would make her keep the blanket. Screw her instincts. She should be locked in the house in a sterile whelping box with a heat lamp and blankets! That's the way it's done! Get that man's dogs away from him before he can do more damage! The control issues and desire to dictate behavior behind the entire incident would have kept a whole college of psychologists busy for a year."

RTWT. Somehow the outcome is win/ win; the forces of evil are at least temporarily routed, and now we are not only dog- in- laws with Vladimir; Jess and Brett are getting a pup to add to their diverse Asian sighthound pack, and old friend David Zincavage of Never Yet Melted is also, as is master hunter Mark Churchill in Scotland. Dog - in-laws everywhere! Long live aboriginal hounds!

6 comments:

Jess said...

Evil will generally crawl back under it's rock when you shine a bright light on it. I have no standing in the Saluki community and really don't give a crap about registration and whatnot, so I can shine that light and challenge the Saluki Guild of Calamitous Intent in public without worrying about my non-existent reputation.

That post is still generating a huge number of hits; if even half of those 'get it', I will be happy.

Anonymous said...

I had to put my dog of 14 years down yesterday. She was born in the back of my truck and she died in the back of my truck. She produced 3 lovely pups in my bedroom, does that make it bad? Some dogs just have pups in a hole in the ground, these pups in question, looked very well taken care of to me. Why did they need a blanket?

Anonymous said...

Of course, those Saluki mafia people probably breed in and in and don't care what that does to the long-term health and performance of their breed. They are more interested in romantic notions about Persian greyhounds than ever trying to ensure that those dogs could ever act as sight hounds. Just so long as the ribbons keep coming in, they can think highly of themselves. They are the popinjays of all popinjays.

So who cares what they think?

I've talked to breeders who tell you (straight-faced) that if you handle a newborn whelp, it will die or its mother will abandon it. That might be true for hamsters, but it's not true for domestic dog. I guess they've never heard of early neurological stimulation and its benefits.

Steve Bodio said...

Retrieverman, those breeders are so ignorant I don't know how they produce pups! I have helped all my mothers whelp and handles each pup from right after birth onward with no problems whatsoever. How do they know if a pup is in trouble??

Eliezer M. Morgan said...

The accommodations are pretty “up-town” compared to those recommended by Ian Billinghurst and some of his followers.

Best litter of working line Shepherds that I have ever seen were raised in a small cave the mother dug out for herself in the breeder’s backyard.
The litter represented a substantial investment of time and money, and while he was pretty anxious about the whole deal, the owner of this nice Sch III import decided to let her have a go after she went to all the work.
This was 85? 86? And I know he raised several more in exactly the same manner…

Gregg

Jess said...

Don Turnipseed, who allowed me to use photos of his Airedales in my post, has puppy raising practices that would make most breeders heads explode: he does not handle the pups until they start walking around (he does check on the bitches and pups during and after whelping), and his dogs are highly inbred, yet they are fabulously healthy and produce large litters of temperamentally stable pups. By most standards, what he is doing is 'wrong', yet it obviously works for him and his dogs. I could not, in a million years, raise my pups the same way, but who am I to tell him he's wrong when what he does works so well for him and his dogs?

People tell me all the time that I'm causing chronic disease in my pups by vaccinating them, all my dogs will die of cancer because I feed them grains, yadda, yadda, yadda. I do what works for me and my dogs, constantly research and learn, then apply that. Stuff that doesn't work or produce results, I discard. Stuff that does, I keep. Dogs are healthy, in good shape, reproduce easily. Works for me.