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Seminar Overview
This presentation has information to benefit
everyone working with dogs and every puppy out of a conscientious
breeding program. The Puppy Puzzle has been acclaimed
as a long-awaited gem by judges, breeders, and other fanciers, and
as an invaluable tool for beginning and established breeders.
The single most important decision we can make for
our puppies is to determine whether each puppy is structurally
sound enough to do what we will ask of it in its lifetime.
Whether the hope is for the show ring and whelping
box or obedience, agility, field trials or flyball, we owe it to
our dogs to know in which lifestyle each may best flourish.
Once the litter is on the ground, breeders must
evaluate each puppy with a critical eye to determine whether the
choice of sire and dam resulted in offspring that will in their
turn contribute to the breed. However, evaluating puppies
with a critical eye is difficult, for the heart often gets in the
way.
In this Seminar, pat provides techniques and
instructions for telling which puppies in the litter have the most
potential to become the future sires and dams of the breed.
Seminar Discussion Includes:
- Evaluating puppies as they meet the breed
standard
- The importance of breed integrity
- How to examine each portion of puppy anatomy
to judge soundness and breed type.
- Topline problems in relation to front and
rear structural weaknesses
- Movement as a function of front and rear
assemblies
- Skull growth and how to predict whether the
head will meet the breed standard
- How to determine if the neck is too short or
too long
- How to make sure the puppy is balanced in
bone and muscle
- How to identify the beginnings of a broad
spectrum of potential problems as the puppy becomes a dog.
In closing, Hastings emphasizes the purpose of puppy evaluation.
"The
purpose is not to determine which puppies will grow into future
champions, but which will enhance a breeding program that will
produce puppies that are genetically, temperamentally, and
structurally sound."
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