Being a Responsible Breeder

Still a work in progress..........I'll post a link on the front page once this is done.

One of my favorite links: What is a good breeder?

When I was looking into Swissies years ago, I was in disbelief at the discrepancy between breeders' claims and breeders' actions. So I thought about the many psychological mechanisms that were at play in the dog world. What this article addresses the psychology behind kennel blindness and how to deal with it as well as other breeding maladies. This article is intended for breeders who want to stay true to their breeding program. Every breeder is different, with different sets of goals for their program. We hope that this helps you stay true to those goals for your program.

*At the time I first began to think about psychology and breeding, I was taking a graduate seminar with Wendy Wood now at Duke University who is well-known and respected in the field of attitudes and behavior research. Thus, much of this article is comes from much of the classical social psychology research on attitudes and behavior.

Here are some links to the psychological mechanisms discussed below.

Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959)

Theory of Planned Behavior (Azjen, 1988)

The Concord Fallacy - no link but related to Cognitive Dissonance

Protecting the Self

1. Define clearly and state publicly what your goals are for your program. This will give you a clearer and stable picture of what you want. Goals must be very specific and well-defined. A specific goal would be: To decrease the frequency of neurological disorder by not breeding dogs that exhibit flybiting. A vague goal would be: To make a better Swissy.

2. Get opinions from mentors in other breeds. In the world of dogs, you are your own worst enemy. Kennel Blindness is contagious and affects young and old. No one is immune. In fact, the more invested you are in your dogs, the worse your symptoms. Inability to consider other methods or opinions are also symptoms. When this happens in groups of people, it is called Group Think.

3. Don't be afraid to take responsibility.

4. It is okay to make mistakes.

5. Honor your word.

6. Be objective. Look at the numbers (frequencies) of issues in your breeding program. If you have more behavioral, temperament problems, or health problem than what is average for the breed, then you probably have problems due to genetics and NOT due to chance. Denial isn't just a river in Eygpt. Ignorance isn't an excuse. We've all seen breeders blantantly deny behavioral or health problems and making excuses when confronted. Breeders, oddly enough, think that the mechanisms of genetics does apply to their litters. There can be litter after litter with the same problem prominent in a majority of the litter, and the breeder is still blind or in denial.