What is a Dog Breeder’s Job?
Us as Dog Breeders
For a lot of people, hearing the phrase dog breeder brings up a very negative picture. They think of someone who is greedy and unethical, who is willing to overbreed their dogs with no care for their wellbeing.
Unfortunately, there are some breeders who fit that description. But, it doesn’t apply to them all.
What is a dog breeder’s job?
In general terms, a dog breeder’s job is to breed dogs. However, we consider our job to be solving problems, both for the adopter and within the breed. All the decisions we make revolve around the final adopter, who that person is, and what they need from us. For us, our ideal final adopter is someone who has always wanted a bulldog. We want to help the people who have always wanted a bulldog, or the people who have lost a bulldog in the past and are ready to adopt again.
Our adopter is someone who will love and care for a bulldog for its whole life.
So, because we work for the end adopter, we have to look at the strengths and weaknesses of the dogs in our breeding program as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the breed as a whole.
How does that change our approach?
If you spend time around our website, you know that we consider the biggest problem for English Bulldogs to be health. To anyone who is familiar with the English Bulldog, their health problems aren’t a surprise. English bulldogs commonly serious health problems due to traditional breeding practices.
Many bulldog breeders take a very passive approach to their breeding program. They simply accept that the breed is unhealthy and move on.
We don’t want to be just another breeder.
We know bulldogs can be unhealthy, but that’s just genetics. That’s why we decided to take our breeding program in a different direction. We are working to fix bulldog’s health problems through science, health testing, research, and an understanding of genetics. You can learn more about what that means here. Or you can contact us. We are happy to answer questions.
Fixing big problems like this is never going to be a streamlined process. However, with consistency, we are moving our bloodlines towards healthier bulldogs. It’s not a straight path, but we are moving in the right direction.
I think that the combination of knowing who your end adopter is, and how you can help the breed is the heart of what a breeder’s job is.