Bred for the Job

My first cowhorse was ranch bred Sonita.

She was big, red, freckled, had lots of chrome and attitude.

Those who know me, know her.

She was a life lesson and then some.


My second cowhorse, Loki, was a Foundation bred mare from a Buckskin breeding program. I had bought her as a project for my daughter and I, with no thought of cowhorse in my head.

 I had some success with her and my daughter did too. She was fast, anxious, sweet, and could slide thirty feet on a good day, 20 to 25 without a thought. She couldn't spin worth a damn. She wasn't very bendy. Riding her was kind of like riding a Grayhound bus in a 7/11, but she dug deep again and again.

 I bought Madonna as a long yearling. She was bred to rein and work cattle. She was and is amazing. I have said more than once, and will probably say again, until I trained Madonna, I had no idea I'd been trying to turn chihuahua's into huskies. She was my first sled dog.

Buying a horse bred to do the sport I was obsessed with was a real eye opener. The hours, months and years I spent riding and training horses the better trainers passed on had opened my mind to the potential in horses, no matter what they were bred for. I developed an interest in unlocking a horse's mind so it wanted to work for me, was willing to try, even if the bones were too heavy, the back was too long or the brains too scrambled. It also had me convinced horse training was hard, hard, hard and so was reined cow horse.

Then, I bought Madonna. She slid, spun and was naturally leaded. I'm not kidding, if I set her up right she just did it. The rest was refinement. The first time she tracked a cow she was so happy she started to buck.

"Don't you touch her!" K warned before I could get all clutchy. She smoothed out the second she saw the cow escaping because of her nonsense and she stopped. That was it. Madonna has been all about the cow ever since.


She wasn't particularly fast, she was quick and agile. I realized when you're on a horse that's on her cow, then you don't need a fast one, because you're never playing catchup.


We went to work with a cutting trainer while K was out of town (oops, busted!). I was worried because she carried her head so high while she worked. The trainer watched for a while and said, "She's naturally so underneath herself she's balancing herself with her head. Stay out of her way, off her mouth and wait, she'll sort it out."

He was right. I worked hard on staying out of her way and she sorted herself out. Breeding makes a difference.

In an interesting twist of fate, I have shown Madonna the least of any of my horses. Economics and illness sidelined me. Except for one miserable failing in Nebraska, she has been in the money just about every time we've walked in the pen. She's lovely.

She's also spooky and bitchy. Dead solid on cattle, in the pen or on a gather, she's so focused you'd think she was a rock.

Take her on the trail, or around the yard at the barn and she's a bug-eyed freak. She's bred to physically respond to movement and boy howdy, does she ever.

During the peak of my years hauling to shows, I was mounted on $900 dollar horses. Once I finally got my sled dog, life bit me in the butt. Madonna hasn't been wasted, not as far as I'm concerned. I was able to study the art of building a bridle horse and given the luxury of taking as long as it took. She's sound, sane (ish) and ready to go if the road to showing opens up again.

I guess, what it comes down to is, as far as life and learning goes, I have always ended up with the horses I needed, at the time I needed them, whether I agreed or not.

New Breeds?

There is an interesting rumor flying around about a certain type of dog breeder. I guess it isn't a rumor, since I found this website:

Blue Cedar Kennels

http://www.bcsportdogs.com/index.htm

This is an example of the dogs they breed.





Envy is a "sport dog mix"...her dam, My-My is a Border x Border Jack and her sire, Pilot, is a Border Jack.

Then I found this one:
http://www.paintedstarsfarm.com/sport-mixes-others

I've been looking up the breeders of these dogs because I keep hearing of a sport dog breeder out here in my neck of the woods. It started when I met a family while hiking with my dogs. The Dad was all over my dogs. He asked if I hunted them, I said, " Er, no."

"Why not?" he asked. "What a beautiful team you have!"

I was pretty confused. I was out with Brockle and Charlie. They were doing this:

This is what Brockle and Charlie do on walks, they don't strike me exactly as hunting team material, in looks or technique.

After a bit more conversation, I came to understand things a little better. The family was visiting from another country. At their home, dogs very similar to Brockle were used to drive prey across open ground, straight into the jaws of fierce little murderers like Charlie. This was a sport, as well as a standard hunting practice. He loooooved Brockle. I finally came up with, "Is he like a lurcher?"

"Yes! Lurcher!"

Not that he had lurchers back home, but it was as close as we could come to a description.

Then I met a woman walking a dog that could easily be a Brockle litter mate. Naturally we stopped and compared notes. She told me her dog was called a "Sport Dog," carefully bred here in the state for performance sports like flyball, agility, that thing where they jump of docks, frisbee, any competition where an agile, fired up dog does stuff really fast.

Her dog's breeder was trying for dogs that would succeed at the above and also in lure coursing, an event that's quite big out on the prairie. She crossed Lurchers, imported from England, with breeds known for their high prey drive, Border Collies, Dutch, and German Shepherds and the Australian herding breeds.

"This is serious? This person sells these dogs?" I asked.

I must have had an inappropriate look on my face. I was informed that her dog was winning like hotcakes in three events and there was a waiting list for pups at $800 a pop.

When I told her I got my dog off the clearance rack at the Humane Society she quit talking to me.

I haven't been able to find this breeder. I'll be honest, I haven't tried too hard. I did a bit of research into lurchers though.

I learned that Lurchers are sight hounds crossed with not sight hounds for different kinds of hunting. They're pretty common in Europe. They are a type, not a breed, come in different sizes, colors and hunting abilities. Historically, they were a poor man's dog, bred by a poor man's standards. If they were up for the task at hand, they lived and if not, well....

In Britain, Lurchers are hunted over different kinds of terrain: stubble field, smooth flat grassland, or rugged moorlands. So the dogs are chosen with both the quarry and the environment in mind. 
For these reasons, a useful working lurcher are bred from similarly useful working parents. Its not just a matter of breeding any old greyhound to the collie round the corner. Any responsible person wishing to breed a litter of lurchers  picks parents with a proven ability to work, and rules out the breeds no longer used for their original purpose. So, technically, while a cross such as a Borzoi/Old English Sheepdog is a lurcher, you'll be hard pressed to find one, at least on the other side of the pond.

Greyhounds, Deerhounds, Salukis, Whippets and Wolfhounds seem to be the primary sight hound influence, with crosses to collies, terriers and bull breeds (and mixes of those) to create what's desired. 

The thing is, these dogs have been bred forever. Not by crossing a collie and a greyhound, then adding in some pit or JRT the next generation.

They are bred to work. They are tweaked with fresh blood to improve performance. More like rat terriers were before AKC glommed onto them. Everybody knew there was a bunch of breeds in there, but a rat was still a rat, and was considered an all around barn, farm and ranch dog that fit in your lap.

On the flip side, breeds have to start somewhere, right? My interest was piqued. I haven't found this sport dog breeder yet. If by some obscure chance of fate Brockle did come from this program, he would be a dismal failure. He is too easily amped up to handle the intensity of agility, too dog aggressive to stay on track for fly ball (This is MY BALL, and SO IS YOURS!!!), and while he loves to chase stuff, and he's fast enough and agile enough to run neck and neck with a rabbit, his reaction is to bounce around and look really dopey.
"Aw....hi little bunny!" Brockle says.
"Send it over here! Bite it! Do something! Anything! Aw Jeez, you're killing me here!" Charlie screams.

And then, this morning, I see this.

She's a Malinois Greyhound cross at our local Humane Society. Is she a random mutt or a "Sport Dog" failure? Whatever she is, things haven't been going her way, that's for damn sure. My guess is she's sensitive, protective, insanely fast and smarter than her breeder. If I had the room, energy and time to take on another one, I'd go get her faster than Tess the Border Collie whips through the weave poles. Thing is, Brockle is a tough dog. Hard, reactive, insecure, full of beans, pushy, wary, and definitely smarter than me, the scars from his first months on the planet run deep. I can't imagine where this poor girl's head is at. 

This post is about questions more than opinions, at least for me. It's got me thinking about lots of things, but I'll be honest, mainly I'm thinking about that starved, frightened dog. 



P.S. Just so you don't think I'm totally nuts on the Brockle/lurcher thing...

image a and b are lurchers
         c and d are Brockle.

Purebreds and Mixed Breeds, Registered and Grade

"When you are looking to buy a horse," I asked K, "what's your order of importance?"

He walked to the fridge, grabbed two more Coronas and handed me one before returning to his spot by the stove. It was cold, the day had been long, and we still needed to feed. It was easy to dawdle in  heat emanating from the wood burner.

"Cash, preferably somebody else's."

"That's not what I meant," I said. "When I look at a horse, my first priority is my gut reaction...you know, the thing that happens when you look at a bunch out in the field, and you think, Oooh, look at that one.

"Next, I look at conformation. I like short cannon bones on straight legs, a level head set with a good natural arch in the neck, long, heavy hip, good angles...

"Then I mess with them some and check out their temperament.

 I guess I look at breeding last, earnings on the parents, that kind of thing."

He thought a minute."Breeding, gut, temperament, conformation."

"Really? How come?"

"Breeding gives me an idea how the horse will be to work and an idea of it's resale value. I need to ride the popular bloodlines, but ones I get along with.

"My gut tells me just about everything I need to know and I don't have to think it through.

"If a horse is going to fight me, then I don't want to waste my time and if the conformation is really bad, why, my gut would have weeded that out right away. The little stuff I can work around."

I wasn't convinced. My first two winning cowhorses were registered, but one was a ranch horse and the other a Foundation horse bred for color. I felt that any horse, as long as it was built for the job at hand, and had a decent mind, could compete and win in the event of choice.

I didn't disregard what K told me, I just filed it away. Good thing too, because I hadn't bought Madonna yet, or earned my way far enough up the trainer ladder to get some decent horses to ride.

When I began to experience the joy of riding a fine horse, bred specifically for the job at hand, I realized I'd been training chihuahuas to be sled dogs, and now I had me some huskies.

 I became very partial to a well bred cowhorse. Because I was privileged to ride a bunch of the best bloodlines, I learned which ones created a horse I got along with, which ones were easy to train, which produced a good non-pro horse, and which ones were going to be a lot of work.

I learned that these horses had been bred for function, and within reason, by studying their bloodlines first, I could count on getting what I wanted.

When it comes to dogs, I'm pretty wide open, I like herding breeds and terriers, but through the years my dogs have been a mixed bag. My biggest priority is for my dog to be my companion, my next is it needs to fit into my lifestyle. This means the dog needs to come when called, not bite guests or their dogs, leave livestock alone, and stay where I can find them, whether I'm paying attention or not.

Most dogs learn these things, some take more work than others, but I commit for life when I get a dog, so we have time.

Most purebred dogs have been bred for form over function for the last 100 plus years. The goal of creating cookie cutter copies of each breed hasn't worked out so well for the dogs. Hip dysplasia, cancer, inability to breathe, we've mucked things up in a lot of ways. We've bred hunting dogs that won't hold a bird, herding dogs that bite the kids but are afraid of sheep, terriers that won't go to ground, the list goes on.

Our mutts share many of the same problems, because Hybrid Vigor is bull-shit if both parents have the same genetic issues.

Here's the thing, even though the majority of purebred dogs have been bred for shape over ability, they still retain the essence of who and what they are. MOST hunting dogs want to play fetch and search out game, MOST terriers want to dig gophers out of dens and eat your kids hamster, MOST herding dogs feel better if everyone stays in a group and MOST guard dogs want to keep the bad guy  away.

So, I will keep these points in mind while looking for a dog, and add it into my basic criteria.
When I choose a dog, there are a few things I look for. Temperament, focus, amiability, and physical soundness. I like them to be pretty. I want to be able to trust my dog.

As crazy in love as I was with Brockle I still assessed his hips, elbows and attitude. I'm not a pro on the hips and elbows, but I'm pretty good at avoiding conformation disasters. He is clearly a mix of herding dogs, with who knows what else thrown in. I like herding dogs because they are less inclined to wander than a hunting bred dog, I enjoy their brain power, and sometimes I get a good stock dog out of them.

If I decide on a purebred, I'm going to fork out the dough to get a good one. I want eyes, hips, etc. etc. checked, verified and guaranteed with a blood oath. I'll still do a temperament test and I will have a specific reason to own one.

Either way, I have always found the dog I needed, without paying much attention to their form. They have all functioned as I needed, loyalty, affection and friendship being my most important requirements.

I haven't needed a specific breed or bloodline to find these things.

My Mother is My Father's Grandma

My, but I've been chatty. Please remember, for every successful post there is another failed attempt on finishing this week's food column.

I have been reading a very educational, fun, thought provoking blog lately, Terrierman's Daily Dose  http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/. One of you turned me on to this blog, and while I'm thanking you mightily, I also hate you, just a little.

He has already worked through, studied, researched and written about many of the things I've been just starting to puzzle out. He is thoughtful, opinionated, published, uses bigger words and has better sentence structure than I do.

Being the housebound, OCD lunatic I've become, I can't be happy thinking, Oh, well, if Terrierman said it and it's a line of thought I've been considering, it must be right. Not me, I have to check his resources, read his references, read counter arguments and then try to think my own thoughts. So no, I won't become a Terrierman parrot, I promise, but he is fast becoming a reference I trust, so you'll be seeing his name here and there.

Where he hooked me was when I read his hard look at the AKC and the destruction of dog breeds. My idle thoughts that led me to his posts on the subject was pretty simple. I read an article about several AKC breeds of dogs which were going extinct. The Old English Sheepdog, English Setter, Dandie Dinmont Terrier, Otter Hound and Lancashire Heeler were all on the list.

Can you call the disappearance of a man-made creation, that has only been around for the last 140 years or so extinct? Wikipedia defines extinction as:  In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point.

The definition of species: a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. The species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus and denoted by a Latin binomial, e.g., Homo sapiens

The definition of breed: a stock of animals or plants within a species having a distinctive appearance and typically having been developed by deliberate selection.

When I thought a little more and did some VERY casual research, I wondered, if a breed can actually become extinct, when does it become official? 

Here's an Old English Sheepdog in 1860

So, was the Old English Sheepdog extinct here? This is a show dog in 1937.
 It's certainly not the same dog as the one pictured above.

It definitely has to be extinct here, because at this point,

I'm not sure it's still a dog.

Then I thought I might be making things too complicated. Dogs were bred to suit human fancy. So, if we needed a gun dog, a herding dog, whatever, we bred them, right? At least it went that way until we started breeding dogs AKC style, based solely on looks and tossed out any concerns about health, ability or temperament.

I found some drawbacks to the breeds that were on the AKC endangered list.

On Old English Sheepdogs :  They are really big dogs...80 pound average. Inbreeding has made it difficult to find dogs that aren't high strung, nervous and sometimes aggresive. These great big dogs are rowdy, think jumping on Grandma, herding the kids, dragging you down the street...they are notoriously strong willed, messy, hairy, slobbery aaannnnd very, very farty.

Then there's the health issues:  deafness, cataract, gastric torsion, otitis externa, progressive retinal atrophy (PRA), cerebellar ataxia, retinal detachment and hypothyroidism, or major health issues like canine hip dysplasia

English Setters:

Think, high, nervous energy. Although these dogs are gentle and sweet, all that can go straight to hell if you aren't going to get them out where they can run. They are known for separation anxiety too, so keeping the in a crate for 10 hours aday is a very, very bad plan.Stubbornness, hard to housebreak, heavy shedding and silky, easily matted hair round ou the list.
Health Issues: congenital deafness, autoimmune thyroiditis, canine hypothyroidism, hip and elbow dysplasia, allergies, and cancer.



Dandie Dinmont Terriers:

These cute little dogs look like they were made for Aunt Edna's lap don't they? If your auntie is loaded...they carry an average price tag of $800 to $2500 dollars, yes, that's per puppy, and really gnarly, then maybe. The cost isn't because they are better, it's because there aren't very many of them. Think teeny, tiny gene pool. Dandies are known to be self-willed and independent, aggressive towards other animals, and not prone to use an indoor voice. But they have really cute haircuts, I'll give them that.

Health issues: Glaucoma, cataracts and corneal ulcers. Intervertebral disk disease, hip dysplasia, and luxating patella (loose knees). Luxating shoulder can also occur. Allergies, hypothyroidism, Cushing's disease and lymphosarcoma.

So. My next thought was, maybe these dogs don't need to be saved, resurrected, considered endangered, or anything else. Maybe, they are fading away because there is no longer a consumer demand. Since the breeds themselves were created for our personal pleasure, why shouldn't they fade away as they become obsolete? It's not like we'd be eliminating dogs, just no longer breeding the ones nobody wants. 

Who really needs a giant, hairy sheep dog? Bird dogs are becoming harder to find, because there aren't as many people using them. It's interesting to think about what kind of breeds will develop in the future. You know, after Armageddon, when we need our dogs to start working for a living again.  

If dogs were bred like horses, developed because of what they do instead of what they look like...well, except for color, we do like to breed for color.

That's not working out either. 

Take quarter horses for example. The hottest bloodlines come from the winners in the show pen, right? The electric flash of a top cutting horse, the slides and spins of a top reining horse, the elegance of a top pleasure horse. OK. Stop laughing, I mean it.

Equine breeders may be breeding for ability, but what about soundness, longevity, temperament, general health?  

Let's think about HERDA, HYPP, thin soles, bad guts, Overo Lethal White Syndrome...

Where did my train of thought take me? Other than to Terrierman, they took me down a pretty broad path. I'm starting to think over the last couple hundred years, breeding animals is more about playing God than continuing on with the animals that work best with us. We're just not that good at it.

My other problem is, mugwump that I am, I just love my inbred cow horse. I love who she is and what she can do. I'll never forget telling the Big K - " Training this filly has made me realize that up until now, I've been training chihuahua's to be sled dogs and I finally got me a husky."

Plus, while researching the rare breed list, I came across this little guy, the Lancashire heeler  http://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/lancashire-heeler. How cool is he? Everything I read says this is my kind of dog and if I ever get a chance, I'll be getting one.

Purebreds and Crosses to Bear

Pintabian Stallion, $10,000
OK. He's pretty bad, this proven, homozygous, pointy-butted  mess.
The only thing he's proven is he throws 100% color. He might be a cute gelding, I guess.

Yesterday I wrote about coming out of the Krazy Kolor Klozet.

Some of you fell into the "Old Krazy Kolors Bad! Only Plain Jane's Good!" trap.

Silly people. Don't you know me by now? I was laying the ground for the subject I'm REALLY thinking about. I'm a tad disappointed you mustangs didn't smell the bait trap before you galloped on in. 

If you truly read what I wrote, I just said I like pretty colors and lots of hair. I never, ever mentioned breeding, in the backyard or for color. Not once.

I have been thinking about breeding though. 

I've been reading the coolest book, "Dogs, Describes in a Practical Manner the Training, Handling, Treatment, Breeds, Etc., Best Adapted for Night Hunting as Well as Gun Dogs for Daylight Sport," by Oliver Hartley - first printed in 1909.

Despite it's wordy title, this book is short and to the point. It's the approach a respected hunting dog owner took to breeding his dogs.

I learned an approach to breeding that made SO MUCH SENSE, I was blown away. 

Hartley bred his dogs for his own use. He knew what he liked in a hunting dog and that's what he bred for. 

He set his basic need. He wanted a dog to stay on track, bay when it treed or cornered the prey, and stay there until he got there. 

Rabbit dogs were bred to hunt rabbits.

Squirrel and coon dogs were bred to hunt those.

Deer dogs were bred to hunt deer and so on.

So. He would take a purebred foxhound and cross it with, say a collie, to hunt deer.

Maybe beagle and foxhound for rabbit.

The neighbors good mongrel coon dog and foxhound for raccoon an squirrel.

His years as a hunter told him what he needed and he bred that. He did like foxhounds, but not in their pure form, unless he was hunting fox.

This wasn't an unusual concept back then. It was pretty standard. Dogs were bred which were suited to do the job at hand. Conformation was developed along with, because if the dog didn't have big, strong claws and well developed legs he couldn't get up in the trees. If he didn't have the deep lungs needed for distance, it was crossed with another breed that did and so forth.

Purebred dogs weren't considered the holy grail, they were just a solid, reliable ingredient.

He didn't call them designer dogs, he didn't fight about bloodlines, he just bred the dog he needed.

His approach wasn't unusual, because he talked about other hunters preferences and why they bred differently than he did.

This really got me thinking. Before the first Westminster Dog Show in 1877, there really weren't that many dog breeds. In the last 150 years the dog has become the most varied mammal in the world.

Those crazy Victorians took all that suppressed sexual energy and started creating dog breeds. Then they started showing them at dog shows.Around 1870, kennel clubs were established in the United States and Britain and stud books were created and closed.

 Pre-dog shows, breeds were divided in groups.Pointers were a breed, setters were a breed, spaniels were a breed and so forth.These dogs were defined by form an function. Post dog shows, these groups were divided by type and defined by parentage.So instead of pointers, you had Vizslas, German Short hairs and Weimaraners. 

Dog shows were primarily about looks. How the ear curved, how far the jowls hung, what color they were, and so forth. What didn't matter was how brave a guard dog they had, how sharp their sheep dogs were, or how sensitive the nose on their hunting dogs. What mattered was if the dog fit the visual standard created by the dog clubs.

Writings about animal breeding from the late 1800's to the early 1900's are full of demands to "eliminate the weaklings and invigorate the race by maintaining the purity of its blood. How creepy is that?

Leon Fradley, a renowned and respected dog expert of the times wrote The Complete Book of Dog Care, This is the Ccker Spaniel, Bloodhounds and How to train Them and How to Breed Dogs. He also wrote The Case for Sterilization, expressing his belief in the benefits of eugenics (essentially "line-breeding" people to create desired traits). Are we creeped out yet? The guy even got a fan letter from, yeppers, you guessed it, Hitler.

Once we started breeding for form instead of function, all kinds of crazy things began to happen.

Being people, we couldn't be happy by screwing up dogs. We had to expand to horses. we weren't breeding for looks, not just yet, but we were certainly changing the way horses looked while we changed the way they rode.

Thoroughbreds were fast, but we needed them faster, because horse racing is the Sport of Kings. Originally,  the majority of the preeminent stallions and mares were controlled by some of the oldest established families in the US – the Whitneys and Woodwards, the Bradleys and Wideners and the Klebergs and the Mellons.  A fundamental rule that these families abided by was to improve the breed from a practical standpoint, speed, stamina and soundness.

Ultimately, theses solid breeders lost control and breeders began to focus on speed alone. The trouble started with the immortal Native Dancer. The beautiful gray horse retired with 21 wins out of 22 starts. He retired early, by the time he was four, because of a chronic inflammation in his ankles. Native Dancer had developed osselets (bony growths).

After retirement, Native Dancer became one of the most influential studs in Thoroughbred history. Today, almost 75% of Thoroughbreds trace back to him. He passed on his speed, and also his weak ankles. Every year, the Thoroughbred has become more fragile, with the incidence of breaking down becoming higher.

The Quarter Horse Industry  has taken some blows too. Personally, I think we deserve it. Tell me these horses are examples of the same breed.

AQHA Cutting Horse - all grown up and ready to show
14hh and 750 lbs.

AQHA Halter Horse - 16hh and 1300 lbs.

I'm sorry, but ew.

AQHA pleasure horse - 16hh, 900 lbs

                                                                  I am so confused.
                                                     

AQHA has allowed so much screwing around, our QH's don't even come close to looking like the horse originally recognized as a breed in the 1940's.

People started dipping their sticky little fingers into breeding animals with no understanding of genetics. The more we learn, the deeper in epileptic dogs and cow horses with HERDA we're going to be. The worse part is, nobody seems to care much. Impressive bred horses are still spitting out babies with HYPP. Thoroughbred horses are considered so disposable they only have to win a few races to be a success. Who cares if they're crippled as a three-year-old?

None of these horses were bred for color. They were bred for speed, muscle, pretty gaits and cat-like turns. Look where it got them.

This is where all this studying and thinking has brought me. Back in 1909, Hartley didn't think about shows, blood lines or back yard breeding. He hunted and knew what he wanted. He believed in breeding for ability and had no problem crossing breeds to get what he was looking for.

If we pass enough laws to eliminate indiscriminate breeding we could eventually weed out the mutts and scrub fuglies we see on Craigslist. Of course then we would have to buy from "responsible" breeders.
Look where responsible breeding has gotten us. Dogs who have brains to big for their skulls, horses whose skin falls off the first time they are saddled, blindness, deafness and early death. I can't wait for the day my only way to have a dog or horse is to buy one from a breeder. Not a neighbor with a small program who breeds animals he deems useful, those folks will be considered backyard breeders and shut down. Wont be able to pick up a pup from a local rancher's good cowdog either. She was required by law to be spayed, since she wasn't registered.

Eventually we might figure out we can't breed for any one, specific thing, because you never get just the one. If you breed for speed, you get shattered ankles, breed for cow sense and you get a pony with birdy bones.
Breed for a gorgeous red coat and get a barking dumb blonde joke. Every trait comes with some others we don't know about.

I can't help but think we'd better hope some of those BYB's hang around, and there are still some irresponsible people in the world who don't spay and neuter. We'd better pray there's a pintwalkogoosa or two still around. It seems to me we're going to need those mish-mashed bloodlines some day, and we'd better hope nobody with sense bred them.