Chapter 12 - Know What You Want

Few people are able to achieve exactly what they want. Anybody can know what he wants, although only a small percentage of the men who breed dogs and call themselves dog breeders really do know what they want or recognize the approximation when they approach to perfection. Even to themselves many breeders will not acknowledge their failure when they fall short of their objective.

To know what one wants is not so easy as it seems. It is not merely wishing. It involves working. To believe that one has made a touchdown when one has only crossed the ten yard line is wishful thinking, which is very human; and to believe that one has bred a great dog when one has bred only a good one is an equally normal fallacy and an equally dangerous one. When the judges give the gate to our chef d'oeuvre, it is they who are wrong. Everybody is out of step but Johnnie. That there is anything wrong with the dog is unthinkable.

To acknowledge our failure even to ourselves is a trial to our spirits. But there is no better place to set out to obtain what we really want than the position of acknowledgement that we do not already possess it. The breeder, to be successful, must look his dogs in the face; not only in the face but in the body, front, and running gear. He must not only value the virtues they possess but he must deprecate the faults they embody. If he is off on the wrong foot, he must catch step. If the stock he has is hopeless, he must get new stock or his attempt to breed good dogs is futile.

It is not to be gainsaid that beginning with indifferent stock, a breeder can through careful breeding and selection improve it. But while the breeder with indifferent dogs is improving the stock, the breeder with good dogs with the same acumen and conscientious effort will be improving his already good stock; and while the improvement in the good stock may not be so rapid and so marked as in the indifferent stock, yet the man who has begun with good stock continues to remain just a few jumps ahead of the one who has begun his breeding operations with mediocre dogs. And there is no reason to believe that the breeder acute enough to provide himself with good material for his operations is likely to exhibit less acumen in its manipulation than is he who starts out to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

The larger part of us cannot afford to lay out five thousand dollars for a bitch, nor even one thousand dollars, in order that we may begin at the very top. In fact, few men who do begin with such a splurge stick to their guns as breeders of dogs. They may, and sometimes do, continue to buy winning dogs year after year in order to garner a mantelpiece full of silver cups and to feed their cheap vanity with a ration of very expensive dog meat.

Such men are but grist to the true breeder's mill. The breeder catches them coming and going. He sells them the good dogs he has bred and he utilizes, for a small outlay, the great stallion dogs for which they have paid fortunes.

But to acquire good breeding stock does not involve the investment of great sums of money. It does involve the knowledge of what one wants and of the material required to produce it. The production of fine dogs involves the skillful utilization of good stock when one has obtained it.

Anybody with enough money can obtain a good dog. He need not even know a good dog when he sees one. He can accept the consensus of judicial opinion and buy the biggest winners at the biggest shows. The dealers will probably sell him some chaff along with the grain and at grain prices, but they are astute enough to see to it that his yen to win is titillated sufficiently to keep him buying.

But merely to win does not satisfy the breeder. He not only wants to possess good dogs; he wants to breed good dogs. It is a kind of mania. Indeed, it is his means of self-expression, a creative art. As the sculptor manipulates his marble, so the breeder of dogs expresses himself in canine flesh and blood.

And what sculptor would hack and chisel at a block of marble without a conception of the statue he intended to produce? He may fail to realize his concept, he may fall short of his ideal; but it is only the knowledge of what he wants that enables him even so much as to attain its approximation.

So with the breeding of dogs. Only a few of the men who call themselves breeders do know what they want and formulate and establish an ideal toward which to work. It is those few who, year after year, generation after generation, breed the best dogs of the several varieties. They are the real breeders of dogs.

This is not so easy as it may seem. It means the expenditure of effort and of study. It is possible to any but a blind man. And it is necessary, even essential.

It means first that one must learn to know a good dog when one sees one. This is a matter about which the doctors disagree. The judges do not all see alike and what may appear a serious fault to one of them may be only a venial fault to some other. But the efficient breeder will correlate the concepts of the various judges and will take from all of them the elements which impress him as correct. This does not imply that he will accept as right only such attributes as his own dogs embody. It is necessary to look at the breed objectively, to consider its origin and purpose, to comprehend the reasons why various attributes of the variety have been imposed upon it.

Those attributes are not merely fortuitous. Trial and error, logic, and the aesthetic sense have joined to determine the characteristics which differentiate the breeds one from another.

The standards of perfection of the various breeds attempt to describe that differentiation and in large measure succeed. The successful breeder must know the official standard of the breed with which he works, not merely have read it or even have learned its words by rote. He must know it, must analyze it and seek to decipher its intents. Many fine nuances of every breed are impossible to put into words. The framers of standards are human and standards must not only be kept within reasonable length but also they must leave room for the play of the human equation of the breeder. If the breeding of dogs is to be and to remain a creative art, then the artist must not be too much hampered in his creative concepts.

If the standards laid down specifications minute enough, if the nonessential attributes of the breed were catalogued and detailed to the n-th power, the members of any given breed would be required to be as much alike as two cakes of Ivory soap or they would fail of their conformation to the standard of the breed. The setting forth of only the essential aspects of the breed in the standard, leaving the breeder the freedom to express his own concepts in the nonessentials, is undoubted wisdom. Such a policy makes possible the varied assortment of excellence and the play of the breeder's fancy while detracting nothing from the fitness of the dogs.

But the breeder's work is done within the somewhat broad frame of the standard. That instrument may leave much unsaid, but the specifications which it does lay down are not to be violated with impunity. In order to know what one wants it is necessary to know the bold general plan of the dog set forth in the official description of the breed.

The breeder who is familiar with the standard of his own breed only, however, is likely to become a narrow specialist. He is prone to become a breeder of Greyhounds, Bulldogs, Fox Terriers, or whatever his specialty may be, before he is a breeder of dogs. A fine member of any breed must be a fine dog first. It makes no difference how many of the arbitrary "points" of his own breed a dog may possess, if he is not a good animal and a good dog, how can he be a good Wolfhound, or Pomeranian, or what not?

The standards of breeds other than his own, especially of breeds kindred to his own, will repay a breeder's study. While it may not be necessary to observe the minutiae of type of the other breeds as closely as he observes those of his own, a sound familiarity with the others cannot but redound to the sounder knowledge of his own variety. The breeder of English Setters will know better what kind of English Setter he wants if he knows the standards of the Irish and Gordon members of the Setter trinity also. Those differences are much deeper than the merely arbitrary differences of color and pattern; they are differences of fundamental structure and have their reasons. It is only by the comprehension of wherein one breed differs from another breed that one can comprehend wherein the members of that breed are alike. And one cannot love English Setters half so well, loves one not Setters in general, field dogs, and the whole galaxy of the dog tribe even more.

These standards offer one a more or less hazy concept of what is wanted—excellent so far as it goes or can go. But in order to know a breed of dogs it is necessary to apply its standard to living dogs, to fit those dogs into the standard.

The place to do this is where the dogs are, the dog shows, the kennels of other breeders, and one's own kennel. The breeder must know his own dogs and all about them before he can undertake to mate them successfully. He must recognize the particulars, if there are any, in which they excel; and the particulars, and of these there are certainly some, in which they fall short of perfection. It is necessary to recognize faults before one can concisely and deliberately set out to correct those faults.

All too many breeders blink the shortcomings of their own dogs. The desire to be believed to excel, the yen to win, is too often greater than the desire actually to possess and to breed excellent dogs. Owners of dogs frequently, in an effort to convince others of the perfection of their dogs, actually convince themselves—usually, only themselves.

The man, or woman, who chooses to dissemble to others his dog's failings only succeeds in convincing them of his lack either of perspicacity or of veracity. If he lies to others, he will do well not to lie to himself. He must know what he has and must acknowledge it to himself to the end of obtaining what he wants. If one knows what one wants, one cannot but recognize how much and wherein what one has, falls short of it.

Concerning oneself only with one's own dogs, one is liable to become astigmatic in looking at them. One may complacently accept one's own as a standard and make no effort at improvement; or, just as likely, the minor faults of one's stock may appear major ones, impossible to correct through any scheme of breeding.

To compare one's dogs with those of other successful breeders is by no means a waste of time. It shows one not only what one has, but also what one wants to obtain.

The best place to do this is at the dog shows. There the best dogs of the community are on public exhibition. There breeders and exhibitors meet and discuss the merits and demerits of their dogs and take counsel in the solution of their problems. It is for them a holiday on which to ride their hobby.

An exhibitor is usually glad of the intelligent interest in his dogs on the part of a spectator and will permit the examination of his exhibit at the bench. The judging is, of course, public, and to sit at the ringside, catalogue of the show in hand, and watch the sorting of a numerous entry is as entertaining as it is enlightening. Judges of dog shows are human and fallible; their awards do not always meet with nor merit the approbation of spectators. At most shows, however, the awards are pretty sound and, in the absence of specific and well formulated reasons why one should not accept the judge's verdict, it is safe to assume that it is correct.

Some of the comment which one will overhear at the ringside about the various dogs in competition is worth listening to; but one will do well to consider how much of it is prejudiced and how much merely ignorant. In the heat of partisanship, words which should never be spoken sometimes escape. One should consider not only which dogs win and which dogs are defeated but the reasons for their triumph or their rejection.

Even when the breeder has no dog with which he may reasonably expect to win, he is often wise to enter the best he has in the show and to exhibit him there. The possession of a dog will give him an entree to breeders' discussions, if he will avail himself of it. The opportunity to listen and ask questions is frequently valuable.

Rivalries of breeders are often bitter, but plans and ideas are seldom secret. The comments on the type and attributes of the dogs by the exhibitors are often illuminating. Many of the exhibitors know their breeds quite as well as does the judge who makes the official awards. To be a successful breeder of dogs, it is necessary that one know the breed one is manipulating well enough to recognize the comparative merits of competing dogs. One may not choose to be a licensed judge of the breed, but one should be sufficiently familiar with the nuances of faults and virtues of that breed to be able to judge it if called upon.

The judge of dogs exercises a critical faculty. The breeder is more than a mere critic—he is a craftsman. If he is a careful craftsman, he will know not only how to make it but also what it is he seeks to make.

The how and the what are equally important. One is of little service without the other. The laws of breeding are the same whether they are to be applied to humming birds or to elephants, to Chihuahuas or to Great Danes. The breeder who can breed successfully one variety can breed another with equal success if only he will formulate with equal vividness the ideal toward which he is going to work. He need not exchange his lathe for another: he has only to change the spindle to execute the new design.

The breeder will not seek to breed pigs from porcupines, nor Mexican Hairless dogs from Old English Sheepdogs. To know what materials to employ, it is necessary to know what the finished product is intended to be like.

All dogs of a given breed are in many ways alike but all are different, one from another, in details. The dogs of any long time breeder are prone to greater resemblance to each other than are the members of the variety in general. This resemblance is due to the reflection of the breeder's ideal in his stock. One breeder lays his emphasis upon the perfection of one feature of the variety, another breeder chooses to emphasize another feature. The attribute which a breeder chooses to emphasize is the expression of his own personality; nay, of his very character.

It is impossible to lay equal stress upon every aspect of a variety. Of course, any wise breeder will seek to produce well-balanced dogs, dogs of much excellence in all their departments and without glaring faults anywhere. But, willy-nilly, one man may be a stickler for correct heads; to another, coat will seem of primary importance; the third will consider the propulsive power of the hindquarters the absolute sine qua non for excellence. Each of these men will seek also to obtain as much merit as possible in all parts of the dogs, but the one attribute which is their hobby will mark their stock.

It is impossible to avoid such an over-emphasis upon one virtue. Breeders do not intend to become cranks about a single feature. Their intent is to emphasize the excellence of the whole animal, but to all of us there are primary essentials. Something in our own nature, character, or experience, something we do not recognize has dictated what those primary (for us, at least) essentials are to be. We have no will to permit the tail to wag the dog, nor a good coat to obscure a bad structure, or a classical head to blind one to shortcomings of body.

This over-emphasis upon a single point of excellence would be well enough if it could be made without neglect of other equally important points. It cannot be. When over-emphasis is laid upon one feature, under-emphasis upon another feature must result. Every breeder worthy of the name will make such over-emphasis but the better the breeder, the more he will strive not to entertain a lopsided ideal. He will seek to consider the whole dog, not merely the various parts. He will criticize his ideal from time to time just as he criticizes his stock to ascertain its embodiment of that ideal.

The ideal need not and ought not to be static. Familiarity and experience with a breed will lead to a gradual change of concept. Things which one has thought primary may later appear to be of only secondary moment and one may come to a realization that a feature which one has thought of incidental interest is really an essential aspect of the breed.

But the ideal should be formed with a reason for every aspect of it and should not be changed without an equally good reason. When that good reason presents itself, one should not hesitate to sacrifice one's preconception.

Not only are the ideals of the individual breeder not static, but the breeds are themselves not static. Within the framework of the standard, the ideals of the whole lot of fanciers of that breed may change. What they desired last decade may have been attained and a whole new nebula of minutiae of type may have appeared in their heavens. This change is a slow one and the individual breeder will conform unconsciously, if he is in at all intimate contact with the fancy as a whole.

There are fads that beset breeds. These mere fads are not to be mistaken for the evolutionary trend of the breed. They are merely ephemeral penchants for some spectacular phenomenon and are prone to last a season or two and to disappear.

The drift of the breed toward a finer concept of perfection is to be encouraged and followed. The fads are to be ignored. So to ignore them may prevent one's winning with one's dogs under faddist judges while the fads endure but, in the long run, one will have better dogs and more success with them if one does not run after each showy and reasonless innovation that appears. Fads are liable to sidetrack the major purpose, to breed logically constructed and well balanced dogs.

Most persons who mate two dogs of a breed together to get some puppies, do merely that. They have no accurately formulated ideal of what they wish to produce. The true breeder has in his mind a blueprint of the perfect dog and he sets out to execute in flesh and blood and bone the plans he has formed. Such a breeder knows what he wants. He is the architect of his strain's destiny.

An intelligently formulated ideal is the effective breeder's first requisite. From that ideal he will choose the stock with which to realize it.

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