Thematic Articles

Breeding and Selection

The main purpose of producing a litter should be the development of the breed in the broadest sense, and in particular the development of your own breeding programme. Those who always use their own sires on their own females and repeat litters from which nothing particularly good has resulted should perhaps question their motives or their knowledge.

A puppy should only be kept when there are grounds to believe that as an adult it will be better than its mother. If not, it is a mistake to keep a puppy for sentimental reasons alone. If a litter is acceptable but contains nothing that could serve as future breeding material in your programme, it is sensible to sell the entire litter.

If the litter was bred to improve specific characteristics, those characteristics should be sought in the litter. This is not always easy. Features such as the shape of the hindquarters become obvious only when a puppy is sufficiently mature. Other characteristics, such as proportions, head shape and angulation, may be visible to an experienced eye as early as eight weeks of age.

It is a good idea to keep notes on the development of puppies from birth to eight weeks of age. Video recordings are useful because they provide a real record that can later be compared with the adult dogs. With reliable data, a breeder learns to distinguish promising puppies from those better suited as pets. Puppy selection is not an exact science and probably never will be – there will always be puppies that surprise you.

Of course, things such as an incorrect bite or missing teeth cannot be predicted, but an experienced breeder should be able to identify puppies in a litter that are likely to have correct proportions, angulation and heads.