My Hebrew teacher used to say "Without the rain, you'd never appreciate the sun." Of course he meant it as a metaphore but there is some literal reality to that as well. Lately I've had a little too much appreciation for the sun.
The last time we got any good herding in was at the beginning of the year. I took the two dogs into the 60 mph winds and we drove out the the California coastline. We were attending a herding trial. I sent the entry in too late to get a place for Tsuki, but Freeway was entered in Junior Herding Dog. There were reports of flooding all over. Our drive was not too eventful, one road was flooding when I went in. We had to leave the back way to go around it at the end of the day. But Freeway did make two successful runs and so he starts his new year as Dogplay's Roadside Rescue, JHD.
After that, however, the arenas have been just too muddy for training. So I've been spening my time on my new Dog Play Mall. I'm really married to the concept. The idea is that there are a lot of people like me, sharing our lives with mixed breed dogs, but a huge percentage of dog related products assume your dog is some identifiable breed. It is really frustrating to have to dig through all those breeds in the hopes of finding something that is really friendly to MY dogs. And I really hate those "If it isn't a [breed name], it's just a dog" Ha ha ha I'm supposed to be laughing, I guess. But I'm no more in favor of breedism than I am in favor of racism. Of course some breeds are better at some things than other breeds. That is the point of breeds - to get specialized superior abilities for some specific purposes. But why does pride in one's breed require being snobby about other breeds. And this whole thing of people relating to dog by reference to what the breed is, stinks similarly. That is what sets people up to pay absurd amounts of money for a dog. They pay for the label, not the care in breeding.
What's that? You aren't understanding? What I'm saying is that the real value in breeds is careful selection according to identifiable characteristics. When this selection begins to have consistent reliable predictable results in reproducing those characteristics you have a breed. But some people are more interested in simply the closed gene pool than in concerning themselves about the selection process. So people pay large amounts of money for a dog that is geneticially full of problems. Arrrgh
The last time we got any good herding in was at the beginning of the year. I took the two dogs into the 60 mph winds and we drove out the the California coastline. We were attending a herding trial. I sent the entry in too late to get a place for Tsuki, but Freeway was entered in Junior Herding Dog. There were reports of flooding all over. Our drive was not too eventful, one road was flooding when I went in. We had to leave the back way to go around it at the end of the day. But Freeway did make two successful runs and so he starts his new year as Dogplay's Roadside Rescue, JHD.
After that, however, the arenas have been just too muddy for training. So I've been spening my time on my new Dog Play Mall. I'm really married to the concept. The idea is that there are a lot of people like me, sharing our lives with mixed breed dogs, but a huge percentage of dog related products assume your dog is some identifiable breed. It is really frustrating to have to dig through all those breeds in the hopes of finding something that is really friendly to MY dogs. And I really hate those "If it isn't a [breed name], it's just a dog" Ha ha ha I'm supposed to be laughing, I guess. But I'm no more in favor of breedism than I am in favor of racism. Of course some breeds are better at some things than other breeds. That is the point of breeds - to get specialized superior abilities for some specific purposes. But why does pride in one's breed require being snobby about other breeds. And this whole thing of people relating to dog by reference to what the breed is, stinks similarly. That is what sets people up to pay absurd amounts of money for a dog. They pay for the label, not the care in breeding.
What's that? You aren't understanding? What I'm saying is that the real value in breeds is careful selection according to identifiable characteristics. When this selection begins to have consistent reliable predictable results in reproducing those characteristics you have a breed. But some people are more interested in simply the closed gene pool than in concerning themselves about the selection process. So people pay large amounts of money for a dog that is geneticially full of problems. Arrrgh
posted by Diane Blackman | 3:39 PM
<< Home