BTW - Joe Biden just bought a puppy. A GSD from what seems uncomfortably close to puppy mill status...
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/harrisburg_politics/Kennel_where_Biden_bought_puppy_is_cited.html
As a general rule, try to avoid breeders with 80+ dogs and multiple litters for sale each month.
I’ve also read he plans to have someone else train the puppy...sounds like all he got was the photo op.
>As a general rule, try to avoid breeders with 80+ dogs and multiple litters for sale each month.
I’ve also read he plans to have someone else train the puppy...sounds like all he got was the photo op.<
I agree with you about the avoidance of huge breeding facilities. That said, at least Biden is making the effort to have his puppy trained and socialized by someone who is experienced (a police dog handler, if memory serves). Better that than a GSD pup left to its own devices because Senator Biden has very little free time, and will have even less in the near future.
The problem is that ANY conformation class (dogs, cats, horses) rewards looks over anything else.
It's important when you interview a breeder to make sure that breeder is doing something from a performance standpoint, something suitable to the breed.
We had the time of our lives at the National Labrador Retriever Specialty (a show for one breed only) in October. They had every performance event you can think of -- agility, obedience, rally o, flyball, tracking, retriever -- and quite a number of conformation type people came out to try to put a retriever working certificate on their dogs.
It's a pretty simple test (a single land retrieve live flyer, and two single water retrieves to show that the dog is willing to re-enter the water) but some of the Labs had obviously never seen a real mallard duck before. I was one of the gunners on the land test, and you could tell the newbies . . . some of them barked at the duck, some ran away and hid, and some decided to carry this beautiful new toy off somewhere privately and bury it . . . .
Of course, the show people had a good laugh at me when I put my two little roughneck field dogs up for a Conformation Certificate. Had no idea how to stack them or trot them out . . . and the dogs were like, "Why is this strange woman prying my mouth open and fooling with my tail?" But they both got their certificates!