Dog rehoming after breeding???

[Twoshoesnewshoes]

Is this a thing?
I’ve enquired about rehoming a couple of dogs (I mean a couple of enquiries- I only want one dog!)
I’ve just noticed that one of the advertisers also has two other dogs , different breeds but also four years old, up for sale.
no reason given for rehoming in the advert.
is this a thing, to rehome a dog after she has had a few litters?
he is a registered breeder.
i am just a bit shocked. We had two litters from our family pet, and every pup I’ve bought has come from a similar set up. It’s a given that the mum will just live out her days at home.
but now I think about it I can see that doesn’t work as a business model at all if you’re a breeder, you’d have a dozen older ladies in your kitchen!
does this set up indicate a puppy farm? Should I swerve?
should I report??
help!

There is a breeder not too far from me. Only breeds German Shepherds and is very careful re blood lines and all dogs are hip tested and only healthy dogs are bred. The dogs are in kennels but they have heat and light, regularly cleaned and all dogs are exercised in their fields every day. There is ongoing training. Breeder also offers boarding but only for German Shepherds.
After his bitches have had 2 or 3 litters they are offered for sale. If no interest they stay there.
I would actually be interested in buying a no longer breeding bitch as it would be nice to give them a homely life. I would be vetted prior to purchase.
However, a breeder selling 4 different breeds of bitches sounds very suspicious to me and could come with a whole lot of anxieties and health problems.

Talking of gene pools - it worries me how many litters a stud dog can sire. There are a couple of cocker spaniel studs up in North Scotland that seem to be siring every litter between them. It's no good restricting the females and still letting the males have 50 litters a year.
I appreciate bitches are limited for their own health, but I don't think it does much good for the health of the breed over all not restricting the sires.

That's how we got our girl. She was kept by a breeder until she was 5, with the dog warden trying to take her off him as she was being mistreated. Finally, when he considered her too old, he gave her to the warden.

The breeder we got our dog from sells retired females and stud dogs, but it all looks very above board and she always posts photos of the older dogs happy in their new homes with quotes from the new owners, and does a little write up about their services and puppies etc before they go. We wanted a specific breed and live in an apartment in a busy city so knew we couldn’t offer a home to an adopted dog who might be reactive and much better served somewhere quiet with a big garden. Our dog is completely perfect so I don’t see the issue with finding a professional breeder who is health and temperament testing and proud of their animals. I found that much more responsible than a backyard hobby breeder to be honest.

I genuinely think that there should be a strict limit on the use of stud dogs. if in a small breed you have two closely related dogs siring half the puppies, you have a high risk of really screwing things up.

I do too. Even in a breed as numerous as cocker spaniels, it can't be good. Just had a quick look and one popular dog has sired 98 litters!

We have two retired show dogs from a hobby breeder. We adopted the boy at two - he and the other male dog were no longer getting along, and the girl at 3 or 4 as she'd had her two litters and we had her spayed as a condition of rehoming her.
Our breeder usually has just one kc registered litter a year and keeps a couple who she hopes will be the best to develop her lines. They live in the family home. If you are a hobby breeder you need to be resigned to rehoming at some point as otherwise you’d have too many dogs!
the breeders I know do it to continue breeds and show.

If you are a hobby breeder you need to be resigned to rehoming at some point as otherwise you’d have too many dogs!
the breeders I know do it to continue breeds and show.

I’m sorry, but I think this is a very pretty line to feed to people who don’t know better. Or, even worse, to justify poor breeder/buyer etiquette.

A breeder who get rid of their dogs after they can no longer breed is not a responsible or good breeder. There’s no way around that. I don’t know a single breeder, who I would happily buy a puppy from, who does this. If they do this, IME chances are they are unscrupulous elsewhere. Dogs should be part of their family, and parting with them because ‘it’s expensive’ is a weak excuse.

I’m sure people will accuse me of being a privileged whatsit, but if your finances aren’t good enough to breed from your dogs and keep those dogs then you don’t breed. The solution should not be to rehome the dog. The fact people think it’s okay, or they’re doing the breeder a favour, boggles my mind.

Um... probably not.

My younger dog comes from a very serious 'hobby breeder' who has been breeding for decades. She breeds a litter every couple of years. So far as I am aware, she has only ever rehomed one bitch, iirc because she wasn't getting on with another dog in the household and seemed to want a more peaceful life. Otherwise, all her dogs live out their lives with her.

Same with ours. That’s why she went to the rescue and our girl wasn’t advertised it was by word of mouth. We had the rescue come to us at home for a 90 minute interview and then we had a drive to the breeder and another 75 minutes before she said ok! And we all had to go to the breeder to meet them otherwise it was a straight no.

Honestly I'm amazed at people who think a breeder getting a rescue involved in rehoming is a positive thing!

Well it was positive for us. We’ve ended up with the most wonderful pet who we adore. She’s almost 13 now and fits perfectly in with our family.

I think that's pretty much what happened with flat coat retrievers. A champion dog sired a tonne of litters many decades ago, narrowed the gene pool and that's why as a breed they have such high rates of cancer.

I know with spaniels I'm often surprised at how high the coi of some litters is when you consider they're a numerous breed.

😮 That is not good.

One of the great great grandparents in one of my dogs lines has sired something like 150 litters!

How do you look at that up?

😱 That's been a nice little earner for his owner!
I read years ago you'd be hard pushed to find a working cocker without at least one of the two very prolific stud dogs in their pedigree. It must be the same in this dog's case.

I'm sure there are even more prolific sires within recent history.

Interestingly, despite only being a great great grandparent (might be an extra great in there I can't quite remember), I'm often asked if she is a Drakeshead Labrador.

If you know their KC registered name, you can look up relatives - offspring and siblings. I used the cocker spaniel database, but I think you can look it up on the KC website too.
Just googled two bitches I know of. One has had four litters. The other had two litters in one calendar year. Aren't both of those against KC rules?

Ahh ok thank you. I’d been told mine had had two litters - off to investigate.

@SpanielsGalore I think 4 litters is the max allowed (although I'm sure there was discussion about reducing to 3) and there's an exception for 2 litters a year if say it's Jan & Dec where there's been a heat cycle in between i.e not back to back litters

Thank you again was very interesting.

So she did have 2 litters in separate years and I’ve gone down a rabbit hole looking at her offspring. I’d never heard of COI either and hers is 19% with her offspring even higher.

@SpanielsGalore - Twatdog's sire has about 70 litters, I think.

I do agree there are issues with overbreeding of particular studs.

I am less concerned by Twatdog sire's having so many litters simply because his own COI is very low and his health scores are excellent. I'd be far more concerned if his own COI was higher and he was unhealthy.

And, being very crude, his owners are cautious about the sorts of bitches they let his offspring be born to - no high COIs, no high elbow-hip scores etc. Partly because of protecting the breed, and partly because if you breed your stud with unhealthy dogs, it devalues your kennel name.

Oh I thought it was 3. I shall have to Google.
The two litters were 10th February and 2nd October. You'd be hard pushed to get a cycle in-between there I would have thought. But I only have experience of my bitch whose seasons were 10 months apart. Seems a lot to put the bitch through regardless of it being allowed.

@LandSharksAnonymous Yes. At least some are only allowing matings with health tested bitches these days.
It's probably a lot more complicated than I think and I could waste hours looking into it all.
My current two cockers are from the same kennel, so share a lot of relatives. But they also share relatives with my first two cockers, who were born 16 years earlier and almost 600 miles away. And that's only looking at their 5 generation pedigree certificate.
Not sure what point I am making there. It just surprised me they would be connected. But I guess they all go back to the two aforementioned prolific sires.