A good breeder stays abreast of new scientific based research and adopts the policies or practices as they become readily available, not to continue to do things and techniques that apparently worked int he past but obviously haven’t.

For Clumber breeders this involve, I think each may be of equal importance so these are not numbered)

  • adopting and doing something to breed dogs that are structurally sound including but not limited to
    • breeding dogs that have nice hips and unlikely to develop  hip arthritis due to hip dysplasia
    • breeding dogs that have nice eye lid rims and unlikely to develop  entropion or ectropion
  • adopting and doing something to breed dogs that are mentally healthy and responsive to owner’s needs
  • adopting and doing something to breed dogs that have their breeds’ natural, easy care coats
  • adopting and doing something to breed dogs that are statistically more likely to be genetically healthy, at this stage that means ensuring the COI is LOW, if a breeder doesn’t know what COI is, then they don’t know enough to be breeding
  • never breeding dogs together that may produce a puppy affected by PDP1 deficiency or EIC, or any other autosomal recessive disease for which there is a test available (if a breeder doesn’t know how to do this, they should not be breeding)
  • ensuring the dogs maintain a close semblance to the country’s adopted breeder standard, in Australia that is this one (or search ANKC Clumber on Google is the page gets moved)
  • takes a pride in their dogs that are at home or sold, and makes themselves readily available for consults on anything, good or bad, their buyers may have to contend with (extensive contact details are supplied on our contract of sale, and available here)
  • makes attempts to have their records easily accessible to the public (websites, Facebook pages, etc)