Mandarine, please don''t take this personally, because I don''t mean it as a comment on you personally, but as someone who devotes a considerable amount of time and energy working with rescue dogs and who has spent a lifetime around dogs and learning about dogs, I have to say this.
This link is extremely disturbing, but you absolutely must look at it before you make a decision to breed your dog. Millions of animals are euthanized in shelters accross America every year. Fully 70% of cats and kittens and well over half of the dogs that enter American shelters are put to sleep. That includes cute little puppies. In the best case scenario, if you are responsible and careful and do all the research and breed your dog, there are still potential significant negative consequences, including:
- the potential for them to go to bad homes. You don''t have the resources to screen homes the way a rescue group or humane society would, and that means there are very high odds that at least one of those puppies will end up dumped in a shelter that will then most likely euthanize it, or worse, neglected or abused. I think its great that you would want to find them all homes, but you really have to be an expert to screen potential homes for pets and weed out the bad ones.
- one or more of the puppies could end up like your dog, but more likely they won''t. As others have dictated, those puppies have only 50% of your dogs genes. Additionally, part of the reason that people put so much time and effort into breeding dogs is to have lines that will "breed true." That means that only with generations of screening and expertise would you be able to have a reasonable hope of predicting the offspring''s personalities. Dog''s personalities are often unpredictable even in the best of circumstances.
- even if nothing goes wrong, the puppies are everything you hoped, and all of them go to good homes (extremely unlikely because of what I explained above), you are still contributing to the pet overpopulation problem. Take a trip to your local animal control unit or human society or shelter. At least look at all those dogs - so many of them are sweet, wonderful animals who will meet their end alone and in many cases never having known a loving family of their own. I don''t know about you, but that breaks my heart every time I think of it, and I don''t think I could live with myself if I knew I was contributing to that. Every single puppy you place in a home of a friend or family member is a spot in a home that some dog or puppy wasting away in a shelter could have had. And FYI, not having your dog neutered but keeping him supervised is no guarantee that he won''t father a litter, in fact, chances are very high that he will. And I don''t want to sound harsh, but by the time your vet found testicular or other forms of cancer in your dog that are much much more likely in unneutered males, it could be way too late to do anything about it, and even if its not, cancer treatment in dogs is extremely expensive.
I know that dog and cat spay/neuter is partly an American thing, but consider that studies and anecdotal evidence show that dogs that are not fixed are actually less happy in many cases than those that are. One reason for this is sexual frustration if they are not allowed to breed but still have the urge to. Another is the increased aggression and other behavioral issues mentioned above. I even saw a study that suggested that dogs that aren''t neutered might have a serious problem yielding the alpha spot to humans in their household (or pack as far as the dog is concerned), leading to a great deal of anxiety and stress for the dog. I know that I''m not going to change your mind about this, but you really should know, objectively, that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports spaying or neutering as the best possible choice for the mental and physical health of any domestic dog or cat.
OK, stepping down off of soap box. This really isn''t personal Mandarine, its just something that I feel incredibly strongly about because of my personal experiences with and reading/reseearch about dog rescue. I know I probably won''t change your mind, but I would really urge you to try to read what I''ve written objectively, and at least take a trip to your local shelter and look at the dogs that those puppies would be taking homes away from, in the spirit of making a fully informed choice. Maybe even urge your FMIL to come with you - maybe she will fall in love with one of the many wonderful rescue dogs who needs a home.
hehe
I get it from my vet everytime we go for a visit!. It''s just a personal decision and I just don''t think it''s natural.
