CKC Dog Trivia

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This month CKC has decided to add a fun new feature to our monthly newsletter. We want to test your knowledge! Periodically we will ask a dog trivia question, and the first person to answer the question correctly will be awarded a CKC logo coffee mug. Please email your response to editor@ckcusa.com.

This issues trivia question is:
What are the names of the two famous dogs shown below,
and what are they famous for?

FEATURED ARTICLE II

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BREEDING BETTER WORKING DOGS
By J. Jeffrey Bragg

Part I: What Are We After?

Breeding working dogs is a specialized subject. You won't get the word on this from the popular dog breeding books. Before we even think about breeding, we must decide just what it is we want to accomplish. It isn't just to produce more dogs. If it were, the simplest thing would be to go to the pound. Your purpose might be search and rescue work, dog sledding, herding livestock, or hunting wild game. No matter what your dogs do, there are traits that all good working dogs have in common.

Working mentality or attitude is, or should be, the paramount consideration. The dog must want to do what he is asked and trained to do; he must have the right mind-set. That's essential; force-training only means misery for dog and trainer alike.

Working mentality is easily lost by selecting and breeding for other things. If you doubt it, just look at the many show-dog breeds that started out as useful dogs, yet can no longer perform the tasks for which they once existed. Working mentality must be your key consideration.

Working dogs must be hardy and vigorous. Have you ever watched a good sleddog team, a search and rescue dog, a pointer quartering a field, or a police dog scenting out evidence? The intensity of good working dogs is impressive. Working dogs must often spend long hours at their task without rest, working in all kinds of bad weather. It's not a walk in the park - severe stress situations are the norm, so working dogs can't be weaklings.

Health is essential. Some dogs stay healthy all their lives with minimal veterinary support. Others need a team of vets to keep them going. What's the difference? The dog that does fine on his own is innately healthy; for a working dog it helps to be bred that way.

If you want healthy working dogs, sensible feeding helps. Nutrition is at the root of many insoluble veterinary problems. But achieving good canine nutrition isn't simple. Dogs are carnivores that can adapt to an omnivorous diet. They need meat; they cannot meet their protein requirements from vegetable sources. They can handle well-cooked cereals, but they can't exist on carbohydrates alone.
Some people go overboard on rich diets and supplementation. A dog that requires hyper-nutrition to perform adequately is not a good performer.

Generous proportions of meat and fat are essential. Meat satisfies the dog's need for animal protein; fat is his energy source. That's important - humans produce energy from carbohydrates, using fat largely as a storage system. Dogs go about it differently, burning fat for energy, not carbohydrates. Don't even think about putting your working dog on a low-fat diet! Those who feed commercial rations will need to watch their dogs carefully, tracking energy needs and supplementing with varying levels of meat and fat according to stress, climate, and workload. Vitamin and mineral supplementation may be a good idea, particularly vitamin E, which deteriorates quickly in storage. Minerals in all but premium specialist rations may not be in easily assimilated form.

Don't be taken in by slick national advertising. Big companies often spend the real money on the fight for market share while cutting production costs to the bone. If you can manage to prepare some or all of your dogs' rations from scratch, using ingredients you control, your dogs may be better off. Otherwise, learn all you can about canine nutrition, look over the smaller specialist producers - and be prepared to pay a hefty price for serious working dog nutrition.

Last word on health: if you breed it in and feed it in, chances are you'll have a robust, hearty working dog with relatively few veterinary problems.

I've said nothing about beauty and "conformation." Aren't these things terribly important to working dogs, too? The short answer to that one is "no." We've had a hundred years of beauty-and-conformation contests for dogs; the end result has been the loss of many breeds as serious working dogs. Who would want to hunt with an Irish Setter out of top show bloodlines, all looks and no bird sense! Beauty contributes nothing to performance.

You can't breed a working dog by breeding for physique, either. You're better off to leave it alone, let form follow function, and concentrate on results. If your dog has a slight physical handicap, try to compensate for it in breeding; otherwise, let performance decide if the dog is built right.

"Heart" is something we all want in a working dog. A difficult trait to pin down precisely, but I think we all know it when we see it. It's that capacity that lets the dog win through when we thought he couldn't possibly do it. It's determination, courage, positive mental attitude, tremendous physical capacity and energy reserve, plus that desire to please the Boss who expects him to do this thing. It's something precious that deserves to be cherished in breeding.

Physical robustness and capability - cardiovascular capacity, energy metabolism, oxygen uptake - need to be maximized. If the dog's physiology isn't athletic, his "heart" will just get him into trouble.
Trainability is another factor. Some purposes are more training-intensive than others. Scent hounds and sight hounds depend largely on their instincts; police and search dogs need training to develop their technique.

Cooperation and bonding back up trainability. It's so much easier to train with a co-operative dog who is highly bonded to you and wants very much to please you. There are other important traits, but you need to think about this for yourself. It's important to be conscious of just what qualities you consider vital in your working breed. Try to think analytically about what our goals in breeding working dogs should be. Without that effort to define our objectives, we won't achieve much.

But surely there are some methods that we can use to improve the odds! And aren't there also some practices we would do well to avoid? Part Two of this article will reveal strategies we can follow.

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Other Names: Australian Queensland Heeler, Blue Heeler, Red Heeler
Origin: Australia
Group: Herding
Coat: Medium-Short, straight and hard
Color: Blue speckled, red speckled, red, blue, blue w/ white, red w/ white, blue or red speckled w/ red or blue markings.
Height: 17-20 inches
Weight: 35-50 pounds

For this month's "Breed of the Month" we are going to"The Outback." Australia is legendary for throwing off some of the toughest, most bizarre, and most amazing creatures anyone has ever seen. This is the reason why the Australian Cattle Dog can come from no place other than Australia!

This dog is beyond doubt a professional at work. Its' history can be traced back to the 1800s, before the time of the Australian Cattle Dog. Most of the cattle dogs then were either good for one thing or another. The imported herding dogs were incapable of controlling the undomesticated belligerent cattle on long excursions; most herding dogs used then drove the herd by barking and ran themselves and the anxious cattle to exhaustion. It was this fault in the other breeds that prompted a gentleman by the name of Thomas Hall to breed his two blue merle smooth-coated Collies to a Dingo in 1840. The Dingo was chosen because it is a notorious silent, focused, and fearless worker and has a natural instinct to conserve energy. The crossed offspring turned out to be incredible workers. This cross became the building blocks for the breed. Further breeding incorporated some Dalmatian (not today's confirmation tainted Dalmatians) for loyalty to the owners, Bull Terrier for hardiness, and Australian Kelpie blood to reinstate the herding drive.

All factors that make this a tremendous breed can also make it become a bit troublesome. The breed's genetics combined with its physical ability can cause a predicament if the dog is not challenged both mentally and physically on a daily basis. Australian Cattle Dogs are bred to calculate and evaluate every situation and to learn quickly from their owners. This makes them ideal in not only herding, but also in police work, handicap assistance, tracking and article search, search and rescue, personal protection, and weight pulling is now becoming very popular among owners. They do make good family dogs, but they need attention and space. This is not a dog to stay cooped up in an apartment all day and wait patiently until their owner returns 9 hours later. Because of the fact that they have Dingo bred into them, they tend to have primitive tendencies. The females may try to dig out a burrow to give birth in and will wean the pups at 4 weeks instead of 8.

The Australian Cattle Dog is protective of and loyal to its owner, fearless and aware when working a herd, good-natured and compassionate with children, and ready in spirit. This makes the Australian Cattle Dog a breed truly commendable of being our "Breed of the Month".

Authored by: Crystal Simoneaux

For more information regarding this article email crystal@ckcusa.com

Breeds historic information was obtained from "The Atlas of Dog Breeds of the World" by Bonnie Wilcox, DVM and Chris Walkowicz

Did you know that you could advertise on CKC's Website?

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FEATURED ARTICLE III

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There's Something Special About Dapple
by Joe R. Lock, President, Suncoast Retriever/Bird Dog Assn

CKC registered Miniature Dachshund, Hot Diggity Dog, or "Dapple," to those who know and love her is one special little pup. Dapple was born with detached retinas in both eyes and if you didn't know before hand, you would never know she was blind.

Dapple's problem didn't seem to bother 14 year old Ashley Knight and her mother Holly of Camden, West Virginia. They lovingly adopted the pup and decided to raise her in spite of her disability. "People don't even know she is blind," Ashley eagerly told me. "People are shocked and sometimes don't believe it," Holly added. Dapple is very friendly and doesn't seem to mind strangers. That is a good trait because Ashley is very social and all of her friends at school seem to be really fond of the little dog.

Holly also told me that they had Dapple spayed so that this trait could not be passed on, but a pet with a disability is no reason not to adopt it and offer it a loving home. Ashley has an Arabian horse that she enters in 4-H projects and she said that Dapple and the horse get along fine. "About the only thing that Dapple is afraid of is the dishwasher and the washing machine," Holly said.

Training the dog was no different than training any other dog. Dapple responds to the basic obedience commands such as sit, stay, lie down, and heel. Dapple responded fast and well to learning. Ashley said that she really didn't have to make any adaptations to her training techniques. This writer believes that just as in humans, a sightless dog will develop even stronger olfactory and audio perceptions. I'm sure these stronger developed senses helped in the dog's training. The dog is also house broken. She loves to ride in the car and will sit in one's lap while that person works on a computer. She has a great nose and Ashley is considering entering her in CKC tracking events someday. Ashley also told me she will enter Dapple in some 4-H all breed junior handler dog events.

Holly Knight feels that companionship is the real issue. Ashley also has a disability. She is a type 1 juvenile insulin dependent diabetic. Dapple and Ashley seem to have bonded like few other human/canine companions. Could the disability be the reason? Who knows? But, after talking with Holly and Ashley, this writer has to ask, what disability?

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CKC would like to see your canine buddies in action! Each month we will pick a theme and ask you to submit photos of your dog(s) relating to the theme of the month. You can e-mail or mail your snapshot ATTN: Snapshot of the Month, PO BOX 1627, Walker, LA 70785. The winner will receive a custom made CKC T-Shirt with their snapshot on the back. All we ask is that you please include your name,
address and daytime phone number.

July's Theme of the Month
is
"Me and My Buddy"

For "Me and My Buddy" theme we would like you to submit pictures of you and your dog together just being friends! We will accept pictures of all breeds, shapes, sizes and colors.

Congratulations.....

The winner of June's Theme of the Month, "The Dog Days of Summer" is Jimmy Woods with a picture of his dog Hank. Below is the picture submitted. We would like to thank everyone for submitting pictures for the "Snapshot of the Month" & keep them coming!!

Note: All pictures submitted become property of Continental Kennel Club and
may be used at our discretion

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EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH

This month Continental Kennel Club recognizes Sarah M. for her outstanding attitude towards work. Sarah always strives to please. While excelling at her job, she still managed to graduate Valedictorian of her high school class. She will be leaving us soon to begin her college career in pursuit of becoming an Architect. We know Sarah will always surpass at everything she does, and she will be greatly missed here at CKC.

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If you would like to submit an article or write a letter to the editor for upcoming newsletters, you can submit your letter or article to ATTN: Newsletter, PO BOX 1627, Walker, LA 70785 or e-mail to editor@ckcusa.com.

Note: All articles submitted become property of Continental Kennel Club and may be
used at our discretion.

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Copyright© 2003 Continental Kennel Club, Inc. - No part of this publication may be reproduced without the express written permission by the publisher.