Breeding Dogs for Dummies

Rating:
Summary: Only for those who want to breed top dogs
Review: Beauchamp, a highly successful breeder and judge, makes very sure your motives are right for breeding top class dogs and makes no bones (pun not intended!) about discouraging anyone who thinks they can do this for profit. Takes you step by step through finding the right mentor and selecting the best possible stock to establish a bloodline that will produce typey, healthy and mentally sound puppies. He makes genetics really easy to understand and how important they are in developing a breeding program. I show my own dogs now and I'm not actually a beginner but far from achieving the goals I've set. This book will be kept handy for a lot of years to come I'm sure!
I think what is especially responsible about this book is that it not only cautions against breeding without making sure suitable homes are waiting but gives some great tips on how to go about doing it.

Rating:
Summary: Breeding Dogs for Dummies
Review: By some one wanting to start a Hobby Kennel the right way!

I bought this book seeking knowledge on how to start a good breeding plan. I thought Mr.Beauchamp started the book with a wealth of knowledge aimed at making people understand what they where getting them self in to. Great start but from that point I felt very confussed. I had been looking at a prospect of a puppy from a great looking Champion. I started to doubt my plan as I read. I don't feel that novices should be pelted with the great idea of Inbreeding and Inlinebreeding. He does say that Inbreeding is not for the novice but at the same time it made me start looking in that direction. He even went as far as to recommend against Outcross breeding,so what is the novice to do? I did feel that the whelping chapter gave some good advise.

I don't feel that this book should have been written for the Dummie series of books as it made me feel like I needed more knowledge and a kennel already in place to have benifitted from this book.

Rating:
Summary: Complete Rubbish
Review: I bought this book thinking it would be as good as the other for dummies titles I've read, but I was wrong. It seems to me as if this book was written by a novice.

For instance, in one of the sidebars (titled "Old wives tales"), the author states that "the dominant gene prevails" and breeding a dog of one trait to another with the opposite trait (like tall to short for example) will never produce offspring that's in between. He obviously hasn't heard of co-recessive or co-dominant genes or gene mutations. In the same article, he also claims inter-species matings is impossible- I guess he's never heard of or seen a Bengal Cat, Liger or Mule. His statement about breeding dogs to their wilder counterparts like wolves will never better their hunting skills is also false (there have been many instances of dogs mating with wolves and the resulting puppies had traits of both parents, the controvertial American Indian Dog is one example). Perhaps he should have taken the chance to explain how these myths came by instead of proving his lack of knowledge by being a cocky know-it-all.

The rest of the book is nothing but articles concerning dogs and dog breeding in general- the only detailed articles (and there are a lot of them) are the ones bragging about the sucess of the author's breeding stock, the countries his breeding stock has travelled to and his credentials. For example, he talks about how important matching pedigrees is, how he does it all the time, how successful he is at doing it, but never tells us how we should go about it.

There is nothing in this book on choosing a potential owner for the puppies, only a couple of paragraphs saying that people should avoid giving out their dogs to those who only way one because the breed is a latest fad. Perhaps a sample question list would have been useful.

The fact that such a reputed publisher would let a narcissist who doesn't even understand basic genetics write a "How To" book worries me. A novice breeder would have better luck finding out about dog breeding in a general pet care book.

Please do not buy this book. The only time it'll come into use is when you run out of newspapers to toilet train your puppies with.

Rating:
Summary: Please Stop Here.
Review: I'm really hoping after you read this you will really consider what a waste of money this is.
Please do not buy this book and think that it will show you step by step how to raise a healthy happy pup. It will only get you so far. If you've never bred before, more than likely you will run into many problem that this book cannot answer or you have trouble following the directions or whatever. You will more than likely end up with sick pups, and/or a dead mother. Please Please Please don't buy this book and think oh, now I'm going to breed. I dare you to take a walk into an animal shelter and look into the eyes of the many homeless dogs there and tell me you still want to breed. I know you've probably heard this, but millions of dogs die every year die because there just aren't enough homes for them all. So please consider adopting a homeless dog, or go to a breed rescue. 'Adopt One Until There Are None'
This book may be very well written, but I think I speak for many dog rescuers out there that this book is going to cause many problems because people are going to think this is a step - by - step way to have great dogs.

Rating:
Summary: There are many reason for wanting to know about breeding
Review: My roomate recently rescued a pregant female dog and was literally unable to find a *single* book on dog reproduction in our strongly Animal Rights influenced community library so we bought this book. Might it ever occur to the writer of review 2 that there might be Humane reasons other than making money for wanting a book on dog breeding? Should the rescuers of pregnant animals be prevented from reading books that will tell them how to take care of their charges, safely deliver a litter, and care for the puppies afterwards? There are a lot of abandoned pregnant dogs needing new homes and thank goodness we are still allowed access to materials ( though we had to pay, the library was loaded with "adopt a dog" material, which we had *already* done and not a single book on how to help our adopted pregnant dog! )
This is a very good, detailed, informative book, and very HELPFUL. If we had listened to Reviewer 2's advice and not bought this book, we might have made mistakes in caring for our furry refugee, and what's humane about that?
Censorship is an attempt to control access to information. Censorship can hurt.