OUR OFFSPRING
A litter doesn't tell you very much about a breeding at eight weeks old. The interesting part comes later.
I follow Tuebor dogs as they grow and collect information about their health, temperament and development throughout their lives. Some I continue to see myself, while others I follow through their owners, health results, photos and updates over the years.
This has become increasingly valuable as more generations of my own breedings have been born.
From puppies to adults
Puppies change a lot as they grow.
Temperament develops with maturity and experience, and the same is true physically. Some things can be seen early, while others only become apparent months or years later.
This is why I don't consider a litter finished when the puppies leave. I want to know what those puppies eventually become as adult dogs.
Different homes
Tuebor dogs live in many different kinds of homes. Some live in the countryside, some in more populated areas. Some live with children, other dogs or other animals, and their owners have different levels of experience and different everyday routines.
Following dogs from the same families in different environments gives me useful information about temperament and development.
It also reminds me that dogs are individuals. Even siblings raised in the same litter can grow into quite different adults.
Health
I collect health information from Tuebor dogs throughout their lives. This includes health examination results as well as information reported by their owners.
Good results are important, but so are problems. Both help build a more realistic picture of what may exist within a family and what should be considered when planning future generations.
Not every dog is formally health tested, particularly those living purely as pets, so the information is never complete. Where there is enough data to be meaningful, health information may be published as aggregated statistics rather than as individual records.
The important part is that the information is collected, followed and used.
More than test results
Health results are only one part of what I want to know.
I am equally interested in what the dogs are like to live with. How they mature, how they respond to unfamiliar situations, how they behave at home and around people, and whether there are behaviours that appear repeatedly within a family.
A dog can have excellent health results and still tell me something that affects a future breeding decision. The same applies the other way around: no dog is defined by one result alone.
What the generations tell me
One dog can tell me something. A litter can tell me more. Several generations begin to show patterns.
Today I can look at siblings, half-siblings, parents, offspring and, in some cases, several generations of dogs I have bred or followed myself. That doesn't make breeding predictable, but it gives me more information to work with than I had when I started.
Sometimes a combination produces what I expected. Sometimes it doesn't. Both are useful.
The point of following my offspring is not to prove that every breeding decision was right. It is to understand what those decisions actually produced and use that information when making the next one.
