With all this talk of "Not throwing the baby out with the bath water", I have a question for long time breeders.. Have you had success in starting out with Labs who had a timid/shy/fearful, dog alpha or lets just say it for what it is, Dog Aggressive temperament and been able to improve the temperament by selective breeding for your bitches with temperment issues ?
I've tossed out more (purchased) foundation dogs and bitches than I care to remember due to non labradror temperaments. I guesss in my mind's eye, I always wanted to start my foundation lines with a near perfect tempered Labrador bitch. Who wouldnt' right ? 12 yrs later, I am still waiting for the ideal Labrador temperament, perfect in every sense of the AKC standard description.
I think the Fear/Aggressive temperment is the trait I would find hard to breed out of a line once it is in there for many years. Why are breeders choosing to breed this traitin their dgos and further more, why are they selling these dogs as foundation stock to other breeders ?
Your kidding!! You really have had to get rid of lots of Labradors because of temperament. I have been breeding showing and training since 1969 and we have a pretty large group of dogs at all times so over that many years I have owned and shown a lot of Labradors and I have to say through those hundreds of Labradors I have only seen maybe a half a dozen with bad temperaments. I am really surprised you are having such an issue with this.
I agree wholeheartedly. I believe that temperament is the absolute most important part of this breed or any other for that matter. Now we have placed dogs and taken them out of our breeding program for temperaments that didn't suit us but they were certainly not dog aggressive or even bad temperaments and their new pet owners love them and think they have the most wonderful temperaments so I would not call those 'bad', just not what we wanted , especially now that we are older and don't enjoy the high rollers all that much. Some of those dogs we didnt' keep though, we would have loved to have had during our competition obedience days.
At any rate though I wish you would email me privately because again I am very surprised you are having this problem with labs you are purchasing. If you have been to the Potomac and seen all of those male specials crowded into the ring and under that tent, you would know we are not having much trouble with dog agression in our breed. And still I can see at a specialty during the Best of Breed class, all the owners sitting on the ground in the shade awaiting their turn for their individual exam , with all the male specials sitting happily beside them and no one growling or posturing (not even the owners!).
Judy
