# questions on eventually breeding male whippet



## James Householder (Apr 15, 2014)

Ok so I do have experience in breeding of coonhounds and beagles by watching my grandfather closely, who bred his own dogs for their hunting ability and did not pay attention to pedigrees or anything else, only making sure to do as little inbreeding as possible, I myself have only ever purposefully bred one pair myself and they were just to be family pets, they were small mix breed house dogs. Basically what im getting at is, I know nothing of pedigrees and registries and so forth. 
My whippet did not come with AKC or any kind of registration or pedigree but as you can see he is a purebred whippet. I'm hoping to breed him to a hunting whippet when hes ready to be studded, he is 6 months now. All I want from the pairing is a pick of female pup. question 1 is I have heard various things about at what age a dog should be studded, and just wanted some opinions. Question 2, how likely am I to find someone willing to breed to my whippet for a pick of female pup, as I know alot of whippet owners are kind of sketchy about non papered dogs. 
The whole reason I want to do this is to end up with a female pup which I can later use as a hunting pair with her father, though I have known cases of breeding a father to a daughter, I believe this is line breeding right? If it is something that can be practiced safely than that is a possibility If I like the way my current whippet and his later perspective daughter hunt. anyway just wanted some insight, I'm open to criticism as I am still pretty green at it. Thanks guys


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## jamie lind (Feb 19, 2009)

Why wouldn't you just buy a dog from hunting lines. You seem to have ?s already about the ability of the male. What would he add to the breeding other than bringing it down?


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## Kadi Thingvall (Jan 22, 2007)

The first thing you would have to do is get your Whippet hunting. When it comes to breeding the owner of the females pretty much holds the cards. If they are hunting their female, and are interested in breeding it, chances are very good they are only going to be interested in breeding it to a male that also hunts. That would also be about the only situation I could think of where the owner of the female would mind that your male doesn't have papers. 

I'm curious how many hunting Whippets you have run across. I personally have never seen a Whippet that actually hunted, 99% of the ones I've met are house pets that might do a little flyball or lure coursing. Most I have met are to timid for even flyball. 

You should also try to find out what your dogs pedigree is, even if he has no papers. You indicate you aren't sure about doing line or inbreeding, but if you don't know your dogs pedigree how do you know the female you'd like to eventually breed him to isn't his sister, cousin, niece, mother, etc?

If your Whippet turns out to be a good hunter, and you can find someone with a female that hunts and is interested in breeding, the rest shouldn't be difficult. A pick pup is a pretty standard stud fee.


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## rick smith (Dec 31, 2010)

James
i think you are getting WAY ahead of yourself 
it's nice to have goals, but
1. you have a dog who won't perform what you would like
2. then you write : "I'm hoping to breed him to a hunting whippet when hes ready to be studded, he is 6 months now." (but you don't even know it it is purebred except for how it looks, i see some saluki and maybe some Afghan in there myself, but it's just a visual based on 2 pics)
3. it doesn't sound like you have any experience yet in actually hunting with whippets

i'm with Katie ... seen a lot of nice pets over here, but chasing things is a far cry from hunting 

look at a lot of whippets hunting, get some experience, and if you still want to embark on the long expensive journey of breeding them, know the breed inside and out first

jmo


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## Matt Vandart (Nov 28, 2012)

I got a buddy that hunts with his whippets and breeds for himself, lots of people hunt with whippets over here, in Wales anyway, but most people use lurchers, cheaper and better.


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## Chris McDonald (May 29, 2008)

James maybe I’m wrong but I’m thinking there are likely a bunch of people on here that are holding back regarding there thoughts of you breeding dogs? I think there are a bunch of people about to explode? 
My understanding is that breeding should be left to those with a good deal of experience in dogs and in your case dogs and hunting. I think it’s hard if not impossible to determine if a 6 month old pup is breed worthy. My thought (take it for the little its worth) is if you want some whippet in the litter your trying to wind up with it should be a whippet that is the best at what you hope to have in the litter you want to have. If you had the capabilities of weeding through 100 hunting whippets would yours be the one that is chosen to breed? 
What im getting at is what makes you think your dog is breed worthy and not just a pet?


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## James Householder (Apr 15, 2014)

I suppose that remains to be seen seeing as though he is only 6 months old. Excuse my green enthusiasm and my jumping the gun a bit but I'm not convinced that he should be weeded out as a potential stud yet. He has intense focus and drive but no real experience yet and in this case I'll root for the underdog. If ultimately he doesn't show the desired qualitys than he won't be bred


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## rick smith (Dec 31, 2010)

of course i don't breed so my opinions don't carry much weight.
but i would like breeders to chime in on this and maybe help James later on.

i always think of studs and breeding bitches as the dogs who are great rather than good ... great in many areas
- as in not common; aka: special dogs

and i also thought that the breedings should be matched to try and make a better version of the breed, emphasis on improvement
- and then there is the fact that there are very few perfect dogs
- so pairings always have to be matched up to help improve the good points as well as decrease the not so good ones 

so maybe it's pie in the sky and reaching for the moon, but i still feel that too many people breed because they have 2 good dogs and want to make more and hope a great one pops up somewhere along the process.

not many working dog breeders kill off pups that don't meet their standards. that seems cruel to many people these days who won't face the reality that there is already a population explosion of dogs in general. 
so the poor quality working dogs stay in the gene pool. breeders sell em off or give em away as pets and they are outa sight outa mind. but a lot of these "pet quality" dogs most certainly get bred too ... and that is how i feel true working lines degrade over time

1. the working dogs, who did not make the cut and became pets, get titled to "upgrade" them and are then bred; or they just get bred as is
2. smaller numbers of the truly great dogs get bred because the breeder lowers their standard for any number of reasons they feel are justified


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## Chris McDonald (May 29, 2008)

James Householder said:


> I suppose that remains to be seen seeing as though he is only 6 months old. Excuse my green enthusiasm and my jumping the gun a bit but I'm not convinced that he should be weeded out as a potential stud yet. He has intense focus and drive but no real experience yet and in this case I'll root for the underdog. If ultimately he doesn't show the desired qualitys than he won't be bred


 

Sorry man, im learning there is just a whole bunch more to it than most think. But from the sounds of it you’re going to contribute to wreaking breeds and making pets. Try looking at your dog in a different way, rather than looking at your pup as “not being weeded out yet” look at it as not even yet being considered yet. You might look at your dog at 7 months and see a cull shoulda been? 

Not that there is anything wrong with pets, the reality of it is-its all my dogs are. As are most of the dogs spoken about on this site. But lets try and make good pets and great working dogs. 
Im starting to see that most of the people that call themselves breeders aren’t breeders. They simply have a few dog runs in the yard, a couple litters of pups a year and raise the pups in the laundry room.

The more I learn about it the more I see breeding is more of emotional wants, thoughts, decisions then add ego. 
Very little good comes from emotional decisions with a bit of ego. It makes people breed dogs for show and sport rather than practical, logical reasons. A whole bunch more culling would be taking place if the emotion was removed. 

Doing right in breeding takes years of interning under the right people. That being said no one is capable of saying who can or cant breed dogs feel free to do anything you want. I’m certainly not going to lose any sleep over you breeding dogs. Just want to point another view out.


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## rick smith (Dec 31, 2010)

Chris said it better than I could 

my buddy who hunts and breeds kai kens culls more than he keeps. his dogs are very healthy and overall nice dogs. he doesn't often bring in dogs outside his blood lines and he doesn't study pedigrees even though he registers his dogs in the japan dog registry. he is not a cold hearted breeder and loves his dogs as much as any dog owner would, and he's probably even given some away over the years.

a year ago i had a customer with a kai ken. she owned a beauty shop. also a nice dog but it didn't seem very close to the ones that i was around who hunted

of course i can also understand the emotional side of breeding too. and the lines between pets and working dogs are not always clearly defined. owning any dog comes with a lot of emotion. that's what makes dogs special in the first place.

but in the bigger picture you only have to look at the gsd story as well as other "working" breeds to see what happens over time, and it's often not the picture we want to see


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Matt Vandart said:


> I got a buddy that hunts with his whippets and breeds for himself, lots of people hunt with whippets over here, in Wales anyway, but most people use lurchers, cheaper and better.



Whippet x Border Collie = excellent small lurcher!

Does Hancock still breed lurchers over there? He got pretty commercial yrs ago but still produced nice working lurchers.
I believe he used Bearded Collies and Salukis.


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## Kristin Muntz (Jul 3, 2012)

James Householder said:


> I'm not convinced that he should be weeded out as a potential stud yet.


As previously stated - this is backwards. Wait until he shows himself to be exceptional and until you have enough age on him to have his health screens done before you even consider looking for a bitch.

http://www.whippethealth.org/Health_PreBreedingScreening.aspx


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## Annamarie Somich (Jan 7, 2009)

Honestly ask yourself is this dog is so good that lots of folks ask to buy him from me and folks want to breed their females to him and if he died he would be difficult to replace.......these kinds of questions will help you decide if he is breed worthy. If he is not and you really want to get into breeding, then go find yourself the best female you can possibly buy and beg off of a good breeder.

I had to make a hard decision last fall on a "breed worthy" female pup I purchased off of a national PSA champ. Kadi was very helpful in setting me straight on not introducing the lines into my breedings. When I asked her advice about breeding the female to get a better female pup, Kadi told me that the problem would eventually crop up again, especially in the grand pups. So no, if you try to "breed up" in some cases, it will bite you in the butt.


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