I’ve been having a bit of a debate with my good friend Craig McLaughlin over the value of the repeat breeding.  He and I both have one litter of pups on the ground, his are a few months older than mine.  We both subscribe to the “peas and pups” theories of breeding, generally speaking.

My feeling is the repeat breeding gets the breeder nothing.  In essence, you waste one of the few breeding opportunities you have with your bitch by producing more of the same puppies.  You can’t cross them with the litter on the ground (nobody does full sibling crosses).  At the time the breeding decision is made, you usually don’t have all that much information to fall back on.  There is usually no hip scores, no UT results, etc.

To me, it’s like saying “I did well enough with the last litter.”  Where I am always looking to improve.  It’s treading water, jogging in place.

Craig has a different view and it’s got me thinking.  He rightly points out the success of any breeding program as viewed by the general public is determined very much by the people who own the pups.  Sell the typical litter to professional trainers, you are likely to be considered an excellent breeder because the pups will likely do well in testing.  Sell them to a bunch of pet households, and the tree falling in the woods question comes to mind.  Novice trainers are a mixed bag some do well with the pup, others do not.  Some help and some hurt your reputation and there is no good way to tell which are which.

The repeat breeding is wildly heralded as the best situation to buy a pup.  The litter has instant status because the breeder felt highly enough about it to repeat it.  Usually there is a pup or two from any litter that anyone would want to own, and the repeat breeding brings the promise of a carbon copy of that pup.

Purchasers of repeat litters still need to do their homework.  Some are the result of lazy breeders.  I've seen more than one repeat litter produced just so it could be advertised as such.  I've also seen some that produced a star and a dud.  Are you feeling lucky?  Your hoped for star could wind up to be the carbon copy dud.

If a repeat breeding can bring the type of quality owners to the table that a fledgling kennel needs for success, then it is not treading water.  If you produce pups that actually get titles (because their owners wanted to buy only from repeat breedings), then you have something you can breed back to down the road.

I doubt I’ll ever repeat a breeding.  It’s not in my nature to stand pat.  But I’m also not going to criticize other folks for doing it.