Culling Female Puppies to Preserve Lines

[Jag]

I know quite a few good breeders do it, mostly older breeders.

What is your take on culling females to preserve a breeder's lines of dogs?

I'm an all around dog lover (not just working dogs), so I'm not a person that could physically do that to a puppy.
I'm also not a breeder, so I've never been in their shoes or had someone take my hard work and breeding program and destroy it.

Couldn't breeders who will go to that length to preserve lines just charge people the cost of an early spay and sell the puppy that way? The pup could still work or just be a companion to someone without the breeder having to worry about someone breeding her.

anyway, would love to hear some opinions, breeders or not... it would be nice to hear from a breeder that does this too, to see their perspective.

[Vadim]

Culling does not have to mean killing, it can mean removing from the gene pool. So spaying early or limited registration papers can do the same thing.
I understand protecting blood lines but I am not sure it helps our breed....

[rosamburg]

The only real scientific control studies that I know of that have been done on puppy testing for working aptitude and temperament shows them to be completely unreliable. Therefore it makes no sense to cull puppies in the manner that is being implied. I doubt that breeders who actually euthanize puppies are going to speak out about it in this day and age..

The following link is an interview with Gabi Hoffman. I wish the interviewer would have pursued a line of questioning that was available to him in the interview, but he had a different agenda.

www.dogsportblog.com/

I have had several conversations with Dr. Hoffman who is described in the interview above. In her Doctoral Thesis, she followed 250 German Shepherd puppies. She did all of the temperament tests on the puppies, including the volhard and others, at 7 weeks. She followed up with testing at 5 months and at 18 months. She said she went into the study believing that tests would show the early testing would provide clear insight into how the dogs would end up as adults. Her findings in the study were that tests done on young puppies are COMPLETELY unreliable in determining temperament and working aptitude as adults.

The tests were done on Australian show line GSD dogs. When asked about how the tests may have turned up with working line dogs, she said puppy testing would be even more unreliable.

She went on to say that many more actual scientific studies on working temperament, including testing hunting dogs have reached the same conclusions.

She added that while many times people's anecdotal experience may seem to show the validity of testing when put to scientific controls it just does not bear it out.