Looking for Hodie(An old member here i learnt few important things from) - Page 9

Tried to PM her - no response.
I really hope she is doing well, only no longer interested in the up`s and down´s of "virtual" people...
In case anybody is able to communicate with her - I miss her and her common sense!

@Susie... I've sent emails to a couple of addresses I have for Blitzen, and no replies back, yet. If she is reading them, I did let her know you were missing her and trying to get in touch. Let's hope she is sailing on a catamaran somewhere enjoying a stress free vacation and good health. (She was having back issues a while back and avoiding all stress— last I was in contact.)

Thank you, Bee, I often think about her.

IMO…it’s the training and breeding threads that get the most heated and tend to get people to leave. A lot of the other topics are pretty black and white. Like...health issues or something like AKC rules, it’s either a rule or it isn’t. It’s the discussing of the breed itself that tends to get the most people in trouble.

Susie, you brought up the biggest issue I have with what happens when mediocre people become major players on a forum. People start recommending them as good breeders, as people to go to for training advice, as people that are “highly reputable” even though in real life they are none of those things. You basically summed up why people need to be able to review accomplishments in the United States, but the people purchasing pets/club level dogs don’t care enough to do so. They’re easily swayed by a few words, a few recommendations on an internet forum…especially when a small group says the same thing. But also notice what happens when someone does bring up the fact that people need accomplishments…you automatically get “experienced” people arguing about how high level accomplishments don’t mean anything and trying to tear down the people that have worked hard to achieve that level. Truthfully, the whole system is broken, and many breeders like it that way…that way they don’t ever have to prove some great accomplishment in order to sell their dogs. The majority of the industry in the United States just hopes to produce a stable dog that can barely get through a club level title at best, has a decent enough temperament at home, and is hopefully free of any genetic diseases.

Unfortunately BW the situation you describe has been all
too common ever since Breeds began; its always been a
minority that were truly interested as owners or breeders
& sellers, in proving the health aspects and, where relevant,
working abilities of their dogs. We just have better
communications technology now. Not sure how you would
measure whether that is really getting worse than in, say, the
60s, or not.

It’s hard to say because I believe dog ownership has changed greatly since the 1960’s. We have a lot more people interested in purebred dogs, and for me the people that are actively on forums or on the internet looking for dogs are probably looking for something special…most times they want to “start doing a sport.” I’m assuming that at least that part of the population, if they were interested in a dog to do dog sport/show with, would be going to a club and actually doing the research to figure out if the dogs are good or not in the 1960’s. Since video, youtube, ect wasn’t available at the time…that was the only way to figure out if the breeder was being truthful or not. Today, we go online, join a forum, get information within seconds. The ease to get that information (right or wrong) doesn’t give people the incentive to go out, drive hours to get to a club or a breeder, and actually figure out things for themselves.

What I’ve seen is a breeder that has a small group of people on a forum that either have a dog from them, a dog related to their lines, or just people that due to their way of communicating have accepted that person as an authority in the breed. When a recommendation is asked for, that breeder always comes up…why? Because people know them, they feel comfortable with them, they say all the right things, and those giving the recommendations don’t really know much in the first place. What I see a forum do is that it allows people to have “personal” relationships with breeders that they would never have in the first place. They then overlook the shortcomings or the lack of achievements of that breeder due to the relationship they have formed with that person when it comes to either recommending them or purchasing a puppy for themselves.

I’ve personally seen and laughed at dozens of times when people on a forum that scream about titling breeding stock and making sure the dogs are worked, go ahead and purchase puppies from breeders on the forum who didn’t title that particular dam or sire for whatever line of reasoning they choose to rationalize that decision with. Hypocrisy at its finest…and yet constantly overlooked/not pointed out due to forum rules or the fact that many of those breeders are the moderators on the forums we all frequent.