What’s Your “Line in the Sand” for Breeding

Host Laura Reeves is joined by Dr. Marty Greer for an important conversation about “what is YOUR line in the sand” when breeding dogs.

This is a conversation around breeding ethics and having a “mission statement” for your breeding program.

“I had a listener ask about a baby puppy with one testicle yoyoing and one maybe, maybe not there and what should they do? And Marty said, ‘Well, there's only a couple things and it won't take very long (to talk about), but I think that there's no reason not to breed that.’ And I'm like, wait, what? So, Marty, I want you to talk to me about why, because this was a very interesting perspective that had literally never crossed my mind.”

The conversation continues from there with Marty describing her “line in the sand” as deadly diseases. Her reasoning being the additional genetic diversity that comes when we don’t “throw out the baby with the bath water” for issues which do not actively impact a dog’s quality of life.

“The world according to Marty Greer is for me a level 1 is something that you don't have a life shortening, life altering disease from. It's a retained testicle. For me it's extra eyelashes. For me it's an entropian. For me, it's an umbilical hernia.

“For me, level 2 is something that requires chronic management, long term allergies. Thyroid disease, things that always need to be on medication. There's an ongoing expense. There's an ongoing thing that has to happen, but it's not serious.

“And for me, Level 3, are life threatening, life altering, life shortening diseases. This is my definition. For me, that's bad temperament. If your dog bites somebody, I don't think that dog should be in your gene pool. If I have to muzzle your dog to breed it, I don't think it should be in the gene pool. That for me is orthopedic diseases that are crippling. Hip dysplasia, elbow dysplasia, patellar luxation, all this stuff that happens orthopedically. And for me that's things like seizures, because I think seizures are life threatening.

“But that's my world. I live in a veterinary clinic. Remember, that's what I do every day. So I see dogs that come in with owners that are distressed, dogs that are dying, dogs that need to be euthanized. And so my perspective is going to be different than other people's perspectives because that's not the world they live in.”