Laura Reeves of Pure Dog Talk On Structure

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to In Way Cut A Course Soad Podcast.

SPEAKER_06 0:05

We don't know what's right. And we know how to do that. We can make it back.

SPEAKER_03 0:59

Welcome back to the show. We talk all things dogs and we got the Queen of Dog Talk back in the house.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

I'm doing alright, Chu. How you doing?

SPEAKER_03 1:12

I'm good. I'm good. Glad to have you back. Uh I've been anticipating this show. I need to take some some of my audience to another level. You know, we want to kind of explain to I want you to kind of explain to them, you know, like to pet owners, to breeders, why, you know, structure is important. It ain't just they already it's a beauty pageant, you know. So I want to kind of kind of take the narrative to another place so they'll really understand why structure is important across all breeds.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Absolutely. Absolutely, Joe. I'm very excited. This is one of my very favorite hobby horses. So um, I think, you know, I give the same basic presentation to guys at the Novda annual meeting, right? Like the North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association. Like these guys, they're just bird dogs. They're just, they're they're making bird dogs, they're breeding them based on test scores. And I'm like, that's great. Um, but your dog is running on heart and desire and and you know, the will to do it, and it's killing itself in the process because you haven't paid attention to building a structure that's gonna let them do that and to wrap around that big heart and that all that drive. And just because they will run themselves to death doesn't mean they should have to. That's right. And that's and that's our job, and it's our fault if they're not, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:44

Right. And then too, I mean, it it probably could be some pain involved in bad.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

There's a lot of pain. Yeah, there's a lot of pain, and we're gonna talk about that and why it's painful. And again, you know, the dogs don't ask to be built how they're built, but you know, depending on whatever it is their job is, if they have the drive and the desire, they'll do the job, whether they're built right or not, and then they'll pay for it and they'll suffer and they won't make it in and they won't be hunting or doing whatever work it is into their later years, they'll be broken down, right?

SPEAKER_03 3:16

Right, yeah. All right, well, I'm gonna let the floor is yours, young lady.

unknown 3:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Um, well, we're gonna do this. We're gonna go to um one of the various presentations I do.

SPEAKER_05 3:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

And this one is part of a um a whole, there we go. This is part of a whole um seminar that I give with Dr. Marty Greer, who's a um pretty famous uh reproductive veterinarian. And we do this whole seminar series called Pedigrees to Pups. And I was just telling you about it a little bit earlier. We've now made it into um an on-demand um like basically a TV show. So if people are interested in that, I'm sure you can make sure they've got that available. Um, but we're gonna talk about this idea of structure. And I I think about it and I talk about it from the idea um that we're building our dogs like we're building a house, right? There's a blueprint. When you build your house, you have a blueprint, right? Right and y'all have seen those houses that don't have a good blueprint, or they didn't get built next to the blueprint, right? They kind of they're a little whoppy jud, right? And the foundation's a little cracked, and the roof kind of leaks over here on this side where things are a little out of whack, right?

SPEAKER_03 4:42

That's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

It's no different with our dogs, it's literally the same thing. So, what is a breed standard and why does it matter? That's what we're talking about. The standard describes the ideal dog, and I know a lot of guys, a lot of folks, when they hear the word breed standard, they think dog show and they think it's just a parade. It's like Miss America waving at the crowd, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. But even Miss America has to tell you something smart, right? It's not just a bathing suit contest, right? So the ideal vision, the breed standard was written to describe the dog that did the job the best, right? And it describes structural soundness, and it describes the predictability of what people, when they come to buy a connector, they expect it to be a certain way, right? Size, certain head shape, all of those things. This is the standard is what gives them those people that are coming to buy that dog, the idea and gives you the ability to produce it predictably when we're breeding to the standard. So one of my favorite quotes uh Wayne Kavanaugh um is another AKC judge, friend of mine, and this is his comment that hungry hunters who needed a meal did not form a club, write a definitive breed standard, and then create a dog to match their written words, right? They were hungry, they wanted a bird, they wanted dinner, and so they took their dog and they got dinner, and over the course of time they developed a dog that would get them dinner better, faster, what have you. And then when it came time to write a breed standard, they they literally, I'm sure, in my mind's eye, scribbled it out on a cocktail napkin in the bar and and described the dog that had just gotten them the most birds. Yeah. And we've all seen anybody in dogs has heard this trope, form follows function.

SPEAKER_05 6:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

And and I think a lot of people maybe misunderstand this because quite literally, the form of the dog, the shape of the dog, is the shape of the dog in order so it can do its job, its function. Okay, every angle, every bone, every proportion is dictated by the breed standard, but that breed standard was written to describe the dog that did the job the best. Okay. So if we're breeding just for pretty, or just for this, or just for that, or just for whatever we're looking for, and we're not understanding those underlying mechanics, we're building a machine that can't run. We're building a house that's gonna have a leaky roof and a whoppy jog floor. So we talk about some of the different dog breeds, right? So think about you know, something like a gendo or some of these breeds that just sort of developed organically in their physical space, a basinji. Okay. Those dogs were literally developed by the basic concept of form false function. Like this dog has to survive, and the ones that don't do this job don't quite literally don't live.

unknown 8:15

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Survival of the fittest is a thing, okay?

SPEAKER_05 8:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Um, and so then you think about something, some of the terriers, right? That were very much a man-made breed that were developed to do a specific thing. Selective breeding is selective breeding for a reason, right? Like, I want a Scottish terrier, I want a dog that's gonna go in the rocky terrain and it's gonna go in the burrow to get a badger, and it's gonna have these big teeth and this big strong front with the short legs, right? Like that was selective breeding to create that specific thing versus the dogs that sort of developed a land race breed, right? That developed in its space. So, as I said, you build your house according to a blueprint, you build your dog according to the breed standard. All of the things apply. There's four legs on the dog, there's four walls on your house, unless you have one of those crazy octagonal houses. Right. Do not make an octagonal dog. That's don't do that. Um, but you're you're you've got a roof on your house, right? That roof, well, that's the same as the top line on a dog, holds everything together. And if you think about like a bridge where there's too much length that's unsupported on the bridge, the same thing that happens when you get too long, say, of a loin on certain ones of these dogs. Okay, so all of this is basic, I hate to say it, y'all, geometry, right? Like I was not good at geometry, but but that's what it boils down to. Right. Um, I think this is a really important slide. I'm hoping that you can see these because oh yeah, what right? What you need to remember, every single dog breed from a Chihuahua to a Great Dane has exactly the same number of bones. And what uh uh uh dictates their sh their the shape of the dog is the length, shape, circumference, right, of those bones, where they go, and where they go is dictated by the job they did. One of my favorite stories, there's a a really great book that I love um called Knife for a Dog, and it it has some beautiful illustrations, and I'm can send you a link for you to share with your listeners later. And it talks about the whip it and the bulldog specifically, and we're gonna get to that in a minute. But it it the standard of both of those breeds describes having a rise over the loin, right? And so if you can see my cursor, this part over here is the loin, yes, between the ribs and where the the pelvis, where the hip bones are, okay? That's the loin, and that rise over the loin does a different job in both of these breeds. In the whip it, it is to get their rear legs up underneath them in that double suspension gallop, right?

SPEAKER_05 11:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

And for the bulldog, it's to get their rear legs up underneath them so that they can pull down on the cow's nose for traction, right? Right, right. Okay, so so different, different parts of the body, different jobs that these breeds do, they're similar structures to do different jobs depending on what the job is, all of those things. Fascinating. Um, this is this is the comparison, right, between the whip it and the and the bulldog, and that the leverage that the bulldog gets from that rise over the loin where he's got his rear underneath him versus the speed that the whippet gets from that double suspension gallop.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

And so they they both are functional, they're just different functions. So that's an important part to understand your dog's original job, helps you understand the structure and why it's in the standard. Right. Right, right. So four corners of support, four legs on our dogs. And most of our, say, our uh sporting dogs or working dogs or some of those, they describe this bone structure. You can see the cursor is moving on this top bone that's called the scapula, it's the shoulder blade. This long bone here is called the humerus, the upper arm. And those two bones in most breeds, certainly there's a lot of um there are exceptions to this, but most, if not many, if not most breeds, those two bones should be essentially the same length. And the idea is that you want the the open end of the triangle towards the center of the dog's body, because that's where they provide the most support to the bridge, right? That's the back. And then your goal is to balance again. If you can see my cursor, here's the pelvis, okay, that pelvic structure, right, down to the femur, that long bone in the back leg, uh-huh down to the tibia fibula. This we call it the second thigh. All right. Those angles should basically match the front angles. And even in dogs that are um have more open angles, right? That are straighter up and down, if they match, the balance is what matters. The the the most damage that our dogs do are when they have mismatched angles. All right. So here, oops, sorry. Oh my computer gets like a little ahead of itself sometimes. This this particular slide, you can see the shoulder blade, the upper arm, humerus, right? All of these, and you can see those balanced angles on this dog. The posternum in the front, that's the part the part that kind of sticks out on some of our dogs. That's literally where everything gets connected in the front of the dog. That's kind of the uh ribbing and all that stuff comes together at the posternum. The other thing to remember all of that front assembly, all that shoulder blade, upper arm, all that, that is attached only by muscles and ligaments. Right now, the rear, you've got structure. You've got a uh the sacral arch, the all of the pelvic structure is attached by a bony piece on the spine. In the front, you don't have that. So again, ribs, those are your walls, legs, the pillars of support, the spine, the roof, the suspension bridge. Okay, all of that. So now we have to remember this piece because what do you what's the very last thing you do when you build your house? What's the last thing you do? Um hang the curtains, paint walls? Yeah, yeah, the thing here.

SPEAKER_03 15:35

The interior.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

That's that's what we that's what we have here. The paint, the the curtains, those things are absolutely the last piece that's important. The thing that's really important is the actual structure, the architecture of the dog.

SPEAKER_03 15:54

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

So front assembly. I you're you're down there in Arkansas, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:04

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

You have definitely ridden in one of those, you know, old Chevy trucks with busted out springs going down uh uh uh gravel road.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

I feel got with them old Chevy Novas out in the front right now.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

There you go. There you go. That that sensation of that's what every dog that has a front assembly that's straight up and down feels. That front is the suspension for your dog.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

And so if that's straight up and down, that's just like that dog riding down that gravel road on that busted out Chevy. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:46

Um that and and Ms. Laura, and and what about you know, with it being straight up and down? I'm thinking of large breeds like uh masters with easty, westy, loose air bowls, bad feet, how devastating all of those things.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

What does it say right here? Flat splayed feet are painful. That is the foundation. The old hound guys, if you ever talk to any of the the hound masters, right, that ran all the foxhound packs and stuff like that, right? They're they're saying no foot, no dog, right? And that is a hundred percent true. Um, but all of this front structure that you can see here, the scapular humerus, radius ulna, pastor and feet, all of that, that's a shock absorber, that's a suspension system, okay. When the dog gallops, when it trots, when it does anything, it lands on its front. And so again, depends on what the job is, right? Some of your tall terriers have got a little bit shorter upper arm and a little more forward set because they did a different job. But the general concept is you want to have balanced angles, keeping the front as much as possible underneath the dog. So, to give you an example of an exception, do you know what an Ibethan hound is?

SPEAKER_03 18:09

I've heard of, but I'm not sure what it looks like.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yeah, the Ibethan hound looks kind of like a deer, actually. They're um uh rabbit dogs from the Iberian Peninsula in Spain. If you've ever seen um uh a drawing of the god dog Anubis from the Egyptian tombs, okay, that upright ears, that long, narrow. Okay, the Ibethan hound's job was to hunt rabbits, and it had a particular way of hunting in which it would jump up in the air and use its ears like radar to track the rabbits, and then it would spin mid-air, its front legs literally cross underneath its body. And so an ibethan hound's front is set more upright, right? Straighter. You can't see my hands, you can only see the thing. So the the scapula and the humerus make a more open angle, a more of a straight line, and the chest does not come below the elbows because the dog's front legs literally crossed underneath its chest to do its job.

SPEAKER_03 19:13

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yeah, so again, structure is specific to the breed and specific to the job. Gotcha. This, I will say I have this conversation a lot with my toy breed friends, right? My my friends that judge or raise or breed um Japanese chin, right? Some of these breeds. And I'm like, you know, they've got to at least get to the food bowl, right? Like, if their entire job is to sit on your lap, they still have to get to the food bowl. My friend's like, nah, they're pretty enough. Somebody will bring them food.

unknown 19:48

Like, whoa.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Um, okay, so here's we're talking about the no bony attachment part. It's really important to understand, too, when we look at our puppies, you know, they're kind of like gumbies, right? They're just kind of loop, loop, nothing's really attached. And so we can kind of stack them up or make them stand up and and look the way we want them to look without keeping in mind that that um front assembly, particularly, is impacted by muscle, it's impacted by condition. So if you have a puppy that looks just beautiful at eight weeks old and it's got this lovely front, and you send it to a home where it gets fat and lays on the couch and doesn't do anything, all of a sudden that front doesn't look the same. Right. Just doesn't look the same.

SPEAKER_05 20:41

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

So that's that's an important thing to remember about the front assembly, is it is more malleable than the rear for that reason.

SPEAKER_05 20:51

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Um, you can also talk about we talked about the layback, right? The structure, the geometry of those shoulder blades. So there's two terms that we use. Lay back means how far does the shoulder blade, the scapula, lay back onto the rib cage. And lay on is how smoothly it fits over the rib cage, if that makes sense, right? So when you take your hand and you feel a dog and you run it from the top of its neck, right there at the ox but run it down the neck, and your hand gets to the shoulder blades and goes clunk. Okay, that's that's not laid on very smoothly. And there are breeds, corsos are one of them, in which the the shoulder blades are supposed to be wide, right? You've got the broad chest and some of those things. Some of your sporting breeds, your setters, um, some of those breeds that flow should be really smooth and nothing should go clunk because the the shoulders are laid more smoothly over the rib cage. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 21:55

Makes a bunch of sense, yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Okay. Um, I I get so. Frustrated with certain judges going over dogs, and they're like, Oh, the dog's shoulders are so smooth, and the dog's shoulders are around its neck. I'm like, you know, it's a lot easier to make a smooth transition when all the shoulder blades have to wrap around is the neck. It's a lot harder when they have to wrap around the actual rib cage where they belong, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Okay. Um, okay, front angulation again, same thing. We're talking about the layback, the upper arm. Those should make pretty close to not really realistically not 90 degrees, but that kind of a solid triangle that gets the wide part underneath the dog's body. Okay. The other thing is back to our geometry. See that angle, and you can't see my hand, but take that we can see your hand. You can see my hand.

SPEAKER_05 22:57

Okay, yeah. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Take that upper arm. This is exactly how far geometry lets that dog move its leg forward. Do you see that line?

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Okay, that's the angle. Now say that the angle is this. That's all the further that dog's front leg can go. So that tells us what the how the dog can move at a trot or at a gallop, either way, how much range of motion is available in that shoulder is 1000% dependent on the angulation of how those bones come together. You can see at the point there that there's a kind of a knobby end on the end of that bone, and it hits the other bone and it will not go any further.

SPEAKER_05 23:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

It is absolutely geometry that tells us the structure tells us how much ground that dog's gonna cover. Pardon me. Okay, your rear end is the powertrain. So if the front end's the shock absorber, this is back end is the powertrain. And and I don't know if y'all have ever had my I had an ex-husband that had one of these little Toyota Tacoma pickup trucks, and it was so over-torqued that as soon as you hit the gas, the rear end it'd swish out on you. That's what the rear end of a dog is for, right? And it should be balanced to the front, otherwise, that rear end's gonna torque out on you. Um, all of this, these bones again. Remember, we're making that same basic triangle that is the the hip structure, the all the pelvis area. This rounded part here by the tail, that's called the croup.

SPEAKER_03 24:45

Yes, ma'am. Is that also is that also uh called a shelf? Do some people refer to it as a shelf?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

So the shelf is actually what see this kind of pointy end of the pelvis? That's the issue.

SPEAKER_03 24:58

Oh, the tissue, okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Uh ishium, yeah, and that's the shelf. And in many breeds, you're not seeing it in this particular um illustration, but many breeds we want to have what we like to call dog behind the tail, right? And that's the shelf, that's the piece we're talking about there, and that is based on structure. It would assume that this pelvis was more up here. You can see my cursor, and that the pelvis had a flatter angle up like this, um, to get yourself a shelf. You're not gonna get that in this particular um structural design.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Um, again, all of this is balanced to the front. This we talk about the turn of stifle and the length of hawk. Um, there's a lot of conversation. If you go to a dog show, there's always somebody telling you, oh, look at the nice short hawks on that dog. Which short hawks can add propulsive power, but it depends again on the job that the dog was designed to do. The Spinoni Italiano asks for the hawk, the tibia fibula, and the femur to be in a one-third, one-third, one-third ratio, which is quite different than other breeds because they need the leverage for hunting in the mountains.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Okay, so each again, every breed has its own standard that is designed to make the dog able to do the job that it was designed to do.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

Now, most of them are most working breeds or is it hot gonna be at a 90-degree angle?

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Most working, honestly, most working breeds, so in the working group from Akita down to standard schnauzer, right? Most of them have slightly more open angles, right? So if this is 90 degrees, they're at maybe 100. Um, and they again are balanced, they're they're broader through their whole body. So their their um shoulder lay on is not as smooth as many other breeds. Um, exceptions to that would be like a boxer and a Doberman, and some of those that tend to have a more smooth presentation. An Akita, a corso, a St. Bernard, a Newfoundland, right? These are broad animals that have broad structure throughout and usually a little bit more of an open angle, but not a lot. They should not be straight. These are dogs that pull, or they, you know, they have to have that um strength to do their job. They're they're maybe not racing like a whippet, but they still have to have that ability to have shock absorber, and definitely they have to have in the rear structure that engine to propel them forward. That has to be there. And um, you know, the exception, say for example, um something like an Akita that asks for a very moderate angle in the rear, um, you know, again, balance to the front. So each standard is specific to itself. And each one of them will talk about how the muscling should be. Is it a long, lean muscle, or is it a thick, you know, broad, powerful muscle? Each one of the breeds describes that differently for that specific animal.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

Oops, see, I talked bad to my computer. So, shock absorber, okay, engine, and the balance is the most important part. If you don't want your rear end of your dog fish tailing out because it's got too much torque for the front, you need those to be balanced. And that is the piece I see most often in sporting and working and hound dogs across the board that is a mismatch in those angles. It is really difficult apparently to make those match. Um okay, so I when I judge, I ask the dogs before they stack them up or do anything like that. I want them to move around the ring because movement is the proof of structure. And if I see some the front legs kind of paddling or flipping or going in circles, and I see the rear just kind of go clunk, right? Like instead of having good follow-through, they have the same geometry in the rear structure that they have in the front. You can't, if you don't have the angle, your rear end is gonna stop right here. Klunk. All of those things um are gonna tell me what I need to know about the structure, and then I will go feel the dog to feel the structural faults that made the movement flaws. Okay, so here's a really good. I love this. Um, the dog on the left is a dog I showed as a champion. The dog on the right was my very first wire hair. God, she was ugly. Wow.

unknown 30:15

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Uh this was this was a top-winning special and somebody's backyard bred bird dog. And you can see all the difference, you can see the structural faults, and it is such a good comparison. And I've drawn the the green lines right on the dog on the left and laid them over the red lines on the dog on the right.

SPEAKER_05 30:38

Right, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Um, that is a straight line. That that rear end that is a one straight line. There is no bend to that stifle at all. The front's not much better, and she has, and you don't see this very often, certainly not in wire hairs. She has a U neck. You can absolutely see that. See um the lower part of her neck where it goes ties into her shoulders, it goes forward. Look at the dog on the left, it should not do that. Right, that is a weakness that's results from having her shoulders up in her ears, right?

SPEAKER_03 31:16

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

All of this is to give people a vision to really understand this is what they should look like and what they shouldn't look like. And we just talked about the reasons why.

SPEAKER_03 31:29

Yes, we know.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Um, this is talking about the efficiency. This slide really gives you a good visualization. I wish I wish the moving picture was a little better. I tried to tell Claude to get this right, and I didn't get it right.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

I'll tell you what, these uh these examples though are really, really good. I would regret it.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

It really helps you see the the kinetic motion, right? Like it really visualizes it, and I thought that was useful. Um, this the front leg on this dog moving should should show a little more forward stretch, but it's okay. We're we're doing what we can do here. Gives you gives you the idea of what we're trying to accomplish. That efficiency in movement. I don't know if you've ever um gone and watched dogs run at like a horseback field trial. I know you don't do a lot of bird dogs, but that that was sort of something that I did a lot of back in the day. And these dogs, um, when the judges are judging them, they say, Man, that's a that's a snappy runner. Okay, what that what that translates to is it looks like a spider on speed. Oh, really? And it looks like it's working real hard because it's working real hard. And so I had I bred a dog that was a best in show dual champion, wire hair pointer, and he was a big dog, and he was kind of fluffy, and all the field trial dog guys are like show dog, and they'd be like laying back in their saddle, dicking around. They're like, I'm that stupid show dog. And about five minutes in, they'd all of a sudden you'd see we do it's a thing that we say in field trials, they'd like sit up in their saddles, and they're like, um, where'd that dog go? That dog, a big dog with beautiful structures, one of the pictures that we saw earlier was three counties away, and he didn't look like he was working hard because he wasn't, and he was just gone. And these good old boys be like, Yeah, here's one of my favorite things in the world, man. Um, and it's it's the difference between a dog that's made right and a dog that's not.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

Yeah, yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Um, okay, so we talked about this before, everything that's held together with with tendons and muscles and ligaments, overweight dogs, out-of-conditioned dogs, dogs that are not kept up, can't keep their structure together. And you can have a beautifully built dog that if it if it comes in my ring and I sink to my knuckle and its thigh, we have a problem. Because all of that slop is going to be affecting how they move, how the bones are held together, how the top line looks, all the pieces of it. So conditioning is a hundred percent important.

SPEAKER_03 34:41

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Exercise, stretches. You know, some of the field trial guys do um drag tires or do road work on the four-wheelers, whether you've got a treadmill or ride them on a bike, they need actual exercise to keep everything together.

SPEAKER_05 34:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Okay, so I don't know how many folks here have brachosphalic breeds or achondroplastic breeds, but again, remember their jobs.

unknown 35:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

Um, pugs, for example, their job was to sit in somebody's lap on a fancy carriage.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

That's right in China where it was cold.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

They didn't have to run marathons. Nobody wanted them to run a marathon, they wanted them to be cute and look like a human baby. That was their job. And they're really good at it, they're adorable. Um, achondroplastic, right? The so think of like a basset hound or a duchend or some of these, uh, some of the corgis, right? That the legs are short to do a specific job. Corgis needed to be low, so when the bull kicked, it went over their head instead of whacking them in the in the skull. Those are all absolutely specific reasons that dogs are built specific ways that don't have to do anything with a show ring. They were made now, now, now, you and I both know we've been around, we've met people.

SPEAKER_03 36:11

Yeah, I met a few in my day.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

You know what happens when you meet people? People are like, Well, if this is good, then this must be better, right? And so exaggerations in size or in wrinkling or in you know whatever it is happen because of this more as better philosophy that exists in human nature. Um, it has nothing to do really so much with dog shows, except that it is um, I find that in dog shows you can run the risk of people rewarding exaggeration um because it catches your eye. And that's that's reality. And as judges, we have to guard against that. Some more than others are better at that. So there you go.

SPEAKER_03 37:01

Thanks. I knew it was coming.

unknown 37:04

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Um, okay, and then the most important thing that I can say has nothing to do with structure. No matter what we do with these dogs, 90% of them are gonna go be pets. And even the show dogs, uh, Mrs. Trotter, when she judged best in show at Westminster Kennel Club, she said, not every pet is a show dog, but I guarantee you every show dog is a pet. And you have to have the temperament, it has got to be part of the breeding program. It's not just how they get raised from eight weeks on, it's the work you put into them before they leave. It is the genetics, and it is the epigenetics, how the DM um interacts with the puppies. All of this has something to say about it. And um that that is an important component that I think far too many people leave out of the equation. Um, if a dog can't exist comfortably in an appropriate home, the blueprint has failed. Doesn't matter how pretty they are, doesn't matter how structurally sound they are, if they bite people and go to heaven, you failed.

SPEAKER_03 38:23

We got a problem, yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Um, okay. So that gives you just kind of an idea. Sorry, I'm trying to get back to the stop screen.

SPEAKER_03 38:37

Okay, all right. Bam, here we go.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

There you go. So that gives you an idea. That gives you an idea, kind of what we're talking about. Um, there's more and deeper and and and um further discussions. I love to do um evaluation structure, talk about structure when we have a dog we can put our hands on, right? So people can feel because once you feel where that shoulder blade is, and then feel it down to the upper arm, and then feel that back to the elbow, it is cemented in your mind. The tactile piece of it is really hard to get across on a screen. Um, and that I mean, I was really lucky. I was really lucky. I was raised up in dogs, and my first purebred dog was an English setter. And the the lady that that we hung around with at the time that had English setters taught me this when I was 13. Right. And so once you start thinking that way, it never goes out of your head.

SPEAKER_05 39:35

Right, right, right. It just doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Yeah, and you just learn more and more and piece more and more together. And I'm I'm lucky on the podcast, I have people that'll come and talk to me and we dig into it more. So it's uh it it is fascinating and and important. And one of the things I I didn't plan to be a dog show judge, like that was not that's not what I was gonna do. Um, but I have found that what I love about it is is two things. One, that I get to that that two minutes that I'm judging that dog, that's my dog. I miss, you know, I show dogs. I miss having a lot of dogs and having hands on dogs. I miss that a lot. Um, but the other part of it is the learning and trying to understand, you know. I I just I approved to judge the sporting group, and now I'm starting to look at some of the hound breeds and um some of the working breeds and and really going through and comparing and contrasting and understanding why does this one have this and that one have that, and the other one not have any of it, right? It's it's very cool, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:45

Yes, it's it's it's a journey for sure.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

It is boy, it's a journey, it's a it's a hella expensive journey, is what it is.

SPEAKER_03 40:52

Sure is. I got one question for you. Um puppies for the people that's trying to preserve lines. I know you know you know, different lines develop differently, but for the most part, puppies might grow a little wonky. What what kind of uh structural markers help us during these uneven stages of reverse to let us know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

So every breed is different. I do a lot of litter evaluations for people. I just drove 18 hours out of 36 to go evaluate a litter of spinoni. Um, and what I like to look at most breeds around eight weeks to start with, right? In my breed, in my own line of my breed, I can tell what I want to see by six weeks. Right in a different breed or someone else's breed or even a different line in my breed, it may be seven weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks, somewhere in there. And and eight weeks, Pat Hastings. If if anybody's familiar with her work, um Pat Hastings was very famous for the puppy puzzle and a few other things. She was hell-bent on eight weeks as the perfect place where what they look like at eight weeks is exactly what they're gonna like like as an adult in miniature. Kind of it's a good, it's a good place to start. Um, and then I I have a tendency, and I encourage my my clients in this, you look at them at eight weeks, and then you go like so. And you do not go unlike so, um, usually until they're like a year old. Um I will I will usually look at six months and I'll look again at a year, and then I might look at two years, sort of depending on the breed, and and there's slow maturing and late maturing and fast maturing, all those kind of things that kind of come into the category. But for the love of all that is holy, do not look at your four-month-old, five-month-old puppy and say, Oh my god, it's so horrible. I'm sending it to you know, Uruguay. Because that's not what it's gonna look like when it's done. No, no, um, on the other hand, don't look at your six-month-old puppy and get stars in your eyes because it's so beautiful. Remember, it's gonna grow, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:25

And that's funny. I mean, like, I'm in a corso, so you know it's a lot of variants in there. I had one from I had a bitch from Italy, yeah. She her structure was like like perfect, she didn't go through any walking phase.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

I'm like, I love that. That's my favorite, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:42

But she did she didn't get big, she didn't get like I was worried about a size of the whoa. No, but when she when she came into her home, I was like, Oh, there it is. All over the world.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

My best dogs over the years have been dogs that did that, that just kind of grew like they blew up, right? Didn't go, you know what I'm talking about, high in the ass, high in the front, high god, front, going this way, all the things. My best, my best puppies just kind of until they were grown up. I love that. Rare, but but really fantastic. The other part of it that I didn't really go into, that if you want to talk about this in terms of young dogs, nutrition and environment is enormous. Like absolutely mission critical. Um, keeping the protein levels at a reasonable place so they don't grow too fast, particularly in your giant breed dogs, and making sure that you supplement vitamin C and even zinc if need be to keep to feed the soft tissue, right? That muscle, ligament, and and tendon piece, that vitamin C is what feeds feeds that beast. And I have had, I cannot tell you how many clients and whatever else, Irish wolfhounds and bull mastiffs and all the rest of it, that would come to me and that they'd have they're down in the pasterns, you know, they're teething, their ears are going wonky, the pasterns are broken, everything looks terrible. And I'm like, please God, please God, please God, just supplement vitamin C. So, depending on the size, depending on whatever, um, we we call it two digestive tolerance. And basically, what that means is you give them enough until they have bad potty and you cut them back a little bit. Vitamin C is water soluble, you cannot ODM on vitamin C. You can and other things, but vitamin C, you can't.

SPEAKER_05 45:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

And that will make a tremendous difference, that in patients, right? Because I got to go through the teething thing. But the vitamin C supports them through that process and improves your outcomes for having dogs with strong pastorns, strong muscles and ligaments throughout. I do not do this myself, but I know of golden retriever breeders that will not honor their contract for hips if the dog has not stayed on vitamin C until two years old.

SPEAKER_03 46:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've seen I've seen contracts like that. We give the SP, yeah. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

It is very real.

SPEAKER_03 46:17

Right, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

The other part of it is if you've got dogs on concrete, that's they're gonna blow their feet, get them on gravel, get them off the damn concrete. If they're on slippery floors in the house, can cause problems with their hips, right? All of these pieces matter, and every single thing that we do as breeders and as owners has some impact on these dogs. As breeders, we can put together the pedigree and do the genetics and raise them just right and like do all the things, then they go out in the world, man.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

For sure.

SPEAKER_04 46:56

Yeah, oh my for sure.

SPEAKER_03 47:02

Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am. Well, I uh that was a very great presentation. I enjoyed it. I know everybody else is gonna enjoy it. Before we get out of here, though, you you mentioned the pups to pedigrees, pedigrees to pups, yeah. Yeah, let's talk about hey before you go, everybody make sure you go to Pure Dog Talk. You mostly on Spotify, right? That's your biggest order.

SPEAKER_02 47:23

I'm on Spotify, I'm on iTunes, I'm on YouTube, I'm everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 47:26

Yeah, YouTube everywhere. Great, great, great show. So uh, but yeah, would you talk a little bit about pups to pedigrees before we get out of here?

SPEAKER_01 47:35

Absolutely. So pedigrees to pups is a uh a program that Dr. Marty Greer, who's a really good friend of mine, a frequent um guest on the podcast, wrote literally the Bible on on breeding called uh reproduction and canine reproduction and neonatology.

SPEAKER_05 47:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 47:55

Um, everyone should own it. I'm just telling you, it's a hundred dollars and it's worth its weight in gold. Um anyway, she and I have gotten to be pals, and and she we started talking about the idea that so many dog breeders don't have mentors, they don't have a support system at all. And so we created this concept of basically a 360-degree mentoring system, all the way from you know, why are you breeding dogs, selecting your foundation bitch, doing pedigree research, reading a pedigree, actually knowing what a pedigree is and reading it, um, and then building that up, searching for a stud dog, um, building a family of dogs, talking about how to do that inbreeding, outcrossing, line breeding, all the things that go into the breeding piece is what I talk about, including this little snippet we had tonight. And then Marty takes it and she takes it from um, you've got your bitch, you've chosen your stud dog, now you're getting your bitch pregnant. So getting your bitch pregnant, getting her unpregnant, right? Um, semen collection, neo um neonatal, all the stuff on raising puppies, um, all the veterinary piece to um saving sick puppies, c-sections, just like everything, all the way through to the end, uh placing your puppies, doing contracts, co-ownerships, all of that kind of stuff. It is meant to give breeders at any level, but really young breeders, new breeders, people that are getting started, and people that maybe have hit a snag that are more experienced, or like, man, I don't know what to do with this, um, or people that just want to have knowledge um in their back pocket. And so we've done the half a dozen of these live. And now the last one that we did live, a friend of mine filmed it with actual like TV cameras and stuff, like like real, real things.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

Like I made a Hollywood, man. It's like Jesus Christ, I got a mic in my bra, and I'm like, this is weird.

SPEAKER_05 50:11

It's just you're the big leagues.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

Big leagues, yeah. So it's very cool. And they um we're in the process of the the two and a half day seminar was recorded and will be edited and produced in like kind of a TV show fashion and released in 10 episodes that are gonna be available on demand um from Dog It D-O-G-G-I-T. So um Joe, I know I sent you the link so you can share that with us. I got it. It is it is a hundred percent one of the most I I mean I'm giving it and I'm saying I'm learning things as I give it because we're talking to the people, right? We're having the conversations and we're asking the questions, and it's it's really it's a lot of fun. I really, really enjoy it. And um, we've been like up to our eyeballs doing this. Is I think we gave I think the first one was in Hawaii last fall, like September. So we did Hawaii, Wisconsin, uh Texas, Wisconsin, and now Seattle. So this was the fifth one that we've done.

SPEAKER_03 51:22

Okay, nice, nice. Well, hey, you got it going on. You gotta go on.

SPEAKER_01 51:28

Anyway, I you gotta keep running, man. Otherwise, the devil's gonna catch up with you.

SPEAKER_03 51:33

That's right, yeah, yeah. We don't need to sit still. But uh, everybody, I want y'all to make sure you go follow Miss Laura Reeves on every platform you can. This is a very important lady involved, as you can tell. And she got one of the most tremendous podcasts with people from all over the place, man. It's really boy, it's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

It's a lot. There's 700, almost 750 episodes now.

SPEAKER_03 51:59

So yeah, yeah. Great job. Great job. Well, I appreciate you coming stopping by uh once again. And it's all good. If you want to say something to the to the family over here, you just hit me up. Joe, let's go.

SPEAKER_02 52:12

All right, Joe. It was great to talk to you. You know I enjoy it every time. I'm happy to happy to be joining you.

SPEAKER_03 52:18

Likewise, okay, we out of here. We'll see y'all next time. Step into the realm of canine wisdom with our podcast NWA Connie Corso, where we interview dog men and women from around the globe. Discover their talents and insights on breeding, training, nutrition, and the rich history of dogs. Tune in to the most underrated yet influential dog podcast on social media. Your journey into the dog world starts here.