About the Breeding: In early 2007 we have decided to breed Isis (Rumba De Akido San).  This will be Isis' first litter and our first litter in 6+ years.  Isis is co-owned by Julie Holmes (Epic Dobermans) and Kathryn Kudron/Wilhelm Beckmann (Voyager Dogz).  Isis lives with Kathryn and Wil but will whelp her puppies at Julie's house.  Isis will be 3.5 years old when she is bred.

 

December 2005 - January 2006

Deciding to Breed Isis   Kathryn & I (Julie) have decided to start making plans to breed Isis in her first heat cycle of 2007.  Our hope is that Isis will finish her AKC Championship title in 2006 so that she will be a finished champion before she is bred.  We also decided that the breeding should wait until after she shows in the Doberman Pinscher Nationals that are being held in Colorado in September of 2006.  All of this contributed to our decision about timing.  Because Kathryn and I 'live' with our dogs (no kennels), we both agreed that we would not be able to keep a puppy from this litter.  However, we both want a puppy from Isis (or one of her offspring) in the future, but we know that waiting until she is 6+ years old for her first litter would be challenging.  Our hope is that we will be able to evaluate her as a mother, see the quality of her offspring (temperament & conformation) and then plan to breed her again in the more distant future when one or both of us have room in our homes and lives for another puppy.  We hope to find at least one puppy buyer that will take a puppy on a co-ownership thus giving us another option for a "future" puppy that we can keep.    The first step in this process was to take a long, hard OBJECTIVE look at Isis and determine her strengths and weaknesses.  We believe that a good breeder can justify why they bred the dog they did and why they chose the stud dog that they did.  Kathryn and I have similar beliefs:  simply breeding for the sake of it, for money, so the 'kids can see the miracle of life', or because the stud dog was local are not a good reasons to breed!    You will see that our initial discussions were LENGTHY but I hope you will find them worth reading.    Isis has several significant strengths that we believe make her an excellent candidate for breeding: Exceptional Temperament - Isis is a stable dog that has an outgoing, fearless, friendly personality.  She is an easy dog to show and train because she has a strong willingness to please and is motivated by food/toys.  She is alert and enthusiastic. Conformation - Isis is the correct size for a Doberman bitch.  She has full and proper dentition.  Her best physical attributes include: head shape, eyes (set and color), great feet. Health - Isis is an overall very healthy dog.  She has had some health testing and she will be tested for cardio (a common cause of death in Dobermans), thyroid (Dobermans are often subject to developing hypothryoidism), eyes (she will be CERF tested) and her elbows and hips will be evaluated for displaysia.  All these tests will be done in the coming months before any final determination is made about her being bred. Pedigree - Ultimately, we look at the dog to determine if she is a good candidate for breeding.  However, the pedigree should provide some indication of the types of genetics that she carries.  Isis is a tightly linebred dog as she has the same grandsire on both her mom and dad's side of the families.  For Isis, this meant that her grandsire's genes should be most predominant in her (both the good and bad genes).  Because of this, we will choose a stud dog that is an outcross for Isis (not related).  Linebreeding is an excellent tool in a breeding program as it helps cement certain characteristics in a dog's genetic makeup - however, too much linebreeding can also cause problems if there are flaws in the health or conformation of the primary dog in the pedigree.  Lex Luthor (Isis' grandsire) was used heavily as a stud dog during the last 5 years so many dogs that we like will be ruled out because their pedigrees are too similar to Isis'.   No dog is perfect.  A good breeder will be able to be objective and should see the areas that need improvement.  This is how we all strive to improve our breed.  The goal should always be to produce puppies that are better than their parents.  We identified several areas where Isis could be improved: Temperament - Guarding Instinct: Isis is fearless - but we believe that fearlessness also makes her less "guardy".  She will watch a threat (no shyness or fear) but doesn't find that threat significant enough to react.  She does bark at the door, etc., but we would like to see her puppies be a little more 'suspicious' and more apt to react to the threat if appropriate.  This is in keeping with the purpose of the Doberman. Conformation - Topline: Isis has a good topline now but, during her puppyhood she was "soft" (making her back/topline look dippy)...we will look for a dog that has a strong topline and maintained that topline through his growth phase and as an adult.  Forechest/Front: Isis is pretty much balanced (her front and rear angles are similar) but we would like to see more forechest on her puppies. This presents a better outline and, with an improvement in the front, should improve on her movement (giving more reach and drive). Health - Isis is vWD affected.  vWD (von Willebrands) is a common bleeding disorder in Dobermans (similar to hemophelia in humans).  Through DNA testing a dog can be classified as either: clear (they do not carry the gene); carrier (they carry the gene but do not exhibit any symptoms) or affected (they carry the gene and exhibit symptoms).  In truth, a dog's vWD status is numeric (not black and white) so a dog may be borderline on any of these.  Isis, while she has not displayed any of the common symptoms of vWD (common symptoms include excessive bleeding when cut, slowness to heal) is still in the affected range.  This is a gray area for the Doberman community - some breeders are not concerned about vWD and producing vWD affected puppies.  However, Kathryn and I agreed that this is part of stacking the cards in the puppy's favor.  With an affected dog, we have decided to ONLY breed to a stud dog that is tested clear of vWD.  By breeding an affected dog to a clear dog, all the puppies in our litter will be carriers.  Our goal is to not produce any affected dogs (which would happen if we bred her to a dog that is a carrier or a dog that is also affected).    Kathryn and I also established our priorities for a stud dog.  What was most important to us (remember, there is no perfect dog and, so, there is not perfect stud dog!).  Our priorities are as follows: Temperament - It doesn't matter how pretty a dog is if their temperament is difficult to live with!  A good temperament (stable, friendly, fearless, trainability/willingness to please) is our number one priority.  Because this is our number one priority, we have agreed that we will physically go and MEET the stud dogs we are considering.  This is going to cost us money to (most likely) fly out to see the boy but temperament is something you have to see to evaluate and it is worth it to us.  By the way, temperament is affected by their upbringing (nuture), but we believe that simply serves to shape and develop their nature.  Again - this is all about stacking the cards in the puppy's favor! Health/Longevity - We are going to be looking closely at the health testing of the stud dogs and also at the longevity of the dogs in their pedigree.  While there are no guarantees in this world, we believe that health testing (and longevity of ancestors) is stacking the cards in our favor.  We have an added challenge with Isis because she was imported from Argentina.  Health testing is not very prevalent in Argentina so we have very little data on many of the dogs in her pedigree.  Fortunately, her double-grandsire, Lex, was fully health tested and that gives us enough comfort to proceed with breeding her.  Isis' mother was also recently health tested with excellent results. Conformation - The dog we breed to must be a good representative of the Doberman standard.  As such, we start by looking only at dogs that have finished their AKC or CKC Champion titles.  A title does NOT make a dog perfect, but it does provide some degree of objective evaluation.  Pedigree/Owner - We are not "well-known" breeders.  Also, many long distance buyers will select their puppy based on two things: pictures and pedigree.  Finding a dog with a strong pedigree (ancestors that have consistently produced champions and performance titled offspring) will help us attract the kind of people we want to have our puppies.  The owner of the stud dog is also important to us.  The owner must be easy to work with, a true caregiver of the breed and well respected in the Doberman community.  This person (and their dog) will forever be associated with these puppies and we believe they should be a person with similar goals, perspectives and a love for the breed.  Also, their must be mutual trust between us and the stud dog owner - we will rely on them to be honest about their dog's strengths and weaknesses.  They must be willing and able to answer tough questions about why their dog is at stud and what he contributes to a breeding program.  We hope that stud dog owner will become a friend for life - in the same way we hope our puppy buyer's see us.  As a person who owns two imported Dobermans with natural ears (see Merlin & Indy), I felt strongly that our puppies would be sold natural or cropped at the new owner's preference (to show/performance or pet homes).  There are many breeders that are totally opposed to selling puppies natural eared so it was also important to find a stud dog owner that accepted and respected our choice in this matter.  The last thing we want is a stud dog owner speaking ill of us after the fact --- honesty up front is always the best policy.

February 2006

Finding a Stud Dog   Keeping in mind our breeding goals, Isis' strengths and weaknesses, etc., we began our search for a stud dog.  We started by looking at current and past issues of the Doberman Digest (a quarterly magazine with ads of Dobermans that show/perform), searched the internet and talked to fellow Dobie people.  We looked not only at stud dogs, but at all dogs - if there was a dog we liked we might consider its sire.  As I said before, we were limiting our search to only dogs that are vWD clear, have an AKC Championship and that was a proven sire (we agreed that it helped us to see what kind of puppies he had produced in the past if we could SEE them!).   Our first short-listed stud dog was ruled out by the stud dog owner (he was no longer available at stud for health reasons).  While we were very disappointed, we were extremely grateful to the owner for being honest with us about his health.  We hope that everyone has as much integrity as this person!   We have short-listed two other dogs at this point.  Again, we have agreed that we will meet our short-listed dogs in person before making the final decision so we expect this process to take some time.    One of the owners has been very good about communicating with us, talking to us about her dog and has readily shared information like health testing documents, pictures, etc.  We also received a copy of her stud dog contract and talked to her about plans to home the puppies cropped or natural-eared.  She was very accepting and easy to talk to -- and this puts her dog at the top of our short list.  Based on this, we have made tentative plans to fly out and meet her (and her boy) in April 2006.  With any luck, she will also be having a litter of puppies out of this stud dog at that time so we'll get to see first hand the offspring he is producing.  We also contacted another Doberman breeder that had used this dog at stud to get her feedback (what were her puppies like, etc.) and she had very favorable comments about him (and his owner).   With the second dog we short listed, the owner has been a little harder to get in touch with.  She promptly replied to my first inquiry but she was leaving for a circuit of dog shows and said she'd be back in touch.  I haven't heard back from her and it is getting to be time we contacted her again for more information.       The search continues but we feel we've made a good start by providing ourselves with sufficient time to really look at the dogs and make a good decision!

July 2006

Finding a Stud Dog (Continued)   I have been to visit our first short listed stud dog.  Seeing him in person was definitely a great idea.  I was able to get video of him moving, see him with other dogs/people, interact with him and I even got to see some of his puppies that were 6 weeks old.  On the whole, he was an excellent candidate - sound of mind and body.  His owner/breeder was wonderful and gave me free reign to fully evaluate his temperament, etc. during my six hour visit.    We are continuing to keep our eyes open and have a couple other potential candidates to review.  We will make our final decision after the DPCA Nationals in September (after all, what better place is there to 'shop' for stud dogs?!).

August 2006

The Value of Health Testing   In preparation for breeding Isis, we began to do all of her health testing.  This included:  x-raying hips/elbows (she was rated GOOD by the OFA), DNA testing for coat color (she is a dominant black) and more.  Most importantly, we did a liver panel.  A blood test is not necessarily a common health test but, we knew for certain that at least one Lex Luthor off spring died from Liver issues at a young age.  Therefore, we did this test to ensure that Isis was healthy and genetically sound.  You can imagine our surprise when Isis' liver numbers came back extremely high (far above the normal, healthy range).   Isis appeared very healthy so we decided to retest Isis several weeks later just to make sure that the results were not skewed by anything and even had the second tests sent to a different lab.  The liver results were even HIGHER the 2nd time.  Isis was immediately put on medication and it was decided that she would definitely NOT be bred.   This was obviously a hard decision.  We are not a 'breeding kennel' with multiple bitches to choose from for our breeding program.  We owned just Isis whom we had many hopes for.  However, this is why we do health testing -- and this is why EVERY breeder should do health testing.  Isis being sick is sad and hard but we can only imagine how much worse it would have been had we bred her, potentially putting her at a life threatening risk and then produced puppies that might have also suffered from liver issues.  There is no excuse for breeding in ignorance and we fully know - and have experienced - making a hard decision that was for the best of the breed.  We would like to extend our thanks to our many friends that offered us advice, shared their stories and supported us during this time.

September - October 2006 --- THE FINAL INSTALLMENT!!!

Isis Gets A New Career and a Loving New Family   After the initial liver results indicated there was trouble on the horizon, we were approached by some very good friends of ours about potentially adopting Isis.  Russell and Thad had adored Isis from their first meeting years ago and said they would love to adopt Isis and do performance work with her (agility, obedience and more).  We discussed her health issues and had many, many talks before agreeing that they were a perfect home -- one where Isis would be live with her new Dober-brother, Disco, and enjoy the love and companionship of two of the best dog-parents we have ever known.  Isis moved in with Russell, Thad and Disco in August and officially ended her confirmation career at the 2006 Doberman Nationals.  We still see Isis regularly and love hearing about all her adventures!   Isis is not out of the woods yet.  As I write this (October 2, 2006), Isis is scheduled for a liver biopsy (and will probably be spayed at the same time).  Despite being on medication for over a month, Isis' liver continued to get worse.  The biopsy will hopefully tell us all exactly what the problem is and how it can be treated.  Until then, we offer our support and love to Russell and Thad and hope the best for our little girl.