Dog Breeding

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Nancy Frensley. I'm the training manager at the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society, in Berkeley, California, and I've been asked the question very often what is dog breeding? Well, the answer seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? It's two dogs breeding together to make puppies, but it's a lot more complicated and even controversial issue than many people think about. So, those who breed in what we call the breed fancy; really responsible hobby breeders, people who are breeding dogs for a specific purpose are breeding specific traits together so that they get a certain way of looking and a certain way of behavior. This is a very careful, methodical, and responsible process that usually doesn't tend to throw a whole lot of extra puppies onto the market that wind up in shelters. For most pet dogs humane societies all around the world recommend spaying and neutering your dogs so that they don't breed. There are so many pet dogs in shelters and municipal facilities all over the place because people have bred dogs together without realizing that they need to find homes for all the puppies, and there just really aren't enough homes to go around for all the dogs that are currently being bred. So, when you think about breeding, putting two dogs together to make puppies, if you have a purpose in mind, something that you really want to do, a type of dog that you want to produce do it once, and then have your dogs spayed and neutered."