.com Forum · Portuguese Podengo

Hi lovely Podengo people,

I've just started a rare breed kennel in your breed.

I really like the low SOPs you presently have, and would love to participate in your work to develop them. You have room to move and improve - sounds exciting.

I've been in the game a little while, so I know the basic things. As I'm not a basic, I can breed more than once (when I have some good dogs).

What are your biggest challenges?

What are your high SOPs?

I'd love any advice you can give, either through the forum or by PM.

Lisboa

Welcome to the breed! It's always good to have new people and fresh blood.

As for the highest SOP, as far as I know right now the highest is this guy: www.showdog.com/users/dog_info.aspx?id=7786177. If there are any higher I haven't personally seen them yet, but then I don't make a habit of stalking other kennels either. As for the challenges, there are two that stick out.

Obviously we don't have a large number of breeders. Therefore, getting a major can be a challenge. The flip side of that is that we have had several people drop out because this breed just doesn't seem to want to raise in SOP very quick like other breeds do.

We started with a lower overall SOP to start with, but for some reason it seems to raise really, really slowly. Trying to get puppies that are even a point or two higher than their parents is a challenge. I have had times when I have had to go through three generations before I got a dog that was a point higher than I started with. It takes a LOT of patience. Some people just don't have it. They get frustrated with trying to get things going their way and give up just when they are to a point where they are about to make some progress.

So I hope you have a lot of patience. You will need it. But if you need any help just yell. Everyone is really good about working together to help the breed. As far as I know, we don't have any studs up for anything higher than $100 to help keep costs down. And I haven't seen any pups for sale for anything higher than $100 in awhile. Once in awhile you might find a good champion up for maybe $150 or $200, but it's rare. Plus, people are really good about helping you get started with some good dogs.

We do have a lot of colors and coat types that will be coming out sometime in the future. That should make it a lot more interesting in more ways than one. I don't have any idea how long it will be before that gets put into place though. Jeff has been pretty silent on that for several weeks now.

If you need anything just ask. We'll see what we can do to help.

Kat

Oops! Wrong kennel! I thought I was in Hues, which is my Podengo kennel. Instead I see I was somehow in Colours, which is my Lagotto kennel. Sorry.

Kat

thanks

I guess the next thing is to look for some dogs.

Does source breeding help at all?

Lisboa

I guess it would depend on what you want to do. If you are wanting to strictly go for show quality dogs that will get you into the top ten ranked kennels or be able to have a dog that is on the Top Dogs list in the breed then no, I wouldn't bother with starters. Get some established dogs off of some good breeders who have been here awhile and show them, then go from there.

However, if you are looking to develop your own line then it might be worth giving it a try. You might come up with something that has a very high number in a particular area that we are lacking in right now.

Since we are higher in quality than starters, you wouldn't have such a hard time catching up to everyone else. You could use your starters to breed to their established dogs to help raise SOP a lot faster than most.

But if you are talking about just breeding your own line exclusively from starter stock, I would say forget it. As I said, these dogs seem to move V-E-R-Y slowly in quality (it took 11 months to go from our first 60% SOP dog to our first 70% SOP dog). Trying to play catch up with all starters would probably burn you out and you would give up before you ever got anything decent.

Plus, as I said before, we are waiting on the colors/coats to come out. So you may want to save your starters. Then if we have any colors that seem to have disappeared during the course of the breedings, you could try and get them back. But that's up to you. I would say it depends on what you are wanting to accomplish as to which track you need to take.

If you are wanting to try buying some dogs to start with, I do have two litters settling tomorrow in this kennel and another one in my other kennel. Surely I'll end up with something decent out of the three. The younger the dogs are when you start sessioning, the quicker the stats move. So you would be able to session and get them into the ring quicker than you would if you just bought a couple of the older dogs and went from there. But if that's what you want, I'll probably have some of those getting ready to go as soon as these new ones settle.

Just let me know which direction you plan to try going and we'll see what we can do about getting you set up.

Kat