.com Forum · American Cocker Spaniel

In this kennel, when I choose a match for my dogs I consider color first. Then I decide what the bitch needs most before choosing a sire,although,sop seems to make a huge a difference. Say your bitch has a low gait, but the dog in your kennel with best gait has the lowest sop. Gaits definitely improve overall but sop goes down.So sometimes I just breed for sop and color, just so I can get something to show. Then after several generations, the entire kennel has low gaits. Just wondering about some of you others, will you breed down sop to improve a trait?

I have done this in some of my other kennels before. For instance in Anatolians I found a stud in an abandoned kennel and he had a great Head trait (10.0 I think it was) but low SOP, so I bred him to every single one of my bitches - and then kept the pups that had good head and worked hard to lock that 10.0H in - so now I have a whole heap of 10.2, 10.0 and 9.8 in head etc. Then you just start breeding those ones with dogs that have a high SOP and good traits across the board to join the two projects together as per say.