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Curious from any other source breeders (or anyone really), how do you decide which puppies to keep when they are all pretty close in quality?

It's easier when I have a litter and there's a few noticeable pick puppies, but then there's those times I dread where the litter is extremely close with all pups of similar overall quality, but the high/low stats are very different. It can be tough to decide, especially when I'm only trying to keep 1-2 pups a litter.

I know one option is to look at which puppies have better important traits (like for OES the Gait and TN&B is considered the most important traits), but I feel focusing too much on those leads to stuck traits and pockets of low quality in the overall dog, so I tend not to focus on traits but overall quality.

It is not that difficult for me.

This kennel does true Source breeding.

Early on, I would pick a male and female with higher SOP.
Now that I am years away from that, I pick traits that I want.
I choose the pups with better traits in a certain area and FHd the rest.

Not sure if this answers your question.

Carol

Yeah I was curious what other people tend to look for to help with decision making, so yes it's helpful :3

I personally don't always trust the SOP number listed since I think it takes SS into account, and that can mess up what I see as the "true" quality of the dog (outside the "it" factor). I've definitely picked the "middle" SOP dog in a litter and FH'd higher SOP dogs because those will have one or two Reds/Oranges and a handful of Green, while the lower SOP dog is all Green.

So that's basically why it can be tough for me. I'm not looking at SOP numbers or Show Shine. I'm looking strictly at overall traits and trait colors. And when you look at that, at least for me, it can be harder to eyeball what the best puppy is.

Yes, show shine is also the easiest trait to get to 20 so I would definitely focus on keeping dogs that have higher traits in other categories for source breeding even if the SOP is lower due to show shine.

I'd also try to keep some dogs with traits numbers on both sides of 10 if that makes sense. Like if you mostly have 1-9s, make sure you keep some 11-20s too.

I know that when source breeding it's good to look at the old SOP also. Some have high current SOP and lower old SOP, and some have high old SOP and lower curent SOP.

How do you choose there?

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posted by Eclipse 207
I know that when source breeding it's good to look at the old SOP also. Some have high current SOP and lower old SOP, and some have high old SOP and lower curent SOP.

How do you choose there?

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Oh yes! Having both old and new SOP tables visible is definitely something I use regularly :3

Personally I disregard the new system numbers until I start getting a large amount of blues/greens and all the "20" and "0" numbers are gone. So I work strictly off the old SOP in the beginning.