My dogs are my fulfilled lifelong dream! They are family dogs and my friends and partners on shows, on the training ground and in my daily life.

That they are also used for breeding comes second.
The reason why I keep different breeds is because I do love different breeds. My enthusiasm for rare breeds is too big for only one breed.
It often says that a good breeder only breeds one or two different breeds. This may be the truth in many cases, but remember that it is also possible to keep many dogs of only one breed outside in kennels and that my different dogs are lying on the couch with me every day.
I do not breed different breeds to supply demand and make the big money (In this case I would not keep such rare and also difficult breeds). I just love my dogs.

But this enthusiasm for rare breeds is also the reason, why my dogs should be used for breeding, if possible. As I said the breeds are rare and the gene pool is small. There are still many problems in the breeds and there’s a big need for action. So I’m sure my dogs and I, with my knowledge about breeding and genetics are able to contribute to the breeds future.

And of course: raising a litter of puppies is one of the greatest things in the world ;-)

Of course my goal would be to breed healthy, beautiful dogs with the best temper.
But it would be very overconfident to think, this is easy! The truth is, this is impossible, because no dog is perfect. Dogs are living creatures and thankfully it’s not possible to create them in Frankenstein’s laboratory (yet).
So my principles are not the all time quoted:

Health – Beauty – Temper.
But:

Honesty - Responsibility - Love.

Which means, I’ll always be absolutely honest about my dogs and puppies with all their pros and cons and also about the breeds themselves.
I bear the responsibility of every dog I brought to life and I take this very seriously.
And I love my dogs and all the work with them! I love raising a litter, no matter how difficult it could be. You can only give your best, if you love what you’re doing!

Of course this doesn’t mean I don’t care about health, beauty and temper! Read here about my priorities in breeding and how I choose breeding pairs:

To enlarge the gene pool

In my opinion this is the most important thing to keep rare breeds alive! This means to prevent inbreeding as effectively as possible.
But this also means not to use popular sires and thinking in generations. It’s easy to find a partner not related to a female, but you also need to think, if it’s possible for their pups to find such partners in the future too. So mixing up all lines together is also not the solution.

Health

Of course health is very important. My breeding dogs are tested on all diseases which are known to be typical for the breed. And I also only use partners which are known healthy.
Unfortunately many diseases are not well known at this time, so I also spend lots of time to be always up to date to the newest scientific results.

Beauty

Beauty or better type is important too. Not only to win in shows, but to keep the original appearance of the breeds.
When choosing a stud I don’t care much about titles he won in shows, but I look for dogs close to the breed standard. They should not have the same faults as my females, but maybe improve them in the future generation.

Temper

It’s very hard to breed for temper as the heritability is only 20-40% and many other factors have an influence on it. This means a dog with good genes can be made aggressive or fearful easily when handled the wrong way and a dog with bad genes can have a friendly character when socialized and educated perfectly. So you never know which part of the parents’ temper is hereditary.
Of course I try to find nice tempered dogs for breeding, but this is not the guarantee to get nice tempered pups.
The next thing is the question: what exactly is a good temper and for which I want to breed? For me a good temper is open minded, intelligent and trustfully and also with all the natural instincts and the typical breed character. A zombie dog which endures everything and which seems to has no more needs and instinct has NOT a good temper in my opinion.
The more important part is to socialize every pup as good as possible, which I do to the best of my knowledge and belief.
But the biggest part has the new owner, who need to carry on the breeders’ work, educate the dog well and handle it with knowledge and love!
As the breeder I need to find such homes for my pups and as an animal psychologist I’ll always be there for my puppy-buyers.

And if something goes wrong…

…I’ll always stand by my dogs and there puppies! I would never kill a pup which is born with a fault as long as it’s possible to deal with it.
I also see no reason to hide those pups, because it’s always possible that something unexpected happens. That’s nature!
Also wrong coloured dogs, DS operated or ridgeless Thais or whatever can make a great pet for someone, so my part is to find good homes for them. Not to hide them and boast off a small but correct litter.
I’ll also take any pup back at any time, if everything goes wrong in the new family.