Quote Originally Posted by wildchild
Which one do you have?
Which one is right?
Mr. Breeder gets it hard from the competitor and is labled soft on the dogs and a peddler.
Mr. Competitor gets it hard from the breeder and is labled a gambler and a dog user/butcher.
How did those two minds come to confliction?
A breeder has many reasons not to compete.
A competitor has many reasons not 2 breed.
What would a breeder do with all those dogs if there weren't any competitors & where would the competitors get their dogs from if there weren't any breeders?
I've read and heard for years that only a rare special few can do both and now I think i understand why. Because trying to do both can earn you a trip to the psyc ward. How do you who do both maintain sanity? Two minds, one body, and conflict between the 2.
wildchild

Well, first of all, I am sorry about the back-to-back losses of your 3 best males, amigo, I know that has got to be rough. As I told you on the phone, "Welcome to the dogs!": meaning, the kind of heartache that is a game test of its own. What you are articulating is called The Paradox of Truth: for the simple fact is all truths contain paradox. If you love your dogs, it sucks to lose them; but if you don't risk your dogs, you'll never know how high they can rise. On and on it goes. Total breeders could be viewed as those who are committed just to "making more dogs," which can come under criticism, true enough. Total matchers who only run dogs into the ground, without regard to their long-term genetic value, come under the opposite form of criticism, namely "dog wasters" who can't see beyond the immediate thrill of the hunt.

You are right, it does take a special kind of dogman to balance them both well, to build something worthwhile up, and then to put his years of toil out there to be risked ... to know when to stay in it, to know when to pick up, and to have all of the right medical supplies onhand ...and know-how to use them ... all of which are necessary to save any man's best dogs for posterity. Making mistakes in this game can cost you your dreams, it can cost you a decades-worth of breeding potential, even a whole new potential bloodline. And, worst of all, making mistakes in this game can cost you the life of your little friend in there, who's trying his hardest for you, but who just didn't have enough to pull it off that day. At the risk of sounding sappy, I will quote the best poem ever, IMO, one that my own father shared with me many years ago:

If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowances for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
~ Rudyard Kipling

Hang in there amigo ... it's something we all go through.

Jack