Barbie and Ken

[IronHorse]

IronHorse, you rogue! More than 1,000 posts, and never once before this thread have you mentioned owning cattle. Even when you were telling about your pet bison and your emus, and raising so many kinds of smaller poultry/fowl, and having cattle rancher friends, and raw-feeding white-tailed deer and wild turkeys, and thinking of keeping some rabbits for food because your "goal is to get both ourselfs and our dogs away from as much commerically grown beef as possible." Couldn't you have just butchered your own cattle to achieve that goal? Never a word about owning cattle when posting on threads where cattle production was being discussed, and and never a word about working your dogs when posting on threads where working dogs was being discussed. You posted lots of nice pictures of your dogs, but not one showing them working, or with cattle. You even said several times (here, for example, post #13) that you don't work your dogs on stock, just to throw us off the track I guess. And now we learn you're running a herd of 157 cattle (maybe more by now), which your dogs work regularly thanks to your training. You sure can keep a secret!

 

Well you have me on that call,yes I would confess to being a rogue although one of a paradox wrapped in a conundrum.

The personal goal of diversification of my protein sources is one of balance IMO

The mix of wild and domestic, one must not foresake the fruits of the forest simply because he hunts trees.Something that an elder once said to me really struck home.

He said "its fine to search for gold but learn the value of the diamond for you may never find that gold you seek as you trek unknowingly over the diamond in your quest for one with no knowledge of the other".Knowledge may be the treasure but the vessel that holds it is the knowing that there is always more to learn.

If I have appeared to be deceitful it is not done with malice in mind but with a desire to maintain a degree of privacy as its purpose.

Although beef is one of my business ventures we consume a surprisingly small amount of beef in our diets.Given a choice of beef,vension,elk,bison or even rabbit, the beef would be my last choice of preference.

BTW its 159 now

 

 

 

I'm surprised, IronHorse, that with the reverence you express for the earth, and the forbearance we should have in transforming it to meet our frivolous desires, that you do not feel a little of the same reverence for the border collie breed. It too is a fragile and complex masterpiece, created with much effort and easy to destroy. I'm surprised too that with the concern you've expressed about overbreeding and rescue, that you apparently see no moral and ethical implications in mass breeding. At least, I have to assume that is your view, when you say "as long as a breeder is not being deceptive and is breeding with reverence to the animal while operating within the legal confine of the laws governing such pratice then I have no problem with it."

 

I can understand your not wanting legal rights to be interfered with, but it surprises me that you can't see the moral and ethical concerns in overbreeding and in breeding without recognizing and respecting the essence of the breed.

The word "reverence" needs to be emphasised in my statement in regards to this hypothetical breeder that I am refering to. Would it not be logical to believe that if the definition of the word is shared by all then wouldn't it stand to reason that said breeder is indeed respecting the essence of the breed with an intent upon tweaking that essence a smidge to the left or right of the fine line to achieve a subtle alteration without blowing the diamond into dust?

Therein lies the conundrum and the entrance of a rogue.

Rare they may be but I do believe such breeders do indeed exsist and i stand by my statement that such a breeder represents no threat to the philosophy of the USBCC.

[IronHorse]

Ah Eileen, but he did elude to at least one of his dogs being a working mushroom finder!

Which isnt it about time Ironhorse, that dog should be gettin a break from working to go have a little fun and gobble up some shrooms??

I never did find any here last year, but I havent forgotten them, maybe I'll luck out this year. Ive recently found some places deeper in the woods that might yeild a few.

Yes indeed that time is fast approaching,ThunderBolt is the bomb at finding morels.

depending on how our weather holds my guess is we will begin finding them within 3 weeks.I'm going to try my best to get some good pictures of him on morels this season.

(ETA) I found Thunder sitting in the boat this afternoon so he must be thinking the time is getting close too,lol

[Eileen Stein]

IronHorse, you speak with facile tongue.

 

Good luck with your morel hunting, and may your herd be up to 200 by tomorrow.

[juliepoudrier]

Would it not be logical to believe that if the definition of the word is shared by all then wouldn't it stand to reason that said breeder is indeed respecting the essence of the breed with an intent upon tweaking that essence a smidge to the left or right of the fine line to achieve a subtle alteration without blowing the diamond into dust?

I guess my problem comes with the "tweaking that essence a smidge" part of your comments. Breeding border collies as pets is certainly "tweaking" the essence of the breed by more than a smidge in my opinion, and I think that's where Sue's comments are coming from WRT reverence. If you revere a breed's essence, then I think you have to consider the real original purpose of the breed and not one person's idea of how to make a breed better (by making a working breed into a pet breed, for example), especially when that idea is pretty much diametrically opposed to the true essence of the breed in question. In that sense, I think a person breeding a purpose-created breed for something other than that purpose is not being ethical toward that breed, nor are they showing true reverence for the breed, even if they are showing reverence for their individual animals. To me tweaking means maybe creating a dog with a little more eye or a little less, or putting a little more grippiness in or a little less, or a bit more biddability or a bit less--not changing the breed into something else entirely.

 

These types of discussions come up often on some of the other lists I'm on, specifically for rare/heritage breeds where some people have decided that the breed is one part of what was originally the whole and then breed in that direction. That may not be making sense, so let me give a concrete example: I raise tunis sheep. They were common in the pre-Civil War era and were considered multipurpose, or at least dual purpose for meat and wool (sometimes milk). There is now a whole cadre of breeders, breeding largely for show, who have decided that the tunis is a meat breed, and they are rapidly changing the character of the sheep (no regard for fleece quality, sheep larger than the medium the standard calls for, etc.). Are they showing proper reverence for the breed? They think they are, but they are selecting for just one characteristic out of the several that made the tunis an important sheep in the early days of this country. I think such an attitude is especially egregious when dealing with a breed that is rare or endangered, because I strongly believe that conservation means saving the animal as it was used back in its "heyday," rather than saving it by converting it to something else. I am not alone in that thinking, at least among tunis breeders.

 

J.

[Sue R]

Well said, Julie. Yes, you did understand my intent.

 

What you are pointing out in your example with the Tunis is what has happened, is happening, and will happen to many breeds of many species that enter the "beauty pageant" ring without *true* regard (and not just lip service) for the purpose of the breed. By true regard, with reference to livestock, I mean breeding and showing (and placing) animals that are functional, economic, and productive in a real world situation - not distortions of breeds that often would perish or be "useless" (in terms of purpose) if expected to function as livestock in a real farm/ranch situation.

 

There are glaringly scary parallels between what has been seen in breeds of livestock and what we are seeing in breeds of dogs, as anyone who has been involved in animal husbandry or uses "purposeful" dog breeds can attest. In the show ring, reality doesn't win but appearance/style/image does. You can't run a farm/ranch on appearances (unless you are selling that image to the gullible) and you can't have dogs that are useful based on appearance, either. You need practical, proven breeding - not Barbie breeding in both cases.

 

I don't believe you can exhibit reverence for a breed without respecting and maintaining its purpose, and Julie explained that much better than I ever could.