. The dog book : a popular history of the dog, with practical information as to care and management of house, kennel, and exhibition dogs, and descriptions of all the important breeds . Dogs. CHAPTER V B uyiNG A Dog. OW to buy a dog is as difficult a question to answer ofFhand as to tell a person what dog will satisfy him. With the general custom in America of worshipping the fetish of pedigree in animals—^while holding that the man must be guaged by his individual merits—it is difficult to get any person to consider the purchase of any dog that has not a number of champions in his pedigree. I
. The dog book : a popular history of the dog, with practical information as to care and management of house, kennel, and exhibition dogs, and descriptions of all the important breeds . Dogs. CHAPTER V B uyiNG A Dog. OW to buy a dog is as difficult a question to answer ofFhand as to tell a person what dog will satisfy him. With the general custom in America of worshipping the fetish of pedigree in animals—^while holding that the man must be guaged by his individual merits—it is difficult to get any person to consider the purchase of any dog that has not a number of champions in his pedigree. If he has that, you can dispose of the veriest scrub that ever lived. Pedigree has a value, but you must know the history of the dogs of the day and the most prominent of the past generation or two to enable a proper conclusion to be drawn. From a pedigree it is possible for one of the initiated to form an opinion as to what might be expected of the dog in certain characteristics and which of these characteristics he might perpetuate. It has but little to do with the future excellence of the puppy beyond the fact that a dog of good breeding has a better chance of being good-looking than one bred from scrubs. To understand this it is necessary to state that there are few breeders of prominence who do not lay stress upon some particular point in confor- mation. With one it is head, with another it is "front," another must have a good coat, and so on. An expert fox-terrier judge would make but little mistake at an English show in picking out the Redmond, Vicary or Powell entry, all of which is in keeping with what Youatt tells us about the two sheep-breeders who purchased some pure Bakewell ewes and rams, and although there was not a drop of outside blood introduced into the flocks, they became entirely different in type within a few years, each breeder making his selections along a line of his own. Then again we find every now and then a sire that is particularly goo
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublisherne, booksubjectdogs
