Natural Rearing Breeders

Okay, I've had enough of this. There is a Border Collie breeder who advertises herself as being a Natural Rearing ("NR") Breeder. At one time I very much respected this person. I thought she knew her stuff and was breeding nice dogs. Amazing what you find out when you hang around for a while.

I know she's been putting me and my dogs down: for breeding a bitch too young (yep, I did that, but it was a mistake and because I am a NR breeder I chose not to use hormones to cause Midge to abort her litter or to have it surgically aborted. I honestly considered euthanizing the puppies at birth, but I couldn't do that either, and I'm glad I didn't. She's also putting me down for breeding dogs without having genetic testing done. Well, all the testing that I can do at this time is done. Finally, she puts Gel down; she says she had a half sister to Gel and that she couldn't stand her. Said the Bwlch lines are soft and sulky and so on and so forth. Well, the Bwlch lines are behind a lot of Border Collies and I live with Gel and work him and I would not call him soft or sulky. I'd call him a lot of other things, but not soft or sulky. What this person didn't like about a half sister has absolutely nothing to do with Gel or what he might produce. She saw Gel once, at a trial, she said she liked him, she never saw him work. How can she pass judgment about this dog? I guess just because she can.

She calls herself a NR breeder, yet she openly posts on non-NR lists about feeding kibble to her dogs. In my opinion, that is one of the absolute worst things you can do to a raw-fed dog, feed it raw one day and then when it is inconvenient to feed raw, for one reason or another, you toss it kibble. The poor dog's digestive system must be so thrown out of whack by this. Dogs evolved eating their meat raw, their digestive systems are specifically designed to do that. People and companies out to make money decided that they could make a killing on taking the leftovers from humans, throwing it altogether in a vat, cooking and processing it into 100 percent nutritionally complete food for dogs and cats. This is what most dogs and cats eat today: crap in a bag or can. This is not an ideal way to feed. I chose to feed my dogs and cats what they evolved eating. I made the commitment fifteen years ago to feed my cats and now my dogs a 100 percent home-prepared raw meat diet. I do not feed them kibble or canned food if I feel too lazy to prepare food for them. In 2002 I traveled from Massachusetts to North Carolina over three days with ten cats and I fed them a raw meat diet the entire time. It was a pain, but I was not about to subject their systems, used to digesting a raw meat diet, to cooked protein. I considered feeding canned food, I really did, but I did not.

She's currently advertising a litter that she plans to breed as being third generation raw fed; is that third generation raw fed when it's convenient to do so? I guess you can just call yourself a NR breeder if it's convenient or if it suits you.

I guess I'm just a purist, or maybe I care too much about my animals.