I'm still playing some catch up here, hopefully after this weekend I'll be up to date :)
So once the hips, elbows and eye certificate had passed ok it was time to start considering which stud dog to use. Initially I had no idea there were so many ! I had started off by just looking at the champdogs site and their list of stud dogs
http://www.champdogs.co.uk/guided/all_labrador-retriever_stud-dogs.html
I at least knew I wanted a black stud as we want to keep a black puppy so that was the colour out of the way - the choices were still overwhelming. I wanted hip scores as low as possible, certainly under 10, and because of Jess' elbow scoring, had to have a stud with elbows of 0/0. DNA testing for pra was also mandatory. All the dogs fell within these guidelines though !
I started to look back through Jess' pedigree as I knew a popular breeding technique was "linebreeding" - not tobe confused with "crossbreeding". Another category that exists is "outcrossing". They are all described well here
http://www.labradorforums.co.uk/ftopict-12936-outcrossing.html
Jess' 5 generation pedigree had mostly dogs from field trial backgrounds (FtCh - Field Trial Champion, FTW - Field Trial Winner). There were however also some (mostly from her mothers side) from the show lines (ShCh - Show Champion, CH Show Champion that has gained it's show dog working certificate). I was keen to persue field work with both Jess and one of her pups so initially I narrowed my search down to working/field trial dogs with strong FtCh's in their pedigree. I also preferred the more athletic, leaner look of a working dog compared with a show dog (in general). So my criteria - hips (5/5 or lower), elbows 0/0, pra carrier/clear (preferably clear) and field trial pedigree.....or so I thought :)
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