This may be a daft question but do breeders who breed to produce good working dogs (as opposed to dogs for the pet market) register their dogs with the KC as a rule?
I wondered whether for working dogs, it is seen as offering any benefits? I know that racing greyhounds are not always registered with the KC, even if they are registered with the NGRC; what about gundogs?
I assume of they were dogs that compete in Field Trials, then they would have to be KC Registered, but what about the true working lines; that arguably could be the "best" examples of the breed??
I do worry about the emphasis on FTCH in working cocker pedigree's and the over-use of certain FTCH sires & dams in the working cocker world.
I would much rather i had a dog from good working stock who has a *few* ftch's in his pedigree rather than seeing the same ones appear in a pedigree on both dam and sire sides (sometimes over and over again!). At the moment hereditary problems aren't as big an issue with working cockers as they are with show cockers, but who knows in the future?
Line breeding, when done properly, can successfully reduce the incidences of heritiary problems; but it needs careful management, otherwise it can have the opposite effect and produce more *hidden* problems that only become apparent after a couple of generations