food=size?

So I was at the "National Dog Show" this past weekend, and got to see the Misc. breeds show. The breed that starts with an X and has no hair (and a name that seems to be made of random letters strung together) has no height standard. There were three of them there, two were 24"+ and one was 13".

Anyway, I am not as hung up on height as some. I have had a grand total of two litters, both sired by the same oversized dog (gasp!) He is 16 1/4 inches. I bred him to a 15 inch bitch, and a 16 inch bitch. He has produced 7 living puppies, 6 girls and 1 boy. The boy is slightly over, like his daddy, one girl will probably be over. Two girls are barely 13 inches, the rest are safely insize. So I don't get all offended when people breed slightly oversize, because in this breed, there are no guarantees about ANYTHING when it comes to size.
 
ClantyreSheltie said:
So I was at the "National Dog Show"
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This always makes me giggle. National Dog Show? Says who? Not the people actually competing.

ClantyreSheltie said:
The breed that starts with an X and has no hair (and a name that seems to be made of random letters strung together) has no height standard.
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Xoloitzquintle! The hairy ones are kinda cute - they just look like normal little pariah dogs. I didn't know about the tremendous size differences.

American Eskimo Dogs are similar; they come in Toy, Miniature, and Standard (a range from 9" to 19"). Open classes are divided, but otherwise, they're all shown together.
 
I showed a friends Icelandic Sheepdog in breed, and she was very excited to take him to the group. He was the first AKC Champion ISD, and finished with four majors, going BOB all four times. It was a fun show to watch, and she had a great time talking to people about her breed. But otherwise, yeah, just a medium sized all-breed show. I did get a nice picture of Marcy Fine and her Collie.

I also bought a sheepskin throw for the dogs, it matches my sofa. :smile2:
 
Mexican Hairless dogs...well, there is 3 sizes of it :
Toy: 10 to 13 in (25 to 33 cm) high at shoulder, approximately 12 to 18 lb (5.4 to 8.2 kg)
Miniature: 13 to 18 in (33 to 46 cm) high at shoulder, approximately 20 to 25 lb (9.1 to 11 kg)
Standard: 18 to 24 in (46 to 61 cm) high at shoulder, approximately 35 to 45 lb (16 to 20 kg)
And at least in Estonia they judge them as different breeds...
But back to the height and food. Well I had a Cavalier litter 2 years back, 8 pups were born, I feed them mostly with cottage cheese and minced meat and as much kibble as they wanted (they hardly ate it, only when I mixed a little kibble with A LOT of minced meat or/and cottage cheese). All 8 grew up to be way too big in size! A year before my litter, the same dam and same sire had a litter from another breeder, 6 were born. She fed them ONLY kibble. I saw 4 of them when grown up and they are all in good size, one is even perhaps too small for my eye. I am still not sure it was the food that made the size difference...but I guess it makes a little sense.
I have a Cavalier litter again, same dam, but different sire (a lot smaller one). Pups are almost 7 weeks old. I tried giving them more kibble but then they just refuse to eat and when I weigh them (I do that every morning, daily), they have lost weight! So I can`t give just kibble, they are eating minched meat and cottage cheese as well. Just crossing my fingers that they will be in good size when grown up.
 
Mikos_Mom said:
I have heard this before... but I must say, it sounds borderline cruel to me. I've even heard of people just slightly slightly under-feeding to control growth... would you let your daughter go hungry as a child because you thought it was better for women to be under 5'5"?

Feed them... feed them until their tummies are full... feed them a high quality food... and get what you get. JMHO.
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If I fed Sandstorm until he "thought" he was full, I would have a very fat dog.
Karen
 
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