If you have not been on my website in some time, it has been updated with new photos in the slide show, Spanish Mastiff and Pyrenean Mastiff litter plans for 2017, some great resource links for your education and convenience, and more. It's best seen from a computer, not a phone or you'll not be able to access most of the information.
Check it out: http://www.lgdnevada.com/news---litters.html
"Hombre alto, sin carácter ... es un tiempo cuando hay mucho en la ventana, nada en la habitación".
When you breed dogs for as long as I have now, and on the scale I have, it is inevitable that some customers go south on you and/or turn bad or turn out to be a huge disappointment, or worse yet - and this has happened to me - you realize too late you made a huge error in judgment and they were a bad placement - of course this is assuming that you have expectations of your dog customers. And I do.
It's become very unpopular in these days of uber political correctness to have expectations of anything. In the LGD world expectations of LGD prospective buyers and breeders have reached new lows because this huge, new influx of mostly millennial aged, inexperienced, city born and raised, first time back yard hobby farmers and psuedo wannabe farmers do not want to have to wait for results with livestock, farming and/or dogs. They want everything now or yesterday, with minimum work on their part. They come into this with a chip on their shoulder and an attitude that they think they already know it all. They are often spoiled, obnoxious, impatient and typically with little or no common sense.
It has as the Dalai Lama says, become a sad time of "Tall man, no character.....it is a time when there is much in the window, nothing in the room".
This profound observation can be applied to many if not all aspects of our lives - in and outside of the agriculture community.
Because I am a published author and public figure, I must always try hard to stay on the high road. It is not easy and that is why, I am not in any Facebook LGD groups which are typically a waste of time and often cesspools of slander, character defamation, lies, finger pointing and ceaseless "I want it now" demands from people too lazy to do the real work and research required. Drive by posters, fake accounts, pot stirrers, dog fighters disguised as "LGD breeders", arrogant armchair "experts" running huge useless groups with very little decent information is sadly where too many people go now for their "advice" on Livestock Guardian Dogs. They always pay for it in the end. Sadly, so do the dogs. Hence, other than my kennel Facebook page, my participation on Facebook in terms of LGDs is minimal at best.
But when concerned customers reach out to me and point out blatant lies and misrepresentations being put out on Facebook and other venues by a customer of mine about me and my dogs, I am forced to confront this ongoing problem and post this disclaimer so that people out there know fact from fiction.
By being purposely ambiguous and playing with words, one customer of mine is leading prospective customers into thinking something that is not true about the dogs she is breeding that came from me. Judging from the way some of this particular customer's own customer base has continually come on to my kennel Facebook page, posted slander, defamation of character and trash posts, that I have had to delete and then block the posters, speaks volumes about their lack of integrity and their obsessive drive to bad mouth me at all turns. All because someone wants credibility without paying dues, a reputation without earning it. You do not become a reputation breeder of LGDs over night with just a few litters under your belt. There is much more wood to be chopped and water to be carried than that.
Reputation dog breeders and trainers abide by certain unwritten rules. One of those rules is that you always acknowledge where you got your dogs from. You don't make it up and you don't lie about it or misrepresent. You don't remove their kennel name prefix or suffix off of their name in order to disguise where the dog originated from. "The man who honors his teacher, honors himself" is a sage quote noted below. Only evasive, unethical and dishonest LGD breeders lie about the provenance and source of their dogs and breeding stock.
I have posted names and references of the people I bought my dogs from all over my website. There are references to who the parents were of my dogs - and who they came from. Both here and on my blog the names of the great breeders I owe so much to, such as Farma Stekot, Tornado Erben, Abelgas, Viejo Paramo, Alto Aragon and many others are named on my pages with profound thanks and appreciation because I would not have gotten my start without their great dogs and their trust in me. I would never ignore them. However, there are sadly those out there doing just that in the Livestock Guardian Dog breeding arena - some of my customers being some of them.
When I see some of my customers now breeding my dogs they bought from me and either purposely not saying where they came from (me), or in the worst cases ambiguous, deceptive wording inferring that they bred the dogs from me, themselves, or brought them over from Europe, when they did not, I feel it is necessary to alert people to these purposeful misrepresentations.
I ask people to go deeper, and do your homework and ask the questions that need to be asked of these people: why are they doing this? What is their motivation, to try to destroy the reputation of the breeder who gave them their very start, and their great dogs that they own and breed?
Perhaps It is that they have succumbed to the "Tall man, no character" syndrome. There is much in their window but nothing in their room.
It is truly sad indeed I have to even publish this disclaimer but due to recent events I feel forced to in order to defend my own honor. It will remain on my website now as a permanent fixture on the page. In closing, to those of you who are indeed, scratching your heads wondering about some customers of mine who adore my dogs and are breeding them, and promoting them as being the best there is, while in turn slandering me and my kennel operation out of the other side of their mouths: again ultimately what and who you choose to believe is up to you and says just as much about you and your character, or the lack of it, as it does them and theirs. Think on that.
"The man who honors his teacher, honors himself"
--- Colin Chou as the Jade Emperor in The Forbidden Kingdom
