I was talking to someone who raced sled dogs in Alaska at the Iditarod. There was a team of Standard Poodles in the race that did very well, but later the tree huggers protested using them because they were not "sled dogs"... This type of mentality is ludicrous.... many different dogs, EVEN OF THE SAME BREED are good at many different things! That is equally as closed minded as saying Mexicans are only allowed to be gardeners because that is what they are good at! :twisted: The same people who come up with these ideas are the same who push forward breed specific legislation, and other horrible discriminative laws or "rules".. I guess black Labs are good for duck hunting and yellow are good for Seeing-Eye-Dogs only.. :( People, these ideologies are harmful, and I urge everyone to be careful of them when voting, taking surveys, commenting on social / animal laws, etc.. Regardless of the country...

Back on track... My dogs have never read any such laws either

Thanks for the translation Silvester

That's not exactly true.

Mr. Suter did alright with his Poodles in the Iditarod.. But I don't think that any of the Iditarod teams were exclusively Poodles. In 1988 he became the first to finish with a Poodle as lead-dog because he'd put the Poodle in that position about a mile out from the finishing line. In 1990, he finished the Iditarod without a Poodle left (he started with 12 Poodles and 8 Huskies).

The Poodles had been dismissed early on in the race at vet check points, which, trust me, have nothing to do with 'tree huggers' due to safety and health concerns. Poodles do not have an insulating undercoat due to their water-friendly coat, and their feet are not insulated like a Nordic breeds' would be.

Mr. Suter himself said in an 1990 interview, "Those young poodles looked great up to about McGrath, and then they faded really bad."

http://community.seattletimes.nwsour...4&slug=1111229

Breeds are bred for a reason and whatever that reason is should be their strong point. Of course there are frequently breeds that excel at things outside of their typical use, but it should be done in fun and one should never buy a dog meant for X and expect it to do Y. It is exactly this mentality that leads to wrong expectations of a dog and can lead to surrendering dogs to the shelter. For example, buying a Jack Russel Terrier to be a nice quiet home companion. I'm sure you can find some like this, but this is far from the norm.

I'm sure that Mr. Suter might have found his Poodles to be even better water retrievers. ;)

Iditarod
 

I met this person at my local kennel club in Texas. I don't remember her name, but she trained sled dogs before returning to Texas and told me the story. She had warned me about the tree-huggers because I mentioned wanting to see my Vlcaks pull a sled. However, as misinformed as I may have been on that notion, I 100% agree about what you are saying, and I suppose some, certain laws are meant for the well-being of everyone, given the level of ignorance of the "general public". If more people were properly educated on certain things then we wouldn't have to worry so much about other issues. I just get really frustrated when I learn of new laws (regardless of the country) involving "certain dogs are for certain things". These are normally the same people who are to blame for the BSL... America used to have separate bathrooms and water fountains for black people.. I cannot see a difference between the two mentalities.

I was recently in a discussion (with a group of members of the same club mentioned before) about hunting dogs. Several of them were judges discussing the performance of certain hunting breeds and how useful (or useless) different breeds were. One lady asked me if my dogs were used for hunting, to which I replied, "of course!" "you know how retrievers get the animal and bring it back, and hounds go baying after the animal.... well Vlcaks find the animal, kill it for you, and you retrieve it!" One person said, "doesn't that defeat the purpose?", and another said, "it is better than a pointer" lol