[yukidomari]

"If they truly love the breed, why did they change it so it no longer behaves as it was designed to?"

Obviously if you're of the camp where you think that dogs should do what they were meant to do evermore, then you wouldn't agree with them. And actually, shepherding has not much to do in the way of protection since there are still lots of shepherds that do, well, sheep herding, and then there are flock guardians. Two different groups, totally different types of dogs. German Shepherds were, for a short time, a shepherding dog.. at the beginning the Great War, they were transformed into an all around working dog, because it was believed that if they stuck solely to shepherding, which was even then a diminishing activity in those parts, they would go down the drain with that, too.

AmDobes are still one of the easiest to train dogs there are.. very intuitive, still a very easy student. That the sharpness has been toned down some, may to some people be detrimental, and indeed there are a lot of people who find some discontinuity in that. If you want to view their character today as 'dishwater', well, that is sad. People who breed AmDobes don't do it because they don't care about the character.. they just care about certain aspects of it more than others. You can choose to disagree with that but the dogs certainly are not trash with useless temperaments. Their dogs are simply for another audience. And you can also disagree that there shouldn't be another audience, that all working dogs should just be for the working audience.. again, difference of opinion. Their temperament didn't turn into the way it is today because they did not care for temperament.. it was purposely bred this way, so if you may view their dogs as an result of misled or careless breeding, then we can just agree to disagree.

Do I have a problem with working kennels? Nope, not at all. I have admiration for both parties.. actually, as it goes with greyhounds, kennels (working and show) find that breeding from a strict working line to a solely show line can often produce dogs that are both very able and of type. I think any kennel who concentrates almost exclusively on one or the other will undoubtedly obviously bias the breed in some way. By working together I think that the best of both spheres can be had. Unfortunately, it often becomes 'us' vs 'them' mentality, which I actually think is more harmful to a breed than just accepting that there are all different types of kennels that emphasize or excel at different aspects and trying to work together, rather than section off into separate little niches and then everyone breeding dogs to separate extremes - ie., very pretty dogs, very soft dogs, very sporty dogs, very hard dogs, the group that doesn't care much at all about conformation so long as the job gets done, etc.

By and by, regarding breeder listings.. I know the French Bulldog Club of America has, for instance, a rule that doesn't allow the listing of breeders if the breeder has not bred at least one CH. titled dog in the past. For a companion bred pet, not a bad measure at all IMHO. Course, the Frenchie also has a good solid population and can afford that type of discernment.. it'll be a long, long time before numbers of CSV are sufficient so as to allow for that kind of rule.