I'll try to make my summary as brief as possible: I've started hunting around looking for ways to network with other dog people. I've become much more active in training my own dogs (setting very clear boundaries for my 3-year old not to approach or interrupt the sessions), but I need other people (with the same training philosophy-Ellis) for certain exercises. So I started with checking out the nearest kennel club (unfortunately no ring sport clubs anywhere near me). Anyhow, while on their site I recognized the name of a breeder that my mom and I got a GSD pup from about 14 years ago. (The breeder worked with a local rescue group to find a home for him because he was completely deformed: his spine was twisted, he had additional vertebrae growing off his spine towards his hip, and his tail had to be docked due to the fact it was cork-screwed so tightly around his anus he could not defecate.) I have never been able to accept that such a dog could be born as a result of diligently careful breeding; but regardless, here is where I am a little incredulous:

I went to this breeders website and looked at the first GSD (she also apparently breeds Aussies and Beagles now), and he had an awful lot of letters after his name, but absolutely no record of when or how he earned them. His page also had a notation that his hip and elbow x-rays were "good", but no actual results anywhere. Then it gets more interesting; I looked at her litters page where it has a 2011 litter listed as being whelped in January with x-number of sable males, females, etc., and of course it listed the sire and dam, but without any reference to their quality or achievements. And to make it even more curious, next to each parent's name, in parentheses, it says that they are "too young to x-ray"; I took this as a substitute for health certs (or whatever they're called).

Now, I know a fair amount about dogs (meters more than the average person, but staggeringly less than the experts), but I don't really know anything about breeding; and that being said I have to ask: if a dog is "too young to x-ray", wouldn't that dog be too young to breed? The little I do know about breeding is that parents are health tested/screened prior to the mating. I could be way off the mark here, but it seems like a logical line of reasoning to me.

I have no experience with kennel clubs and a very poor experience with a Schutzhund club, so I'm bringing this up here because I want to know if I am right to be suspicious, and I want to know how often members/breeders of a particular club mirror the club as a whole. Perhaps that's not very clear, let me try again: is it usual for a kennel club to share the same ideas and principles of training, breeding, etc.? This particular club is having a monthly meeting in March that is open to the public because they are "always looking for new members". I plan to go and see what's what, so to speak, and I don't want to be biased walking in based on this one breeder if I shouldn't be. I suppose even the disreputable breeders must belong to some kennel club or other.

A dog is never too young to be x-rayed. You can have it done as soon as the dog is big enough to handle the anesthesia. I think the OFA has age requirements before they'll give an official rating, but I think I read here that they'll give you a preliminary rating if the dog is too young to qualify.

Even if you breed your dog before the age requirement, you can still put up 'hips x-rayed, preliminary rating is 'good', official rating to come' or something. It sounds like bullshit to me.

Any group is going to have people you agree with, people you don't. People whose business is ethical, and those out to make a buck. You can still learn and enjoy yourself-you will have in common with many people at the meeting an interest and love of dogs.