Over this current week, we're hopefully going to get a lot done, have a lot more toys in stock, a lot more of that sort of thing, since as you all know, I'm constantly having to make stuff since there's only one of me and 4000 people who want orders. Which is awesome, don't get me wrong, but I would like to get orders out faster to my customers, and that's where this all comes in.
So today, I have a doctor's appointment in another hour or two, so I'm working on clean stuff in the meantime (as in, nothing that's going to cover me with sawdust), so this morning I've been going around and seeing what chins are here and taking pictures and writing notes about those chins so that I can list them on my website and on the other places that I use. And in doing so, I ran across two messages from April 17th (oops!), that somehow I never received a notification for, on this one classified site.
Well, these people wanted a chin for their 2 year old. Probably not messages I really care to entertain anyway, as I don't exactly see most 2 year olds holding a chin properly... usually they squeeze it... whether intentionally or not... and parents rarely correct... but I digress. But anyway, this was mildly amusing, so I'm going to share it with you. In one of these messages, the person tells me that their husband used to breed chins, so "we know what we need to do." I'm assuming that means, they know how to care for chins. Now, in no way am I saying that they do not know how to care for chins... however... just because they bred chins doesn't mean they do know how to care for them, either. I have run into umpteen people who have told me they had a chin live to a ripe old age... of 5. And they think that's awesome! And those same people tell me, oh they did LOADS and LOADS of research. And maybe they did, but they somehow missed the part where chins can live into their 20s. Point is, just because someone's had chins, or raised chins, doesn't mean they've done it right, or that they know what they're doing. Few years ago, I remember buying some "pedigreed" (and you'll see why I put that in quotes) chins from someone selling out (and I know some of my friends reading this will totally remember when this happened). Now, for reference... here's what your average pedigree might look like (few examples):
Here's what the pedigree I got from this person looked like:
Notice the difference? That pedigree is pretty much useless. If that chin developed malo, for example, there's no way to track the parents. Oh there's a dark ebony mom... well, what if that breeder had 5 dark ebony females? Which one is it? Is it one they bred? Or from another breeder? If it's from another breeder, especially a large breeder, good luck knowing which one, out of thousands of chins born... it was. Same with any of the chins on that pedigree. Absolutely useless. I believe, if I remember correctly, we didn't get the pedigrees until much later after we got the animals -- which were sold as pets (rather than used for breeding, which was the actual idea). Maybe somewhere along the line, some of those chins actually were pedigreed, like an actual pedigree, but those ones we got weren't, and it wouldn't be reputable to breed them with no sort of information whatsoever on the parents.
...and let me also mention something else... anyone could make up a pedigree like that pretty much on the spot. It's not hard to come up with what two colors of chins created another color of chin as a baby. Oh you have a beige baby? Great! Standard grey mother, beige father, and POOF! beige baby. Look! A pedigree!!! And I've seen this, sadly, way more than I would like. There was a girl (I think I called her the problem child, you may remember me writing about her) who contacted me about breeding her chins, and ALL her pedigrees looked like this. And the sad part was, for her, it was even worse. Like at least for the pedigree for that one chin above, it's not every color under the sun. The chin that the pedigree was for, was supposed to be a chocolate (it wasn't, but that's beside the point). For a chocolate / dark tan, you would need beige, tan, and ebony. So that pedigree at least vaguely makes sense... For the problem child girl, her chin would be an ebony... and would have a violet in there... and a tan... and a beige... and a sapphire... but she'd tell me, oh the breeder was breeding for sapphires... so I'd ask, ok, why add in the ebony then? Oh, because it will get rid of the red coloration in the chins and make it more blue. *facepalm* If you have any knowledge of chin genetics at all and how the colors and all that work, you know... and if you don't, let me tell you... that is such a crock of shit. There's no way to breed the red coloration out of an animal... you just try to AVOID breeding animals that have red fur tips. But you sure don't add ebonies to get rid of red....
Anyway, moving along... the second message from these people stated -- "He has raised and bred purple sapphires with vet papers" -- now, let's assume you're a pet person, don't breed, don't know much about genetics. Tell me, what color is sapphire? Ok, I imagine we can all answer at once -- BLUE. So if he bred purple sapphires... those were either some really off-color sapphires, or he had blue diamonds and she has no idea what she's talking about. But since blue diamonds are more of a new thing... I'd imagine the first...
Vet papers? How many of you can say you've taken a chin to the vet, and it's clearly sick, and one of two things -- either (1) the vet has NO IDEA what's wrong with the chin, or, possibly even better, (2) the vet can't tell the chin's sick, or (3) the vet gives some random off the wall explanation for why the chin is the way it is, such as "the chin is homesick" (and yes, I've heard it happen -- "stressed" would be a better way of putting it, I think "homesick" is giving that chin a little too much mental credit). But for sake of argument, let's say you have a smart vet, and they actually can tell you, and be correct in telling you, ok, your chin is healthy. Does that mean that genetically, it's fine? Doesn't carry malo or any other illness? No, unfortunately, they can't tell you that. These aren't dogs, we can't do genetic testing on them. So, even if your vet has said, ok, the chin is healthy... that doesn't mean, ok, go ahead and breed it, because you just don't know what that chin might be carrying. And that's why pedigrees are so important, because that way if something comes up, we can trace it back. But a vet paper saying, oh the chin is healthy... really doesn't mean much.
This is one of those things where I get that this person was trying to let me know that they've had chins before and they know what they're doing... but they really proved that they probably really don't know what they're doing, at least as far as the breeding with vet papers and purple sapphires... I feel like this is an interesting case of... if you really don't know what you're talking about... best to leave it simple. If they had just said, oh they bred chins, and left it at that, I wouldn't be writing this blog post (well, maybe a much shorter one). And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I know everything either... but I know what color sapphire is...
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