All about Virtual Breeding 2

With a love for dogs and a love for learning, I set up a site to help disspell some of the myths associated with breeding dogs, while at the same time provide a resource for people so they could best be prepared if they decided to take that venture. I guess this was also part of my own penance in apology to the noble dogs that I had so recklessly thought could serve a monetary and ego role in my life.

After this resource was created I continued to receive emails from people who still didn't "get it". They were invariably under-prepared (just as I had once been), and did not really understand what they were getting into. There was, and still is, this opinion that if you are breeding "pets" than it is ok to forget about health issues, that the conformation of the dog doesn't matter, and that cross breeding is a great idea (don't let me get started on the myth of "hybrid vigour" at this point!).

So in January 2001, I created the website called Virtual Breeding. The site was a run-away success being accessed by tens of thousands of people around the world. Even now, the site still averages over 1000 hits per week. These hits come from word of mouth, rather than advertising on any sites. Best of all, instead of having to explain all about breeding to new people, I could tell them to have a look at the site, and then come back to me if they had any further questions. Invariably they don't write back! And I know that hundreds, if not thousands of breeders around the world, are now using this resource for exactly the same thing.

I received hundreds of emails about this site, and will often get several emails a week about it. I vowed, and kept that vow, to personally reply to every single person who wrote to me about this. I had many breeders ask me to take the story a step further, and so I have with Virtual Breeding 2.

I must confess that I found VB2 much harder to write than the first version. It was terribly difficult to come up with original ideas without covering too much of the same ground as VB1. Let me apologise in advance that I haven't offered as many options in VB2 than I did in VB1. I will always have people email me and complain that there weren't enough options, but in all honesty, it starts to get quite complicated very quickly to set up that sort of thing.

I've had a small number of people email me and tell me that the world of breeding is not that bad and that I've done the dog world a great dis-service by writing about the bad things that can happen when you breed. If you think that breeding dogs is easy and without trouble, please email me so that I can make you a contact for people learning how to breed dogs well. I sure could use the help.

Finally, thank you to all the wonderful people out there who take the time and energy to breed well. Our dogs deserve the absolute very best. And thank you to all those people who rescue. May God bless you all.

And what do I do for a living? Well I have a full time job where I specialise in human resources and customer service. I have an MBA, and consult when I can. At the time of writing this, my son is 4, and I've been married for several years. I currently have 7 dogs and specialise in Portuguese Water Dogs.

Jane M Johnson
(May 27, 2001)