So ... since my total knee replacement in October, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about if I want to continue my very expensive hobby of dog breeding. There's a lot of things to consider .. one is my husband had some health issues over a year ago and it really put things into perspective re: how important is it to me to breed dogs and sell them to pet homes? I sold 5 puppies to PET homes last year, two of those have been not ideal outcomes. Two out of 5, 40% of my sales. That's more grief than I want to have to go through, it's just not worth it. My husband and I thought, before his issues, that we would live here in on the farm for another 20 years. Now we're not so sure. And there's the financial aspect of it. When you're thinking about retiring and you have to pay the vet a whack of money to spay a bitch and remove an inflamed cyst (the cyst removal was more than the spay), well it gets you wondering why in the heck you are doing this???? It's a lot of work, with lately, not much fun and no reward. So I've decided I need to seriously look at things here.
Three of the dogs have homes, good homes and they hopefully all leave in February. That leaves me with 6 dogs. I 'think' I could perhaps sell two to four of the remaining dogs to other good breeders who would take care of them and incorporate them into their breeding/show programs. Leaving me with two dogs, which is manageable. I 'think' that's what I want to do. Need to think on it a bit more. My head is screaming at me to go ahead with this plan. My heart isn't quite there yet.