If you ask ten breeders what makes a good breeder, you’ll get ten different answers:
Health testing. Registration. How many dogs you have. Where the dogs live. What you feed. What you do — or don’t do — in your program. And most of those conversations don’t stay conversations very long. They turn into moral judgments.
I’m sure you’re familiar. It starts out with someone asking what they should do. Maybe they’re looking for a better dog food for their breeding females, and it’s like a fight breaks out in the comments! One breeder says only this, another says, “How could you possibly feed that?!” Then another chimes in with “Raw is the only way to feed, if you’re serious and actually care about your dogs.” Then someone says, “Yes, well raw is dangerous.”
I remember when I was new and reading through these comments, and I felt like I was starting to sweat. I was so overwhelmed looking at these threads. How could I possibly make the right decision? And worse, who would ever take me seriously if I got it wrong?
Then you see other breeders who have four times as many dogs as you, and they make it look easy! Or you meet a breeder with half the dogs as you, and they question if you’re actually doing EVERYTHING you’re supposed to be doing? How could you with so many dogs!? It’s exhausting.
No one walks away from these moments feeling empowered. No one feels like they got it figured out now. For me, I often shake my head and think, why did I waste ten minutes reading this thread?
What I want to talk about today isn’t another checklist that makes you a good breeder. It’s something much more fundamental.
The Proxy Problem
Most of what we argue about in dog breeding are what I call proxies. They’re visible markers that stand in for something deeper — usually responsibility, care, or quality. Things like health testing, registration, size of program, feeding method, or puppy-rearing style. And I have to be honest — these things matter. I’m not dismissing them. But here’s the problem: we use them like they are a standard instead of a pathway. None of them GUARANTEE good outcomes. If I’ve learned anything working with so many breeders, it’s that there is no checklist that’s a one-size-fits-all. There is no checklist of tasks you can simply follow and guarantee success.
I see breeders who check every box they’ve been told matters: their dogs are high quality, their health testing is complete, they are genuinely doing their best to do things “right,” and yet… their programs aren’t working. Not because they don’t care and not because they’re unethical.
But because effort and decision-making are not the same thing.
I worked with a breeder recently who has very high-quality dogs, she has checked all the boxes she’s been taught matters, but she doesn’t believe it will work, so she overdoes everything, overspending. And, when she’s asked to give ground through a discount or question on quality, she hesitates—and then caves—when buyers question her value. She doesn’t have a quality problem. She has a confidence problem that turns into a decision problem.
Instead of making clear, grounded choices, the breeder tries to buy certainty—by adding more, doing more, spending more. But certainty doesn’t come from effort. It comes from clarity.
I also see breeders who are spending so much money doing things “right” that there’s nothing left over. They do every upgrade, every software, every vet visit, every little added expense. Again, the intention is good.
But here’s something we don’t talk about enough: there are expensive ways to do things right…and there are less expensive ways to do the same quality things.
My vet used to offer doing microchips for my puppies. She used a different brand that required you to register after the fact with additional funds and they had a yearly subscription fee to either me or my buyers. She charged me $20 to put the chips in, then the subscription fee was $12/year and, if I didn’t sit down and do it with the buyers, they rarely remembered to do it. They were also irritated about the extra $12, and I didn’t want to cover it myself. It was clunky, to say the least.
It seemed like a great idea to have my vet do the microchips—it sounds like the ‘right’ answer–but the truth was it was an expensive way to do things, and it wasn’t the result I wanted. I switched to AKC Reunite with prepaid registrations and did them myself. Back then, it only cost me about $16/puppy, and it was a lifetime registration. It was easy, the buyers were happy, I was put on the chip as the alternate, they had no additional costs, and it was also cheaper.
If your breeding program can’t sustain itself financially, that eventually affects the dogs—no matter how good your intentions are. Sustainability isn’t greed, it’s responsibility.
Then there are breeders who are completely exhausted. They’re doing everything they’ve seen on the checklist. They’re sending photos constantly. Responding to messages all day. Adding tasks they were never actually required to take on. They are worried they need to make sure people know they aren’t a scam, or that they have a good experience. Then eight weeks later, they’re shocked that their household is stressed. That their spouse is overwhelmed by the dogs, and that they themselves feel checked out.
I remember a breeder scheduled a strategy call with me, and she was at her wit’s end! She was trying to follow a puppy curriculum program with 12 puppies, no less, and squeeze that in, while working long shifts at the hospital, and she was on the verge of tears because she was so afraid to mess up the puppies. But she wasn’t even able to put dinner on the table for her little kids! They were eating too many boxes of Mac’n Cheese with cut up hotdogs. It was unsustainable for a long-term program.
What’s worse? She had Labradors — a breed that comes pre-loaded with stability. Their temperaments are naturally loving and trusting. Some breeds need intensive early work, and others don’t.
Good breeding isn’t about uniform standards. It’s about informed choices that fit the dogs in front of you. Context matters — and in breeding, context is everything.
The problem wasn’t the curriculum — it was the belief that not doing it would make her a bad breeder. Just because something is commonly recommended doesn’t mean it’s valuable for you, and, just because something is on a checklist, doesn’t mean it’s a good use of your time.
In every one of these situations, the breeder cared deeply. The issue wasn’t effort. It was where that effort was placed — and why. Good breeding isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing the right things, for the right reasons, in the right proportion.
Following “rules” and checklists is not the same as making good decisions.
What Good Breeders Actually Have in Common
So if it’s not the checklist… what does separate good breeders from struggling ones?
When I look at breeders who consistently place dogs well, maintain healthy programs, and don’t burn out, they don’t all do the same things. But they think in similar ways. Good breeders understand tradeoffs, they think in systems, not impulses, they can explain why they do what they do, and adjust, instead of doubling down. They are honest about constraints — time, money, energy, and family. They aren’t perfect–none of us are–but they are intentional.
There was a time when I was so worried to sell every puppy that I had no boundaries with buyers. If they messaged at 9 pm, I would talk to them, miss the Netflix show we were watching, or pass on reading my kids their book at night. It was everything I could do to get the sale and provide the best customer service.
Then I crashed. Everything was so delicately juggled, and I started dropping the balls I was juggling. I realized that I never had a break, no me time, inadequate time with my kids, and it was not working. My body was rebelling. I even noticed that I was ignoring puppy applications because I was so irritated with the time it was taking. I completely tipped to the other side, and my program sales suffered for it, sinking my finances with it. There had to be a better way.
Knowing I was a single mom at the time and HAD to make it work, I put in some much needed boundaries. I stopped allowing people to visit on Sundays. That was now a family day. I also changed from messaging at 9 pm to waiting until the morning, or if they texted me late, a simple text back that says, “I’m looking forward to chatting, are you available in the morning?” You know what happened? Absolutely nothing happened with my sales. They were the same or got better. I got more rest, I was more enjoyable in the conversations, and I felt so much better getting good sleep and relaxing a little—I even got my laundry done on Sundays.
Now, many years later, I don’t mind people coming on Sundays because I get my downtime a little bit every day. I choose to push my dog breeding meetups with buyers to the weekend because it’s actually easier for me. It’s okay to change things up to make it work for you, but you have to make the decisions that align with what is actually sustainable for you. This is where having a good decision framework really pays off.
Decisions Over Dogma
Every breeding program is built on decisions: when to breed, how often, how many dogs in your program, what traits to prioritize, who gets a puppy, when to stop breeding a mama.
The difference isn’t whether you make decisions, it’s whether those decisions are intentional… or inherited.
Most breeders are not making bad decisions. They’re making unexamined ones.
You ever hear the story of the ham in the oven? It’s one of my favorites. A newly wed couple moved into their home and they invite some friends over, and the wife wants to make a ham. She cuts the butt of the ham off, then puts the rest of the ham in the oven and cooks it. The husband asks her, “Why did you cut the end off the ham?” She says, “Well, that’s what my mother always did!” The husband says, “You should call her and find out why.” So she does and the mother replies, “Well, you know, I’m not sure, that’s what my mother always did!” So she calls her grandmother, who says, “Oh gosh! I had such a tiny oven, I had to cut the end off so it would fit!”
The reason made sense once, but it didn’t make sense anymore. And that’s what I see happening in breeding all the time. We inherit decisions without inheriting the context. We do things because “this is what my breeder told me to do,” without stopping to ask whether that advice fits our dogs, our goals, our lives, or our capacity.
And sometimes, the person we’re copying isn’t actually running a program we’d want to live with ourselves. That doesn’t make them bad. It just means their decisions were made for a different reality. What matters isn’t where a decision came from. It’s whether it still makes sense now.
Dogma feels safe, but frameworks require thinking.
The Reframe: Good Decisions
So here’s the reframe I want to offer you: A good breeder is not someone who follows the most rules. A good breeder is someone who consistently makes good decisions — for their dogs, their buyers, and their life. And that skill — decision-making — is something you can actually develop. It’s not something you’re born with.
Here’s the thing: even when breeders understand this intellectually, something still gets in the way, and it’s not knowledge, it’s identity.
Because sometimes the reason a breeder can’t make a good decision isn’t that they don’t know what to do…it’s that the decision threatens who they believe they’re supposed to be.
In the next episode, I want to talk about the breeder you may need to stop being.
Not because you’re wrong — but because you’ve outgrown an old version of yourself.
And until you let go of that, even the best framework won’t stick.
If breeding feels overwhelming right now, it’s probably not because you’re doing too little.
It’s usually because you’re making too many decisions in isolation—and carrying responsibility that was never meant to be yours alone.
I’m hosting a short, focused workshop called Why Breeding Feels Overwhelming—and What to Do Instead, where I’ll walk through how good breeders reduce friction, simplify decisions, and create programs that actually feel sustainable.
It’s not about adding more to your plate.
It’s about learning what doesn’t need to be there in the first place.
You can find the opportunity to save your seat below. If this episode resonated, that workshop is the natural next step.
Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Honest Dog Breeder Podcast, with me, your host, Julie Swan. These mindset shifts and understandings are tough, I know it, but I also know you and believe in you. I’ve seen breeding programs take off once they make these internal shifts. I can’t wait to see you in the next episode!
