Originally posted by Miranda_Rae
ParNone did put it nicely though, and so did Twisterdog. Each breed has characteristics. Those are what define them as that breed. Those are the breed "standard", "personality" of the MAJORITY of the breed. You have to go by what the breeds profile is.
Exactly!

What if a family goes to the shelter and meets a Lab that is very calm and quiet..etc, and that's what they want. But they bring it home and in a few days it's hyper and very active(like most labs)??
It's pretty obvious where this lab would end up, and it's more common sense to pick a breed that is *usually* less active.

I mean, if I met Jasper at 8 weeks old with no research, he was a PERFECT puppy, quiet, slept through the night, didn't chew things up, OF COURSE I would have taken him.
But as he grew things got very difficult, and if I didn't do research for YEARS before, I would have been in over my head, if I judged him by my first time meeting him.

Also you can't compare dog breeds to children and people, people are not BRED for certain things, yes some people stereotype certain races and religion, but that's something completely different.

All these dog breeds were BRED to be certain ways, to do certain things..etc, so that if someone doesn't like drool, they shouldn't get a Saint Bernard and hope it's one that doesn't drool(because all dogs are different), and if someone doesn't like a hyper dog they shouldn't get a border collie or a boxer or something like that, hoping that it'll be one of the calm ones.

Thats why people cross out an ENTIRE breed as a whole, because they don't want a dog like the breed standard and maybe they couldn't handle a dog like the breed standard, so why take a chance? The dog would end up in a shelter.

Also Kay, nobody is saying that you picked out your dogs wrong or anything along those lines(I know you didn't say anyone was, but Im just saying). But you are pretty good with training and all of that, so you could probably handle different things that come up with alot of different breeds.

However, alot of people can't, and that's why it's best to stick to researching and usually what's in the breed standard is *mostly* what you get.