One breed or many breeds?


I am the guy who used to tell others “There are just two types of dogs – German Shepherds, and those who want to be German Shepherds”. And for the last few years, I don’t have a German Shepherd – not one. Instead, I have a Golden Retriever and now a one year old labrador male.  These two breeds are totally different from shepherds, and also somewhat different to each other.  And guess what –  I love them and think they are also great dogs to have, as long as I recognize they are unique and dissimilar to shepherds.

At the height of my craze for German shepherds – I knew pedigrees of  hundreds of dogs, and had videos of every big show that happened in the GSD world. I had way more dogs than I should have had.  I knew most top breeders – and knew all top dogs, and up coming stars. I also spent a large part of my disposable income in doing all this. And I totally understood how little I knew even with that kind of commitment.

For a variety of reasons, I bought a Golden and then a Lab . Thanks to the experience in Shepherds – I don’t worry at all any more if my dogs don’t end up as succesful show dogs .  They can still stay home and play and cuddle with us if they don’t make a career in show ring.  However, I still only buy pups which are of show potential, and that too from breeders I like, and blood lines i like.  I think it is a great investment even if the dog turns out not so good in looks when he matures – and so far I have had no regrets.

It is kind of funny when you get into a new breed. Despite not being a newbie to purebred dogs, and despite handling and winning with a variety of breeds for friends – I have to start similar to a newbie all over again. To begin with, I buy books and videos and research internet. But that is just a small step. Unless I see several good dogs at different ages , I cannot appreciate the breed at all. So I go out and get introduced to breeders and handlers.  It is not really a slow process – there is a lot of stuff that you know from other breeds that can be applied to your new breed. 

However, I learned the hard way that this can be awkward too in some cases.  I did not like the movement in a lot of goldens I saw at the national show in Malibu,CA a few years ago. So I got in touch with a judge over email, and asked him. After a few back and forth emails – I got it. I didn’t like some goldens because I was expecting them to move like German Shepherds. The scary part was that I was actually liking a few who did move the way I liked, and hence my “eye” was developing an appreciation for a wrong type of Goldens.  

Life is a bit more easier with labs – since I have owned and shown labs when I was in school, and hence have a decent foundation. But I don’t know them like I know shepherds – which means I still need lots of time invested to learn, and find some mentors to guide me when I get stuck on something. Thankfully – as with Goldens, the lab people are also a friendly crowd. I have met very few who wouldn’t answer my questions – however silly they are.  Another advantage was that I worked in UK before, and they have some great labs. So I have some exposure to good dogs. Couple of trips more to Potomac, and I will have enough to have my basics covered.

I don’t think I will ever become a “breeder” – due to the lack of time and inability to suffer like my many friends who do breed. It is not for a part timer like me – I would much rather make use of the work put in by the dedicated folks who put their hearts and souls into it, by buying from them. A good part of my education in dogs will remain incomplete since I don’t breed – maybe I will try it at retirement. Maybe not. Most probably not. But then again – if I can buy a dog that is not a German Shepherd, I suppose I can breed too someday.

It makes me wonder – when I get my next dog, what breed will he be? Will I buy a German Shepherd, a Golden or a Lab? Or will I buy something else – I also like Irish Setters, Dobes and Boxers. I don’t quite know.  A good dog of any large breed gives me goose bumps.  Maybe next time, I should buy a dog that fits Arizona climate – so may be a Saluki? If I am buying a Saluki – I need to hire a skinny handler. I cannot even imagine what ringsiders will say if I walk into a ring with a Saluki with its 3 ribs showing !

Are you an expert?


Experts come in many flavors.

A couple of weeks ago, my 4-year-old daughter made a statement that warmed my heart…”My daddy works for IBM, and My uncle works for HP..guess what, IBM is bigger than HP !”. My euphoria  didn’t last long – pretty soon I figured out that she didn’t have any grandiose ideas of comparing IBM with HP – all she meant was IBM has 3 letters, while HP has only 2. But that was enough in her mind to reach the conclusion that her daddy worked for the bigger company.

Then it dawned on me that I too make plenty of such conclusions – and probably a lot many others too. Human mind apparently likes simple answers – and as long as the simple answer is not disproved, we won’t go much farther to find another answer. Over the holidays, I got to catch up on a lot of reading , mostly on two topics very close to my heart – Dogs and Management. And on both topics – I can see plenty of examples of this.

I think that once  you are an expert on something – like say stock market, dog shows or horse racing –  you feel compelled to give an explanation for anything that happens in your field. Keeping quiet is apparently not an option.  Being logical or being fact based in your argument is not a necessary quality of such experts either.

Take dog shows – you will keep hearing that “this breed is doomed..it no longer resembles the great dogs of a 100 years ago…and does not resemble the third sentence in the breed standard..” . Except – the standard was written by people who were no more smarter than the people who live and breed today. Also, while they created the breed, and knew the function the breed was supposed to do – those folks did not have the benefit of health and genetics studies that happened in last few years. So – we still hold on to a standard that was written a century ago and think god wrote it.  Also, over a period of time – context is lost. If a standard says ” the dog should look like a clever hunter” – how will the dude living in an apartment in NYC know what a clever hunter is? ..Same with eye color in some breeds..”darker the better” – although no one knows why darker eyes are better.  And it is easier to create a time machine than to revise a breed standard.

it is worser with business management – where there is always an explanation on why something has happened, and it is always after the fact – never ahead of time. When I was doing my MBA in the nineties, Cisco was the cult. Every one wanted to be like John Chambers. Cisco did everything right – I have lost count of the Harvard Case studies I have read on Cisco – from supply chain management, to mergers and acquisitions, to raising employee morale. Cisco could do no wrong. Every business magazine – business week, Fortune etc – wrote cover stories on Cisco every few months. And then tech bubble crashed, and Cisco went down. The pundits at these magazines  didn’t skip a heartbeat – they wrote cover stories immediately on how Cisco did everything wrong. How they never listened to customers, how they did Mergers in cowboy fashion, and so on. I don’t remember having seen “We were dead wrong about Cisco in our prior analysis” from any pundit.

The ecosystem in which we live constantly evolves – and possibly, there are no black and white answers to every question any more. But do we need this compulsive obsession to find a simple answer to every thing?  Einstein said something along the lines of “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” . I think the man had a point.

The one field that hates simple answers that I know of is  horse racing – have you ever read that a horse failed just because he was slow? The horse failed because he didn’t like the surface he ran on, or because his jockey was no good, or because his trainer didn’t put him in the right race – but never because he was simply  slow !!

Maybe there is a middle ground between where the management gurus stand and where the horse racing pundits stand – but then, how would I know – I am no expert.

Stop making new year resolutions


Like every one else I know, and don’t know, I have had my fair share of new year resolutions over the years – but looking back – I DO NOT REMEMBER EVEN ONE such resolution in any great detail.  I also DO NOT REMEMBER even one time when I cried “Eureka, I made good on my new year resolution”.So what is with people (I am part of the “people” too? Why do we keep doing it?

There are a bunch of reasons why I think it is a bad idea to begin with. Weight loss is, I suspect , every living and dead man’s and woman’s and animal’s  usual resolution come January the 1st.. So let us see how well this goes.

It is December 12th – and I start my vacation. I already know that my new year resolution is to lose a hundred pounds off me. But new year is 3 weeks away – so I don’t have to worry about it quite yet. So I could still have all the meat and rice and potatoes and cream and so on, and not feel bad about it. So by the time new year’s land – I am heavier by few more pounds, and have practically ensured that I will never make good on the resolution.

What the heck? I still make the resolution. I start paying a hundred bucks every month to the best gym in town – believing that if I am paying for it, I surely will be doing it. And I do start strong – I take the private lessons, I religiously do 30 mins of cardio and 30 mins of weights for four days a week and so on.  And the 100 bucks covers my wife (if we do it together, we should have higher chance of making it succesful) and child care for my kiddo. So I am set up for success.

This goes well for a few weeks…and then . Yes, you guessed it right – I still like rice and meat, and I still hate exercise. I go to the hotel gym to find the lone treadmill in use. Ah well..I could walk a mile and get the same exercise. Except I don’t want to walk – it is too hot, too cold, too windy, too dark – if only mother nature gave me a break. Not to despair – I go back home in a couple of days, and can always make up.

So there I am at the gym – only to learn that my body does not respond kindly when I switch to greater weights and longer times. So, I don’t push it – and by february – I go to the gym twice a month, but still pay them a hundred bucks every month.

Oh but stop – you have to cut down on your food too. You have to take a holistic ( who made this word? it rings true with hole…not Whole..) view to weight loss, according to the Rambo like guy on TV who inspired me. You also need special blenders to make you healthy smoothies.

I can buy that – it is pretty logical. So I measure calories on every darn edible thing I dare to even look at. I stick to portion control religiously – to the extent that I dread lunch and dinner time.  Lets cut the miserable story short – you guessed right again, it does not work. I fall back to larger portions of the stuff i like.

As part of the weight loss campaign – I also bought a new weighing scale. And every week on Saturdays, I weigh myself and write it down. This is a very depressing way of starting my weekend most times. occasionally, it brings a smile to me – when I have lost 2 pounds. Although my head says that it is because I didn’t have much fluids on friday – my heart makes me believe that it is because of 10 minutes of extra cycling I did at the Gym.

Weight loss resolution at new year’s time is just an example of such bad ideas – weight loss by best friend’s marriage, training puppy to make it a canine good citizen in 3 weeks, running boston marathon next year – so on and so forth, are all in the same boat.

I have some theories about this, and  I am going to try these for myself.

1. Aim small – Miss small : You can probably lose 1 pound a week for next 3 weeks. But this is not a scalable goal – so do this 3 week thing and reset your goal, rather than aiming for 50 pounds in a year.

2. Our strengths are in different areas. The gal who cannot lose enough weight to run the Boston Marathon, might have sufficient strength to get through college in the next year or two. Find out what your strength is – and achieve that goal. Success breeds success – so if you are succesful in something you are good at, then you can use that adrenalin rush to help you with succeeding in something that you are not all that good at.

3. Variety is the spice of life – so do a variety of things in life. This is the hardest to do. We all have an inertia to stay with status quo. Try to get over it, and try something new – cook something new, walk a trail you have not tried before or teach your dog a new trick. And don’t worry about success – this is just to break the monotony of daily life. Success is just having the ability to try. I am particularly bad at this – so this is something I am seriously going to challenge myself .

So let’s do ourselves a favor – and make a new year resolution that “We won’t make any new year resolution”  !