I talk a fair bit about instincts in our Norwegian and Swedish Elkhound dogs as the basis for a lot of our program and our focus in breeding. I rarely if ever talk about “training” in our dogs as part of our focus on breeding. What is already in the pup when it is born is what is important as an Elkhound preservation breeder. What skills and behaviors it will exhibit on it’s own, with little to no input or coaxing from the handler is what we look for.

Training can be given to literally any dog of any breed to perform a behavior. That does not mean the dog will do that on it’s own, nor will it be able to pass that behavior to its offspring. Only instinctive behavior and traits are passed.

Norwegian Elkhound breeders and Jamthund or Swedish Elkhound breeders for centuries have relied on the instincts of the dogs, they have carefully nurtured and maintained bloodlines and offspring that exhibit these traits, but more importantly “passed” those traits down.

You can “Breed Out Instinctive Traits” with careful thought, or with No Thought. Many times the latter is the case for a great deal of breeders. They select breeding dogs based on factors that don’t influence instinctive passing, therefore it takes very few generations and instinctive traits can be lost.

Sometimes breeders are not even aware if the dogs they are selecting have the instincts and they have no method to find out later if the offspring have the traits.

To follow generations of dogs, working the dogs in environments where the instincts can come to life and be seen, these are very hard to do. Much easier to just breed the dogs and not worry about the instincts in future generations, thus the reason instincts get lost.

Here at Kamia Kennels and at our co-breeders, we have hiked in remote terrain with 5 generations at one time, all at the same time exhibiting the instinctive skills and behaviors we look for, want to maintain and want to preserve. It take years and years, decades in fact to have 5 generations walking in the mountains at one time. Now, you would not need to have all 5 generations at one time there, you could literally take a generational dog at a time, but, as we have some extreme longevity in our dogs, we can take multiple generations. This is what was done for centuries.

Preservation breeding is about not just keeping a bloodline pure and intact, but about keeping the instinctive skill of the original behaviors intact as well. If you never see the instinctive traits at work, you can not see if they are in the breeding dog. If you never see the traits exhibited in the pup working, you have no idea if they passed. The only way, is to see the traits and behaviors in the breeding dog and in the offspring.