Peggy Sue,
if responsible pure-bred breeders do not breed, all we'll have are the puppymill and back-yard breeders contributing dogs to the available pool. I don't believe breeding and rescue are mutually exclusive, obviously. But, more importantly, I believe that careful, ethical, responsible breeders are the only ones that can improve the health -- physical and mental -- of the breeds that do exist. I've owned Golden Retrievers and frankly marveled at the temperament issues I encountered within that breed. A direct product of a popular breed that became overbred and under-managed. It's much better now but finding really good breeders back when we had our Goldens was not easy.

The same thing happened with Rottweilers in the late 1990's when the breed was the 3rd or 4th most popular in the US. Most of the good Rottie breeders were aghast that the dogs were that popular because we knew that not every home should have a Rottie. But a lot of them found that out the hard way and far too many of those dogs found their way into shelters. Today, the breed's popularity has fallen to #11 and has been as low (or high) as #16. That's great! Despite the argument that having a larger gene pool is better for the breed, in my opinion having fewer but better dogs is the only viable way to improve the breed.

And then there's the issue of what happens when a Rottweiler, for example, finds itself in Animal Control. Most ACs do only cursory evaluations of the adoptability of the animals that come in and even less of the families coming in to adopt so lots of dogs go out the door into homes just like the one they escaped from or were tossed out of and end up back in AC within the year. So we as breeders owe it to those dogs to give them the type of evaluation that will ensure they are "good dogs" and then place them in "great homes". Nobody else is better at doing that than breeders.

Again, JMHO but I feel I owe it to this breed that I love to make sure that we have more wonderful dogs living in more wonderful homes.

Jim