So... dilemma.
So. Have this rat breeder friend. Well, "friendly acquaintence" as most of the breeders in NIRO/RFL are to me, I think Kirstin's the only one who's really a friend, but. I digress.
I will call this friend "Val." Which is her name. Why? Because I've used enough names in this LJ so far that anyone who finds it will know who I'm talking about anyway, so what's the point of being coy? Again, I digress.
So anyway. Val wasn't allowed to bring rats to the show because she broke quarantine - that is to say, she had sick rats who were taken out of her rattery to the vet, and then brought back inside the rattery. Which isn't a conditional breaking (like, say, having a rat die of a confirmed and totally non-contagious cause of death like cancer) of quarantine where people are in a grey area and need to make a judgement call. It was flat out. Val still doesn't understand this and is very bitter about the fact I was allowed to the show and she wasn't. This is something I'm not supposed to know, but talk to people and it gets around. Yay politics!
Val is not an emotionally stable person. Val take antidepressants and needs them fairly badly. (BTW, this is not a diss on people who do, I did for a long time and probably still would if I had insurance and could afford it.) Val has a fairly high emotional investment in her rats, and also has a pretty serious persecution complex when things don't go her way. When it was pointed out to her that she'd broken quarantine (by me and Kirstin) she said she was going to go anyway. When it was pointed out to the NIRO board and they told her she couldn't come, she decided it was a conspiracy and everyone hated her. Etc, etc, she calmed down after a couple days, but just giving some background here.
So, Val started seriously breeding about a year and a half ago. The average lifespan of a new rattery is 2 years. They hit the 2 year mark and one or more of three things happen.
I've been around long enough to watch a LOT of people show up, go strong and loud for 2 years, and then vanish for one of those reasons, or correlaries to those reasons (like people who have all their animals taken away when the neighbors call animal control because they have 70 animals in a trailer park, etc.) Two years is the average lifespan of a new rattery.
Val's got one and three working for her right now, and won't listen to any advice from Kirstin and I. Kirstin and I are not "officially" mentoring Val, BUT, she got all her initial good breeding rats from us, her lines are based 90% on our stuff, and I've been doing this 12 years and Kirstin's coming up on 5. We're not noobs :P
So, Val got a rat from me named Hiroku. She bred him twice - once to another BVR rat named Whatif and once to a WSR rat (WSR went out of business a year ago right around their 2 year anniversary) named Emma. At about 16 months, Hiroku died of bone cancer.
Now, this would be a huge "woah, omg" for me. Hiroku is a MALE rat, and males don't usually die of cancer. He was under 2 years old - cancer after 2 years is a lot more forgivable. And she bred him twice. She did the right thing, had him necropsied and pathologied and the vet said: "Results determined cause of death to be spindle cell sarcoma with giant cells a type of bone cancer. According to MSU's Dr. Gilbreath this type of bone cancer is not genetic."
So, super, not genetic, a fluke, that happens to all of us. In fact, I'm hoping that's true of Hooperbloob, but I digress yet again.
Valerie decided to breed Hiroku's son, Heebie Jeebie, twice. Once to his sister (from Hiroku x Emma, same as Heebie) and once to BVR Kweet, one of my girls out of Yipiyuk and Hobbit (which makes her Hoop's sister, btw, more possible cancer flags.)
Heebie Jeebie, at just a year of age, now has a tumor. We don't know what kind it is (or even, Val insists, if it IS a tumor) because he's not dead and so therefore hasn't been necropsied, and she hasn't had a biopsy taken yet. However, her vet DID try to draw fluid and couldn't, proving it's not an abcess or hematoma, therefore, TUMOR.
She has plans, in the next four months, to breed Heebie's children. Five of them. Four of them to each other (sibling and half-sibling breedings with Heebie on one of both sides of the ped for each rat) and one to an EKO rat from Emilie.
Kirstin and I have both told her she CANNOT do this. This is IN-SANE. A one-off buck getting cancer, and you decide to cautiously breed from his kids anyway, sure. But when his son gets cancer too, you don't breed from his children! You DON'T! You end that line! You can't breed from two in a row!! And CERTAINLY not before you've had a biopsy done on Heebie!!
Add to that she's having temperament issues (which she blames on Kirstin's bloodlines) because of the way she handles her rats. She breaks up alpha posturing disagreements before the rats can settle cage status between themselves, putting the alpha rat in a "time out" cage, which both undermines his attempted powerplay AND emboldens the beta rats, which are then LESS likely to submit and MORE likely to actually fight with the alpha, resulting in real injury.
She got on my ass about planning to breed FSTR Jo Grant to her brother FSTR Adric, because that's the line SHE has been having temperament problems with (and it's ONLY her, the rest of us with rats out of that line are fine) because she says it's terrible to double-up on the bad temperament. Well HELLO, she's doubling up on CANCER rats and doesn't see the problem with it! AND she's planning to breed from a line that is known for viciousness that Kirstin and everyone else who's tried to breed from it has put firmly into the hayburner category, but she says SHE can "handle them" and they just "take work." They hypocrisy is astounding.
On top of ALL of this, she's got over 70 rats right now, because it's hard to place rats when you don't have a good reputation (which new breeders don't have ANY reputation) and a lot of the time you end up keeping 1-2 rats you didn't want to keep, on top of your 1-2 keepers, and new breeders sometimes end up keeping most of a litter. When I was at my height I had about 60, and I've got around 30 now and I'm feeling it. I can't imagine 70 - and sitting there with 70 AND planning to breed three litters in the next 4 months? WTF, Val.
I just don't even know what to do. She won't listen to us. She's not the kind of person who takes Kirstin's style of advice ( Kirstin sort of sidelong suggests you might not be doing things right and that there's a better way to do things, she's very passive-aggressive :P) and she doesn't take my style of advice (which generally follows along the "this is how it is, shape-up" line.) Kirstin she blows off and if I get as firm with her as I'd like to be, she'll flip out that I "hate" her and stop talking to me altogether.
I do not want her breeding those rats, but more importantly, I don't want her breeding them to the rats I just gave her from my last litter. And I don't want to give her any MORE. She's already expressed an interest in my Fortune Cookie litter and my later ones with Drum and Oil Change. And I don't know how to say "Val, I'm not giving you ANYTHING while you're breeding like this. You need to cut your numbers and you need to stop breeding from lines you know are no good." If I say it like that, she'll flip out and I'll lose what little influence and information I get.
I asked Kirstin what she's going to do if Val asks her for rats, and she says "Oh, I'm not going to have anything Val's interested in for a while." I asked, but what if she DOES ask for something you have? And Kirstin just repeated she'll just say it's not something Val should be interested in. Typical passive-aggressive Kirstin, sigh. Of course, I'm just looking for someone else to be the first one to turn Val down, and so is Kirstin. I suppose it's a race to see which of us gets asked first and who has the balls to put their foot down.
Not that it'll matter lots. Val's not LISTENING to either of us.
So... I guess my dilemma is do I go hardline with Val now, or play passive and just hope she gets better and/or doesn't ask for any more rats from me? I know damn well I have a lot better chance of turning out American Blues (which Val breeds for and which Kirstin and I don't, we're trying to clean them out of our lines and thus Val has gotten first choice at any blues we turn up for like a year now) than she does with our next couple litters. Val also sort of dabbles in Siamese and will probably want something out of my Zak x Cookie litter, which is coming into consideration June 10. Kirstin knows I'll come up against this first and she's gonna make me be the one, even though I only adopted to Val in the first place because Kirstin talked her up.
*sighs* I dunno. Sometimes I wish I was still just breeding whenever I felt like it, placing all my rats on pet-only contracts, and not having anything to do with the rest of the rat breeding community or the politics therein.
Did I mention the more time I spend with my animals the more I dislike people? :P
I will call this friend "Val." Which is her name. Why? Because I've used enough names in this LJ so far that anyone who finds it will know who I'm talking about anyway, so what's the point of being coy? Again, I digress.
So anyway. Val wasn't allowed to bring rats to the show because she broke quarantine - that is to say, she had sick rats who were taken out of her rattery to the vet, and then brought back inside the rattery. Which isn't a conditional breaking (like, say, having a rat die of a confirmed and totally non-contagious cause of death like cancer) of quarantine where people are in a grey area and need to make a judgement call. It was flat out. Val still doesn't understand this and is very bitter about the fact I was allowed to the show and she wasn't. This is something I'm not supposed to know, but talk to people and it gets around. Yay politics!
Val is not an emotionally stable person. Val take antidepressants and needs them fairly badly. (BTW, this is not a diss on people who do, I did for a long time and probably still would if I had insurance and could afford it.) Val has a fairly high emotional investment in her rats, and also has a pretty serious persecution complex when things don't go her way. When it was pointed out to her that she'd broken quarantine (by me and Kirstin) she said she was going to go anyway. When it was pointed out to the NIRO board and they told her she couldn't come, she decided it was a conspiracy and everyone hated her. Etc, etc, she calmed down after a couple days, but just giving some background here.
So, Val started seriously breeding about a year and a half ago. The average lifespan of a new rattery is 2 years. They hit the 2 year mark and one or more of three things happen.
- They experience their first major health setback. Either a genetic bad in the line (like cancer, CHF, etc) that means they need to scrap what they've bred and start over OR a major infection like SDA that kills off all their animals and breaks their hearts.
- They hit the 2 year mark and all their first (and thus favorite) animals die of old age and it hurts them so badly they decide they can't keep doing that.
- They breed too many litters early on, end up with 50+ animals in 2 years, and the expense and the fact they keep not being able to place all the babies in their litters (and thus adding more and more animals to their population) drives them to stop breeding because they just can't afford to keep adding more animals to the rattery.
I've been around long enough to watch a LOT of people show up, go strong and loud for 2 years, and then vanish for one of those reasons, or correlaries to those reasons (like people who have all their animals taken away when the neighbors call animal control because they have 70 animals in a trailer park, etc.) Two years is the average lifespan of a new rattery.
Val's got one and three working for her right now, and won't listen to any advice from Kirstin and I. Kirstin and I are not "officially" mentoring Val, BUT, she got all her initial good breeding rats from us, her lines are based 90% on our stuff, and I've been doing this 12 years and Kirstin's coming up on 5. We're not noobs :P
So, Val got a rat from me named Hiroku. She bred him twice - once to another BVR rat named Whatif and once to a WSR rat (WSR went out of business a year ago right around their 2 year anniversary) named Emma. At about 16 months, Hiroku died of bone cancer.
Now, this would be a huge "woah, omg" for me. Hiroku is a MALE rat, and males don't usually die of cancer. He was under 2 years old - cancer after 2 years is a lot more forgivable. And she bred him twice. She did the right thing, had him necropsied and pathologied and the vet said: "Results determined cause of death to be spindle cell sarcoma with giant cells a type of bone cancer. According to MSU's Dr. Gilbreath this type of bone cancer is not genetic."
So, super, not genetic, a fluke, that happens to all of us. In fact, I'm hoping that's true of Hooperbloob, but I digress yet again.
Valerie decided to breed Hiroku's son, Heebie Jeebie, twice. Once to his sister (from Hiroku x Emma, same as Heebie) and once to BVR Kweet, one of my girls out of Yipiyuk and Hobbit (which makes her Hoop's sister, btw, more possible cancer flags.)
Heebie Jeebie, at just a year of age, now has a tumor. We don't know what kind it is (or even, Val insists, if it IS a tumor) because he's not dead and so therefore hasn't been necropsied, and she hasn't had a biopsy taken yet. However, her vet DID try to draw fluid and couldn't, proving it's not an abcess or hematoma, therefore, TUMOR.
She has plans, in the next four months, to breed Heebie's children. Five of them. Four of them to each other (sibling and half-sibling breedings with Heebie on one of both sides of the ped for each rat) and one to an EKO rat from Emilie.
Kirstin and I have both told her she CANNOT do this. This is IN-SANE. A one-off buck getting cancer, and you decide to cautiously breed from his kids anyway, sure. But when his son gets cancer too, you don't breed from his children! You DON'T! You end that line! You can't breed from two in a row!! And CERTAINLY not before you've had a biopsy done on Heebie!!
Add to that she's having temperament issues (which she blames on Kirstin's bloodlines) because of the way she handles her rats. She breaks up alpha posturing disagreements before the rats can settle cage status between themselves, putting the alpha rat in a "time out" cage, which both undermines his attempted powerplay AND emboldens the beta rats, which are then LESS likely to submit and MORE likely to actually fight with the alpha, resulting in real injury.
She got on my ass about planning to breed FSTR Jo Grant to her brother FSTR Adric, because that's the line SHE has been having temperament problems with (and it's ONLY her, the rest of us with rats out of that line are fine) because she says it's terrible to double-up on the bad temperament. Well HELLO, she's doubling up on CANCER rats and doesn't see the problem with it! AND she's planning to breed from a line that is known for viciousness that Kirstin and everyone else who's tried to breed from it has put firmly into the hayburner category, but she says SHE can "handle them" and they just "take work." They hypocrisy is astounding.
On top of ALL of this, she's got over 70 rats right now, because it's hard to place rats when you don't have a good reputation (which new breeders don't have ANY reputation) and a lot of the time you end up keeping 1-2 rats you didn't want to keep, on top of your 1-2 keepers, and new breeders sometimes end up keeping most of a litter. When I was at my height I had about 60, and I've got around 30 now and I'm feeling it. I can't imagine 70 - and sitting there with 70 AND planning to breed three litters in the next 4 months? WTF, Val.
I just don't even know what to do. She won't listen to us. She's not the kind of person who takes Kirstin's style of advice ( Kirstin sort of sidelong suggests you might not be doing things right and that there's a better way to do things, she's very passive-aggressive :P) and she doesn't take my style of advice (which generally follows along the "this is how it is, shape-up" line.) Kirstin she blows off and if I get as firm with her as I'd like to be, she'll flip out that I "hate" her and stop talking to me altogether.
I do not want her breeding those rats, but more importantly, I don't want her breeding them to the rats I just gave her from my last litter. And I don't want to give her any MORE. She's already expressed an interest in my Fortune Cookie litter and my later ones with Drum and Oil Change. And I don't know how to say "Val, I'm not giving you ANYTHING while you're breeding like this. You need to cut your numbers and you need to stop breeding from lines you know are no good." If I say it like that, she'll flip out and I'll lose what little influence and information I get.
I asked Kirstin what she's going to do if Val asks her for rats, and she says "Oh, I'm not going to have anything Val's interested in for a while." I asked, but what if she DOES ask for something you have? And Kirstin just repeated she'll just say it's not something Val should be interested in. Typical passive-aggressive Kirstin, sigh. Of course, I'm just looking for someone else to be the first one to turn Val down, and so is Kirstin. I suppose it's a race to see which of us gets asked first and who has the balls to put their foot down.
Not that it'll matter lots. Val's not LISTENING to either of us.
So... I guess my dilemma is do I go hardline with Val now, or play passive and just hope she gets better and/or doesn't ask for any more rats from me? I know damn well I have a lot better chance of turning out American Blues (which Val breeds for and which Kirstin and I don't, we're trying to clean them out of our lines and thus Val has gotten first choice at any blues we turn up for like a year now) than she does with our next couple litters. Val also sort of dabbles in Siamese and will probably want something out of my Zak x Cookie litter, which is coming into consideration June 10. Kirstin knows I'll come up against this first and she's gonna make me be the one, even though I only adopted to Val in the first place because Kirstin talked her up.
*sighs* I dunno. Sometimes I wish I was still just breeding whenever I felt like it, placing all my rats on pet-only contracts, and not having anything to do with the rest of the rat breeding community or the politics therein.
Did I mention the more time I spend with my animals the more I dislike people? :P