There are many reasons why people decide to care for dogs-perhaps as many reasons as there are breeds of dogs in the first place.
You may decide to take a dog into your home for security reasons, you may want a pet for your children to play with, or you may simply want to have a companion around whom you can take walks with.
Whatever the reason, all are equally valid and they all serve to emphasize the indispensable role that dogs have come to play in our lives.
One other reason for caring for dogs has come into the fore of public consciousness recently and that is for the purpose of gaming and competition.
Just to be clear however: what we are advocating here is not the breeding of dogs to be used in illegal dogfights, as in the recent highly publicized case that caused an uproar among animal rights advocates everywhere.
What we are talking about instead are competitions that involve hunting, tracking and showcasing of the canine's many considerable talents.
That being said, these events are no less competitive on the part of both the owners and the dogs themselves, and there is often a fair amount of money as well as prestige at stake.
In raising a dog for these purposes, there is one consideration that weighs in heavier than all others and that is lineage.
The vast majority of would be owners would prefer to raise a dog that comes from a long line of champions.
This partiality to a pedigreed dog comes from the notion that the dog's parents will have passed on many of their more desirable qualities to their offspring, making them "champion material" themselves.
While this is indeed often the case with dogs that come from a long line of titleholders, it is by no means a hard and fast rule and a dog that is endowed with such a heritage may turn out to have no taste for the game whatsoever and may perform in a lackluster fashion.
There is simply no way of knowing what the temperament of your particular dog is until he has been tested in the competitive arena.
Of course not everyone will be able to afford a dog that is adjudged the best of breed, so the next best thing would be to choose a dog based on its apparent character and disposition.
A good rule of thumb is to observe the parents and determine if they possess the qualities that you would want in your dog.
If they are alert, active and eager to be trained, chances are that your own dog will be too.
Once you have chosen what you feel is the ideal dog, the work can now begin in earnest.
You still have the training to look forward to and this will have an equal bearing on how well your dog performs in later competitions.
It can be a difficult task finding the right type of dog and subsequently training it according to its intended purpose.
With care and devotion however, your dog just may end up bringing home the gold.