Introduction for Basic Users

Thank you for joining ShowDog.com! We hope you will enjoy this highly addictive sim game. Please take your time getting acquainted with the site. Managing your sim kennel properly can be a little overwhelming at first, so be sure to read over the FAQ and the Beginner’s Forum for advice on how to get started.

Since basic accounts are only allowed to own five dogs, you want to be careful about your dog purchases and your breeding. For the first month basics have unlimited breeding. After that you will only be able to breed if you upgrade your account to a premium one.

Don’t feel like you need to purchase your dogs or even create your starter dogs right away. Spend some time learning how the site works. Once you are feeling confident about how things work, you can decide which breed or breeds you would like to work with. Check out the top kennels and dogs in your chosen breed. This will give you some idea on what to look for when you are ready to buy your first dogs for showing or breeding. Keep in mind that dogs over 120 days old cannot be shown in conformation shows although they can still be bred from.

When ShowDog began in 2003, all the dogs in the game were “starter dogs”. Since then up to 70 generations of breeding has occurred, so the current generation of dogs is of much higher quality than the “starter or first dogs” you can still create when you open your account. If you intend to show your own home bred dogs and be competitive with other players, it is best to purchase good quality current generation bitches to start your kennel with. Breeding these to top quality studs will give you a much better chance of getting quality puppies.

It can be very disappointing to create and breed your starter/first dogs, wasting your breedings, and ending up with puppies that are not of good quality, won’t do well in the show ring and are difficult to sell to other players.

Starter dogs however, can be useful to premium accounts who wish to start their own lines from scratch, or who are searching for lost colors in a breed or trying to introduce new numbers into existing traits. Posting in the “Dogs for sale” forum BEFORE you create your starter dogs allows these premium accounts to request a particular breed or sex which you can then create for them. They can then purchase the starter dog from you.

Think about the direction you want to take with your kennel. As a basic, after the first month you cannot have much of an impact on breeding in the simulation, but you can take an active part in showing your dogs. You can pick a specific breed and then work with one or more breeders in that breed to help them finish their puppies, or you can try to finish a dog in every single breed available. It is up to you how your kennel will develop.

If you need more help getting started, you can try e-mailing some of the top kennels in your breed (if you have picked one) and asking for advice. Most established users are happy to help new members who sincerely want to learn more about the game.

We hope you will enjoy your time on ShowDog.com!

Last Updated: 6/2/2011 10:24:04 PM



Did you know?
In multi-breed and all-breed shows, the winners of all breeds within the kennel club's breed Groups then compete for Group placements.