If you have watched the movie "The Hunt for Red October," you know that one submarine was stealthily following another in its "baffles," a sonar blind area behind the pursued submarine. There was a time when Russian submarines would do a series of sharp turning maneuvers to check this blind spot and be ready to fire on a pursuing submarine. This was dubbed "Crazy Ivan." (By the way, the technology of today makes that unnecessary for submarines.) Right now you may be wondering what a Crazy Ivan has to do with breeding rabbits. Nothing really, but when I am planning my breedings to specifically check for recessives a rabbit may be carrying, I somehow associate it with being a Crazy Ivan breeding. Recessives seem to just follow in the course of some lines often hidden by the dominant genes, so some of my blacks have a genetic blind area and I go off course with my breeding to check it.  I have rabbits in all-black lines with no recessives, at least none that ...

There are so many things to learn about the rabbit show world and the American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA) when starting out. One of those things to which I did not pay much attention at first was registrations and that was because I did not understand them as having any purpose beyond being an ARBA requirement for a rabbit to earn its Grand Champion certificate along with its three qualifying legs. There are quite a few breeders that only register their rabbits when they also can be "granded," as some of us would say. I used to be one of them. However, there are several reasons why I have decided that registrations are important for every senior rabbit in my rabbitry. How one gets a rabbit registered is to bring the rabbit to an ARBA-licensed registrar, which every ARBA-sanctioned rabbit show is required to have present with the exception of fairs. A good registrar thoroughly inspects the rabbit, even more closely than many judges. The registrar is not going to judge ...