QUESTION FOR ALL SHOWSIGHT READERS
Have stricter breeding laws affected your breeding program? If so, how? What can be done to reverse public percep- tion of purebred dog breeding? Thank you to everyone who offered opinions on this month’s topic. The following is a selection of the responses. Want to voice your opinion to the fancy? Follow ShowSight’s Facebook page for the monthly question prompt! No not yet, I don’t breed that much. What needs to be done is to educate the public about the health of the breed they are interested in. How a good breeder does all the right testing for that particular breed they are raising. We do all the testing and rearing of the puppies ,social- izing that babies need to get ready for a new healthy home. Let them know that puppy mills only breed and sell for profit. Testing would take away from profit. Plus how inhumane they breeding dogs are treated . How good breeders raise there puppies in the same house as theirs. Puppy mills are raised in a barn/building just as breeding animals. Plus breeding half bred dogs such a golden doodles or any other is not going to get rid of their health problems. It just doubles up on the problems. Not get rid of them. The public needs to understand that breeders of pure breeds are working together to improve. They are studying the breed and doing the best for it. Not making designer dogs. —Nana Ridgeway Yes, I definitely think so. But more important is that AKC as an organization needs to get out and do more in the media to inform people why they should be buying purebred dogs. I don’t see anything and that’s where AKC needs to be. When people see commercials, celebrities constantly telling them to “rescue” pets, their minds are slowly but surely slanted to that view. It has become noble to rescue and that is the prob- lem. We need to educate the public and I think AKC should be spending their money that we as breeders and hobbyists have paid into this organization. My money is not being spent where it needs to go. It’s great that so much money is being put into health research, but if we don’t turn this around, there won’t be any purebred dogs to do the research on! —Anonymous Yes, I don’t identity myself as a breeder to the general pub- lic due to anti-breeding ordinances enacted in my county of residence. At times I feel like this hinders my reputation in the breeding/showing community. —Anonymous I think breeders are continuing to do their best to pro- vide the public with healthy purebred dogs. They continue to do the necessary health testing for their respective breeds and raise their puppies to be well rounded companions or
show dogs. Personally, I hear from breeders in all breeds that the AKC is more interested in the revenue generated and promotes the designer or rescue dog. Mixed breeds allowed at all breed show obedience trials, trick dog titles, etc. —Anonymous Yes, stricter laws have harmed the good guys. The breed- ers that don’t devote time researching will always affect what most of us try to do right. One bad apple makes the barrel of apples rotten. Limit laws are also killing breeding programs and that began in the 1980s. —Patricia The stricter breeding laws are directly attributable to the main animal rights groups, the Humane Society of the United States and Peta, which play bad cop, good cop with each other! However, they haven’t affected our breeding pro- gram but they have affected almost all others on the west coast as we’re one of the few Sheltie kennels remaining. Pet limit laws, the “adopt don’t shop” campaign and the effec- tive campaign by the animal rights organizations making the public think any purebred breeder is a puppy mill, has driven many breeders underground or completely out of breeding dogs. Now many pet buyers can’t find a Sheltie breeder in their area and when they find someone to refer them to a breeder, many times we get the call. We’ve had pet buyers fly to our kennel in Oregon for a ‘pet to be neutered’ from L.A. to Seat- tle because they can’t find anyone else with a litter. Although we have many good organizations, such as the NAIA addressing the problem, the AKC is the only organi- zation that’s big enough for the public to recognize and to take on the animal rights groups head on—and the AKC is not doing it! Even though the AKC promotes dog shows, they need to do more! If the AKC would educate the public about the hypocrisy of the main animal rights groups and the step by step animal rights agenda of eventually eliminating all animal ownership, we’d start to see this thing turn around! —David Calderwood Yes, I am keeping less dogs than I would like, not “grow- ing them up”, breeding fewer litters than is ideal so I am not subject to the USDA breeder regulations after changes were made a few years ago (especially since I don’t have a
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