THE BUBBLE
KENNELS, COSTS & CREDIT REPORTS
BY STEPHANIE HUNT-CROWLEY
L ooking back at the past year, we have seen things get pretty much back to normal after the COVID years. I say “pretty much” because there is probably no way to get back to where it was before. Some things have changed— and not all necessarily for the better. It has become increasingly difficult for owners and breeders to get veterinary attention on short notice, and emergency clinics are tighter than they used to be, with many refusing to perform an emergency C-section without also performing a spay. I hope these problems can be resolved in the coming year. The differences in attitudes that are now paramount and which affect every aspect of dog breeding, showing, and ownership, not just since COVID but over the whole of the last 50 to 75 years, are striking. This has been reflected in the drop in AKC registrations, litters born, and purebred dog ownership. I have covered most of these in the past year already, but when you look further back at the 20th century and the changes from how things were then and how they are now, these decreases have not been helping. I have been thinking a lot about the words that we use, and not just words like “fur baby” and “pet parent” but the broader terms which affect the opinions of people in general. Let’s take the word “kennel.” Fifty years ago, a dog kennel could have been a wooden doghouse like the one in the Snoopy cartoon, out at the end of the garden in a backyard, or it could also have been a boarding ken- nel, set up with divided pens for each dog, or a family of dogs kept for showing or breeding and sharing a bloodline. The latter could have lived in the house or there may have been a kennel building, from the humble to the luxurious. Today when we refer to the great
78 | SHOWSIGHT MAGAZINE, JANUARY 2024
Powered by FlippingBook