Deb
Posted : 9/23/2006 7:07:18 AM
The problem with attempting to make a breed now is that there are waaayyy too many dogs to justify making a new breed of dog, and because the making of a new breed of dog is an extremely wasteful practice. You wind up chewing through a lot of mixed-breed dogs. When the human population was smaller and less urban, and when breeding was something that was done one litter at atime, on a smaller scale, these extra dogs sometimes hung out, but were mostly killed, or culled, by the breeder. And what I would argue is that this is exactly what's happening now, but on a very grand scale.
It is my personal opinion that there is a cycle operating here:
1. Mill creates huge quantities of "chugs" "mini bulldogs" or whatever, in livestock conditions that are sometimes extremely cruel and definitely not conducive to being a good pet in the future. Very little human handling, learning to poop and pee in the crate, no dog-dog interaction, etc.
2. Sells puppies to pet stores or act as brokers over the internet, where huge quantities of unsuspecting, dog-ignorant people are duped into paying $$$ because he/she "simply fell in love with the cute face" or similarly emotional, short-term, puppy-centric reason.
3. Uh, oh! Turns out puppies are a lot of work. Turns out puppies raised in conditions such these learn how to sleep and poop in the same place and become a real nightmare to housetrain. Turns out pups raised without adequate human contact can get serious behavioral problems that restrict the humans' ability to take care of them. Who wants a dog that is impossible to housetrain, scared of all new things, etc.? Besides, dogs are not as cute as puppies. That cute face is now older and is more about spending all your free time washing out the poopy crate.
4. Now-adolescent puppies flood the shelter, where most are euthanized (culled) and some are given a second chance. But the problems with the scale of this operation remain: the dogs have real potential to go right back to the shelter, as it is still put in the awful position of having to overcome its livestocky upbringing and become a viable pet.
Because the dogs are technically, "mixes," they are generally considered "strays," or the product of oops litters. Individuals get more pressure to spay/neuter their dogs and adopt from shelters. But that does not stop the huge quantities of dogs pouring into shelters, because it's not an individual problem--it's that "new breeds" are being created, as they have been in the past, and that they are being created using the industrial farm model that is now a common part of our globalized economy. You don't know exactly where your tomatoes came from... why not do the same with puppies?
I cannot believe that shelters are letting themselves play the role of the culler for these huge businesses, who are just pumping out puppies to satisfy a demand for puppies, without any consideration of the fact that the puppies become dogs. And it galls me that anyone would equate a system that is operating on such a vast scale and to such huge, negative effect, with the responsible breeder working to keep a specific breed of dog strong and healthy, and to make good pets.
This is a large-scale corporate problem. It's one face of agribusiness. And I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it is so perfect that they wind up flooding the shelters with mixes and not purebred dogs that I can't help but think that somewhere someone thought of the entire cycle and came up with "designer breeds" as a way to make the connection between the mill and the shelter look less direct.