I absolutely agree. Just like people shouldn’t have babbies because they find them cute, the same goes for pets as well.
Breeders and rescue agencies should also push for responsible pet owners. References are great. Classes would be nice before one can adopt, too.
“Puppy mills” is the common term.
We have dealt with some really good breeders. It is not always animal abuse. We waited years for our puppy. And the dogs there live under really good conditions, and receive first rate training, if you go that direction. There is almost nothing better than a well trained dog with an even temperament.
Not all breeders are puppy mills.
The three German shepherd rescue groups I worked with required an exhaustive application. Where you live, your work hours, your expectations RE training, what dogs you’ve owned, etc, etc. Pages and pages. I missed out on a lot of really promising looking puppers. (Many I might have had a chance at, but lost out on because of “foster failure” . . . when a dog’s foster family likes him so much they adopt him themselves.)
Hey. Can’t hurt to plug the place I got my shepherd from:
Most Rescues have far more stringent approval criteria than breeders. Breeders seem to want a check to clear and maybe a reference stating you own the home or have clearance from a landlord for a pet. They kinda stop there.
My cat rescue was INSANE and some of the things they asked were offensive.
My dog rescue was necessarily very detailed, up to and including a home visit.
what was offensive? I am curious.
This happens to some degree with every single bit of popular culture involving a particular breed.
I was a practicing vet during the dalmation thing (and having previously had a dalmation myself), was horrified by the genetic abominations we saw, and the people who didn’t research the breed to see if it was compatible with their lifestyle.
But, this happens with everything… Tons of poorly bred German Shepherds with hip issues? Blame “Rin Tin Tin”. F-ed up Collies? That’s the popularity of Lassie for you. I could go on, but I’d give myself the sad. You get the point.
If your kid or your cat have to go, which one?
That is pretty bad. I would probably give a sarcastic answer, and be rejected.
You’d be surprised at the number of iguanas, they get big and mean, especially the males.
That’s not enough to cover it. Someone realises they bit off more than they want to chew, and they jump straight to abandoning the animal?
Any halfway decent human being would know they’re responsible for finding a good home.
Fuck all those selfish arseholes, with a brick.
Sorry, you miss my point. I’m truly glad you love your puppy and give him a good home. But every deliberately bred dog means one less rescue lives. That’s why I consider profiting off of it to be animal abuse. Pure-breeding is also genetically unhealthy and should be discouraged (though I wouldn’t say that itself rises to the level of abuse).
Very true. Puppy mills are far worse and thankfully illegal in some states (though it still occurs).
This happens every time an interesting dog-type is featured in a big movie or tv show. Heck, ‘Finding Nemo’ even caused Clown Fish to become super overfished in the wild. Meaning, parents were literally causing mass Nemos to be snatched from their fathers in the ocean - Ya know, the exact terrible situation causing the title of that movie.
On the dog note;
A neighbor of mine has a neat, interesting looking, and smart big purebred dog that I mentioned “belongs in the movies.” The neighbor told me the associations or groups representing these kinds of dogs actively fight against them being used that way to avoid this exact kind of thing.
Breeding mills will pop up and exploit and abandonment will happen - plus, the ‘quality’ of the breed will diminish.
I guess many bigger purebred dog breeds used in showbiz usually are very mentally and physically active types and require lots of on-hand work (and even grooming) - and the average household is just not up to the task. So it’s not just out-of-nowhere or selfishness that drives the protective agenda.
By the way; you may have seen the breed I’m talking about in the occasional movie, tv show, or commercial… But there’s never any publicity about the dog or focus on its breed - and I believe that’s fully intentional. Plus, the dog can tend to look like a ‘mutt’ with the right haircut… Ya know, incognito mode.
Greyhounds are known as 40 MPH couch potatoes. They don’t shed a lot, don’t require constant grooming. However, they can be susceptible to digestive problems. Ours slept on our daughter’s bed during the daytime, on her own bed in our room at night, and mainly woke up to see what was on the dinner table (did I mention that they can be quite tall?) You really should have a LARGE fenced yard so they can run when they feel like it.
There’s a girl in Bellingham, WA who has trained her Border Collie to do Celtic dancing. I gather that she spends a couple of hours daily teaching the dog new tricks. The results are very impressive
That sort of assumes that one dog equals another. We wanted a Brittany Spaniel. We certainly made a serious effort to get one through any of the shelter or rescue networks. We drove to other states on the chance that we might be approved for an available dog. And even when we gave up on that, we had to wait almost two years for a puppy from a breeder that my Dad has used for decades.
The genetic diversity issue is pretty breed dependent, and is another function of a good breeder. Some dogs are bred for physical exaggeration of certain features, which adds to the likelihood of genetic issues due to conformation. With Brittanies, the two most likely issues are hip dysplasia, which can be avoided through selective breeding, and big floppy ears that need to be kept clean. Other than that, they are bred for their strength, temperament, and intelligence.
But to really address your point: When a serious bird hunter wants a dog that makes a great family pet, but is a wizard tracking, flushing, and retrieving birds in the field, then he is not going to be happy if all you have is a pit bull/chow chow mix.
Some virtue in that. Could you have made do with an imperfect choice?
Ah, birding dogs. Don’t know much about the stringencies of the task, but I submit that the vast majority of pet owners who buy from breeders are not looking for a working animal, but to fill a fad as with the original article. I have somewhat more sympathy for someone who’s looking for a working pet, but I still would much rather people could find a way to make do with one of countless animals that wind up being killed instead.
Breeding for one characteristic is probably fine.
But the whole breeder culture is about lists of traits that are going to have surprising interactions, like taking multiple drugs at the same time.
The people who started breeding “sphinx cats” tried to get it registered as a new breed. They filled out the forms and wrote something like “it’s a hairless cat.” The response came back, that wasn’t SPECIFIC enough. So a sphinx has to have no hair AND a pot belly AND big ears AND whatever else. Sketchy overbreeding is REQUIRED in order to be included in the system.
My old neighbors had a collie and yes, it did indeed try to herd the neighborhood children. He’d be very upset that he wasn’t allowed to since they were clearly running amok (in their own yards)
The kid of course.
That would be my mom’s answer. 
