1) in college, my roommate found a dog in the streets of south central los angeles. and, as an irresponsible stoner, he thought it would be “fun” to take it home. ha! what a laugh. anyway, i got very attached to her. when i found out that campus security would probably put her to sleep, i spent the next 2 days searching for a shelter that would take her and not kill her. i was told by an expert on the phone that she was bred for match fighting… this made me despise breeding. (i finally kidded a shelter in santa monica – the ‘nice’ place where they don’t kill often – into thinking i found it close by … and saved its life.)

2) the dog i’ve had since 13 was bred. he’s a cocker spaniel and his name is guinness. i’m grateful for him everyday. he brings so much happiness to my family. especially my mother.

Ok, perhaps the procreation analogy was a bad one. This is what happens when I comment without really having the time to think my reply through properly

Actually, I met a purebred Shiba Inu while on a business trip in Japan. It was a great dog in so many ways, and if we were looking to add to our family with that size dog I would definitely research Shibas.

I think you are a very wise person to acknowledge what you do not know, and pose the questions that you do not have the answers for. I think that you care very much for your pet and also for the welfare of animals in general – and it is a great thing to not only care deeply, but to care enough to continue to learn everything you can.

There are plenty of people out there with the best of intentions who only know what they know and wage their ongoing battle armed with just their knowledge, refusing to learn anything more. Good intentions can sometimes pave the way to bad things.

I think you do the right things. You learn and stay open to learning more, keeping in mind the larger picture. You are fair-minded and not petty. And you share the knowledge you have learned with people so that other people like you can learn more.

So keep on going the way you are, because as frustrating as it is faced with people like that, you are a great person to make changes in this world.

I don’t think it’s too Orwelian. (It’s not like we’re talking about chipping the BREEDERS! lol) Companion animals can’t take care of themselves; it is reasonable for society to hold people responsible for the lives the create.

Combine this idea with making pet stores sell spayed/neutered animals and then add something like Las Vegas’s fines for un-fixed animals running around and I can see the beginning of change!

Treppenwitz – <blush> You’re too much. Jordan is a lucky dog to end up with you and your family when she needed a home. If more people felt like you, there would be fewer homeless dogs in the world. And you are right, there are numerous examples of breeds being bred for the wrong characteristics for the wrong reasons. We’ll add something about that to our definition of a responsible breeder.

I grew up with purebred dogs (Newfoundland, Collies, etc) and was quite pleased whenever I would see these breeds in the big dog shows that are televised from time to time. But over the years I noticed that the dogs I thought I knew were starting to change. The breeders (or those that make decisions about what traits are desirable in a breed) were morphing the dogs to suit the whims of fashion. For example, German Shepherds were getting shorter and shorter rear legs.

When I pointed this out to a friend who is quite knowledgeable about dogs she looked at me as though I had just woken up form a 20 year nap! She pointed out that Breeds like Boston Terriers, Bull Dogs and Boxers had terrible breathing problems because they had been bred to have flatter and flatter faces.

Other breeds had similar crippling defects because of so-called aesthetic breeding practices. She also pointed out the breeds that undergo cruel surgeries on ears and tails to conform to AKC standards.

>From that moment on I vowed I would never watch another dog show and certainly never buy another pure-breed dog. We now own a wonderful rescue dog who is mostly black lab with a bit of shepherd mixed in. She was a companion dog to an elderly woman for the first two years of her life, but when the woman went into a nursing home she found herself in need of a home. She is now 9 and is as loved as any of our children!

One good thing which came out of the events with “cranky blogger” was the suggestion to use microchips more. We still need to straighten out issues of frequency and chip encoding and which scanners read which chips, but assuming the business community resolves these problems, I think microchipping could help put a lot of puppy mills out of business.

I definitely think legislation requiring all puppy mills (and breeders) to microchip their dogs could make a big difference. Get the kennel clubs involved — make it a requirement that a dog who is registered with any club has to be microchipped with information about its origin, and any puppy mill licensed by the USDA has to chip all animals as well. Require pet stores to scan for chips before they accept new “stock”. Keep a central database recording which microchips were issued to which breeding facility, much like animal control keeps a central database of rabies tag numbers. If and when a dog or cat shows up at a shelter or rescue, find out the animal’s origin via the chip information, and require the person who bred the animal to either take it back, or to pay some sort of fee to support the animal while it’s in rescue. For example, when the dog from a puppy mill in Missouri shows up at animal control in Washington state four years later, it may not be practical for the puppy mill to arrange to have the dog returned, so instead they can pay a fee to help pay rescue/boarding fees until the dog is adopted. Continue the process ad nauseum… if that same dog unfortunately ends up at a shelter four times, make the puppy mill pay a fee all four times.

This suggestion obviously removes all owner accountability, because it assumes that an owner intentionally surrendered an animal. I don’t want irresponsible owners to get off so easily, but at least this method is the beginning to making owning a puppy mill a much larger responsibility than just “churning out merchandise”. I don’t know what puppy mill owners would do with dogs physically returned to them — perhaps they’d euthanize them if they’d been spayed/neutered, perhaps they’d use them for breeding if they hadn’t, or maybe they’d try to resell them, but I think it would make business sort of difficult. Of course, a puppy mill owner could always “go out of business” every few years to avoid their responsibilities, so then we could make sure the USDA gives licences for puppy mills to individuals and not to businesses. It’s a lot harder for an individual to disappear.

It sounds very Orwellian, and my gut says it’s distasteful to keep such close tabs on people. I always hate the political argument “if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear from government intrusiveness”, because I do think excessive surveillence is creepy. On the other hand, we make doctors take responsibility for prescriptions they write via their DEA numbers, we make people responsible for their actions via license plates on cars, so why not use microchips to make dogs and cats a lifetime responsibility for the people to brought them into the world? The good breeders won’t mind the idea (many of them already insist on remaining as an alternate contact on a microchip), and maybe the puppy mills will find that it would just be easier to go into another line of work.

This suggestion won’t have any effect on the “miracle of life” breeders, and it doesn’t solve the problem of people who don’t spay/neuter and then let their animals roam free. Here in Vegas the latter issue is being tackled with fines — if animal control catches your pet and it isn’t spayed or neutered, you either have to allow it to be done, or pay for a special “breeders permit”. I don’t know if it’s working, but it’s a part of the puzzle.

Please feel free to point out the flaws in my plan (but please refrain from calling me a Communist, as I’m just Canadian).