Perhaps it was the first time in my life I have ever gasped, in absolute wonder, and what I saw before me. To my discredit, I was not standing before the Grand Canyon at the time. (Sidebar: the first time I saw the GC, I understood why they call it the Big Ditch. I didn’t see it with educated eyes. A year later, I went back after having learned about the Canyon, and was more impressed. There is hope for me.) But the experience I reference above was in a gift shop – whose whereabouts I cannot disclose – that was in the basement of a restaurant (and I thought the restaurant was only so-so in comparison to others in the area). I was standing on the landing and overseeing aisles and aisles of trinkets and glass cases of collectibles of all kinds. My eyes were drinking it in with wonder. There were cases of Snow Babies, Hummels, painted horses, Byler carolers, and Precious Moments figurines. The list goes on and on and on. I am sure I almost fainted but then someone spoke to me and asked if I was all right and I shook it off.
For those who are not collectors, there is no rational explanation to what I felt at that moment. I will even take the leap to say that God Himself knows best what a collector feels like. They say no two snowflakes are alike. I say, that’s why He melts them and makes a million more every year. Perhaps He created Canada and New York State just to keep His special snowflakes in, because we get more than everyone else!
I bring this up in an article really about dogs to explain that there is something hard-wired into people who truly love dogs which makes them want to have more than one, to provide puppies for other people, and to hang framed dog pedigrees and pictures of litters of the past on the living room wall.
And then there are others who view dogs as a commodity to generate income. I will echo dog breeders of the first kind: Don’t go into breeding dogs to make money. There are no guarantees. You can time a breeding event wrong, come out with a singleton puppy and end up paying $1300 for an emergency cesarean section to get a fat puppy out of its momma that wants to just hang in there for more time. If you are charging your customers a $1000 adoption fee in 8 weeks, after you still have to feed, shelter, attend, and Vet this little pup, you do the math. You actually LOSE money. And you still should pay at least a token stud fee to the other breeder involved. Ka-ching. Ka-ching. Ka-ching.
So smart people don’t go into dog breeding thinking they will get rich. They hope they will do a little better than break even, but when you first start out you need to buy all kinds of supplies so really that first litter is kind of a wash. You really need to look at the enterprise over the span of how many litters you have. Which brings me to another kind of breeder: those who make it a full-time job, and consequently put a kennel operation together. And those are the folks that can sometimes get into trouble. If you don’t have enough hands on deck to help you, you can get overwhelmed fairly easily.
I have had fantastic advisors that have bred dogs before. They talk me through rough patches and give me suggestions for improvement and management. I also have had fantastic young people that come in and do a daily puppy visit Monday-Friday after week 2 when I go back to my full-time job. My helpers check the room temperature, clean up mess, feed the pups when they are old enough to be playing and hungry. And last year I got really smart and bought a Nanny –cam so I could be at work and check the puppies periodically myself. THAT was a good investment. It gave me so much peace of mind to peek throughout the day at various times into the kennel room. The one thing I didn’t mention yet is this: for the first few weeks I actually sleep downstairs in my finished basement in the room next to the dogs. I am monitoring noises, activity, temperature, etc. There’s not a flea that burps in that area without me knowing it. I am a Force of Nature when we have pups in the house. I also have no brain cells left that take on any other issues. My quotable adage is: When you’re raising puppies, that’s all you’re doing. In other words – if you had a dating life, now you don’t. If you are teaching a class, now you’re not. If you think you are going to crochet an afghan, nope, you are looking for one to take a quick nap to recharge your own battery. You find yourself praying things like, “MY GOD, I don’t think I’ve known it was possible to be THIS tired. Please help me make it to next week when I am confident they will all survive infancy.”
On the other end of life with dogs, there are times when you have to make some horribly tough decisions. An elderly dog with health challenges that gets injured and the vet says it will be all uphill with little hope of good results. What do you do? I always tell my dogs, “I will do right by you. This is my promise. I put you first. I owe you that.” Someone who breeds dogs simply as a side business to make cash doesn’t get that kind of emotionally involved. They can’t. I am setting the stage to explain another kind of person to you....
I was emailing a woman who has a litter of pups. I was interested in one of her females. I am currently down to one retired female, and one very foxy male who would like to populate the universe.... if you catch my drift. The woman was very positive initially until I got into the part where I said I am looking for a breeding quality female to raise a couple of litters. And she responded point-blank: “I won’t sell a dog to you.” I asked why not. She responded: “I don’t do business with puppy mills.” I felt like someone had smacked me in the face. In the world of reputable breeders – both hobby breeders like me and professional breeders – that is the biggest, baddest thing you could accuse someone of being: a puppy mill. I resisted the urge to rip back at her and appealed once more: “My dogs sleep on my bed and get the best of care and vetting. My females only breed a couple of times and then I retire them because they are MY pets. I am by no means a puppy mill. Please reconsider.” No response.
Here’s how a hobby breeder is different than a backyard breeder or puppy mill: we care about more than money. The AKC affiliates are about love-of-dogs. We are about advancing dogs’ lines when they are healthy, quality dogs. We are about educating our customers and staying in touch with them for as long as they need us. In some cases, it may mean we take back a dog that can’t stay in its new home. I once took back a puppy from a couple in their 70’s that had her for only three days and then became fearful they would trip on her because she is little and quick. They had forgotten about how active little puppies are and they didn’t want to hurt her or themselves. (They were putting safety first – right on!) When the woman came back and handed me the puppy, I handed her a lovely potted plant for her garden so she wouldn’t go home empty-handed. I knew she and her husband were very sad to make this decision. I gave them a full refund. The puppy found a doting new home in a few weeks. She even called a couple of times to check on the pup.
A puppy mill functions like this: (this story is true) They charge you an adoption fee for a mixed breed dog that is equal to what you would pay for a purebred. They don’t have an affiliation with the AKC, and don’t have a USDA kennel inspector checking on the cleanliness of their backyard operation. When you look at the pictures on their website they are raising more than one or two breeds of dogs. When you ask if the dog has been registered as a litter with the AKC, they say they have a different certificate for the dog and it is a new breed they are creating. Translation: it is a mixed breed dog, and the certificate is what they printed from a documents template on their computer.
And here is a variable that tells you a lot. When you take your new 8-week-old puppy from the airplane to your vet, you are told it has two types of intestinal parasites and yeast infections on both ears. Whomever you are (this part happened to me with a purebred, and someone else with a mixed dog), you have already fallen in love with this puppy and the bottom of your stomach has just dropped out. You get on the phone and call the breeder and tell them what happened. Breeder AKC says: “I will reimburse you for that vet visit and the medications. I am taking the rest of the litter back to my vet to check the rest of the litter.” Breeder Puppy Mill doesn’t. (Significantly, in both cases the flight regulations would require a pre-flight vet check within a week of shipment. So how the diagnoses got missed I can’t imagine.)
In another scenario, the new owner did not call on that initial problem. But a year and a half down the road when their vet diagnosed hip problems, the backyard breeder said this: “Oh. Well, send the dog back to us and we will send you a replacement.” (your brain goes: huh???) You ask the breeder: “Well what happens to this dog when you get it back?” “Oh, we will euthanize it.” BULL SHIT they will euthanize it. What they are going to do is re-incorporate that dog into their own breeding program OR sell the young dog as-is to someone else. But because that breeder said the “E” word to you, your whole being is saying: “But this is MY precious dog! I can’t let you do that!” And that breeder knows exactly that response was to be expected from you and also knows that you are going to go away quietly and pay all costs out of pocket yourself. You forgot it was about money. The puppy mill breeder did not. It was ONLY about money to them.
Before we rush to judgment on that last type of breeder, I want to qualify an important point: not every human being who breeds dogs, or does anything else for that matter, comes to the Table with the same qualifications or level of ability and awareness. While I will be first in line to vilify the practice of negligent dog breeding or cash-is-king management, I want to acknowledge that there are members of a group of people out there who sometimes have fallen into bad practices in breeding, but not because they know better: the Amish.
And you would be right to ask what religion has to do with dog breeding. It is not so much religion per se, as it is what people are taught to believe about animals, or anything else for that matter. Let’s use an outside example first. I went to Weight Watchers a few years ago when I was optimistic. LOL. It was right before the season of the New York State Fair. I listened to other people in the group talk about the State Fair that was akin to listening to locusts about to ravage a wheat field. I was disturbed. Some of those people talked about food in a way that was unfamiliar to me: they had a plan to eat from one end of the midway to the other: this fried food, this delicacy, that fat laden treat, on and on. I had a plan to eat 2 things and bring one home. I am a different kind of eater than them, because of how I was raised. We were taught to see food as a blessing to sustain life, not an opportunity binge until your buttons popped off. My weight issue was not based in binge-eating. It was based in a semi-sedentary lifestyle. Our philosophies on eating differed widely.
So too are people’s philosophies about life with dogs. My dogs sleep on my bed. My parents don’t let dogs in the living room or on the furniture (hence, they have NO dogs). My ancestors came from Europe. Dogs were either working dogs on the farm or hunting dogs. Sure, they may have liked their dogs, may have had fond feelings for them. But there was not a lot of spare cash in an agrarian society so when your dog got sick, you did not pay a veterinarian cash to euthanize it. My grandfather told me: “In Poland, the dogs go off to the woods to die.” As a youngster at the time, I was deeply disturbed by that idea. But now I realize that it was a poor culture and that was their way. He never said if the dog went off alone or not. I don’t want to know.
The Amish have their roots in Europe. And when they came here to America, because they retain a traditional agrarian lifestyle, no one gets educated beyond eighth grade. Now I ask you to think of the eighth graders that you have known.... would you put them in charge of important ethical decisions? It is unlikely that an eighth grader has been exposed to the philosophical writings of the Saint Thomas Aquinas who declared that there are souls in the universe: plant souls, animal souls, people souls. All share in the breath of life from the Creator in some way. But all of Catholic ecological thought and agrarian thought needs to rest on that tenet: the soul. Does every Catholic function from that base? Probably not. Is every Amish person unable to keep a dog breeding business from becoming strictly business? I don’t know. While I can say that there are exceptions to every case, I also can say that unless the breeder shows some responsibility in running a kennel – membership in a Dog Breeding Association ie.) the Ohio Professional Dog Breeders or the like, OR they let the USDA inspect the backyard kennel – I would be very circumspect about their practices before buying from them.
Some of you reading this are asking what the inspection would be looking for? You would shudder if I told you in more detail of what the documentation says they find: Not just dirty kennels which are breeding grounds for disease. It includes injured animals left untreated, over-bred and exhausted dams, sires that can transmit disease among a group of females they are bred to if they have Brucellosis, and demised dogs not disposed of properly. The list makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Those practices are what define Puppy Mills*: lack of good kennel hygiene, over-bred dogs, too many puppies to be adequately socialized prior to their new homes and heartache. It makes what should be a labor of love and joy into a miserable business. While I don’t think every kennel that becomes a puppy mill plans to get out of control, I do think that without awareness and good breeding plans and lots of support, it is a set up for failure.
Good breeders work hard at what they do. You may hate it that some of them put up lengthy (and sometimes intrusive, over-reaching) questionnaires prior to agreeing to do business, but there is a reason for that. What I would like to ask for is more education and compassion among the breeders themselves. I don’t ever want to hear someone again accuse me of being a Puppy Mill when they don’t know me …. and when I’ve given them access to my Facebook page, my vet’s phone number and references from previous buyers. That is just unnecessary verbal aggression. Everyone needs to do their homework on what it means to be a good, reputable kennel: the buyers and the proprietors. Until then, let’s have some kindness. We all have to work together on all levels for the good of the dogs we share our lives with.
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*For a more graphic look at real puppy mills, Google the 2013 USDA report called: The Horrible Hundred. They outline infractions of the basic standards of care of dogs and kennel hygiene. It's appalling.
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