For the love of dogs .... or money?

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. 

##### 

*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.

Championing Dogs

“We are more than just champion dogs.  We are the dog’s champion.”  This advertisement for the American Kennel Club is on my refrigerator.  Why?  People put what is important to them on their fridge:  their children’s artwork, the card with the date of their next dentist appointment, inspirational clippings, postcards from favorite places, photos of family.  Among all those other things, I want that AKC ad on my fridge because I am proud to be part of an organization that supports dogs and dog owners.

My dogs bring so much joy to my life.  I have always loved dogs so when I graduated from college and moved to the southwestern part of the United States, it was high on my list to have my own dog.  I found a sweet white and red cocker spaniel at the local animal shelter after months of searching.  We had great times together – she accompanied me on retreats I gave to teenagers from my church, camping expeditions, and walks in the lovely Kiwanis Park.  Because she had beautiful conformation and  a fantastic disposition, I had always hoped to breed her but I knew that I needed to own a home in order to provide a stable base.  It didn’t happen in time.  But I knew that whatever I did going forward would be in her memory:  I want people to have the same great relationship with a dog that I did.  And that means that the dog has to bring as much to the table as the person does in order for that to work.  The dog has to “come from good stock,” so to speak – both health and temperament - and the person has to be ready to give appropriate care and attention to the new family member.

My second dog was another “rescue” from a local animal shelter.  She was a fabulous silvery-chocolate lab mix.  While we fell in love instantly, it took an investment in special training to get her to be better with other people…. and more obedient to me.  I learned a lot from her about dog “body language” from her.  Her tail, her posture, her fur – all these things told me if she was fearful or wary or happy.  She was a great soul that had a rough start in life with someone else.  I was able to turn that around with a lot of hard work and dedication.  That experience made me aware of the commitment it takes to train and care for a dog.  It is what they deserve, and it ensures we will have a happy life together.

The dream of bringing purebred puppies into the world and providing families with a great dog continued to grow in my heart.  I knew that I wanted to breed cocker spaniels.  I knew that I wanted to start with a tri-color and that she must be from an AKC breeder.  I searched and searched online and finally found her – and flew her in to my home in Upstate New York.  I was excited.  I was scared too.  I had never raised a puppy before. Bringing her home from the airport was a lot like bringing a new baby home from the hospital:  no directions included!  My other dogs were young adults when I got them.  This was brand new.  I took her to her first veterinary visit only to have the vet yell at me:  “Where did you GET this dog?!  She has two types of intestinal parasites and yeast infections in both ears.”  (I left that practice because your vet needs to be a respectful partner in your dog’s healthcare.)   I reached out to the breeder immediately and she said she would pick up the tab for the vet bill …. and cart the rest of the litter back to HER vet for a thorough check up!

The conversation began like this:  “I want to give you the benefit of the doubt that you did not know you were sending me a sick dog.”  And from there we were able to work it out pleasantly.  As Dale Carnegie says:  “Begin in a friendly way.”  Airlines require that you vet a dog within a few days prior to flying them to ensure their health and that they can withstand the stress of the trip.  That being the case, I decided that I myself would never “fly” a puppy to someone.  I also want the opportunity to meet the prospective new owner to get a sense if they and the puppy are ready for each other, if they are a good fit.  It is also for this reason that I will not use a “puppy broker” to find new owners for my dogs.  I myself want to meet and greet the people – I want the opportunity to answer questions, to educate, to support their journey with the dog.  I make myself available to connect with new puppy owners at their own preference (phone, email, facebook).  It is not something I mandate or force – I want them to know that there is someone who is committed to a successful placement and relationship with the dog.  I think that is what distinguishes AKC breeders from others.  We strive to be professional, instructive, and supportive.  Like the guy on the insurance commercial, most of us can say, “We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.”

My AKC cocker spaniel Bethany Pearl has whelped two litters of fabulous puppies.  In fact, I kept a female from that first litter to breed when it was time.  Where I live, it has been incredibly challenging to find a stud to service to my dogs.  I am pleased to report that I did find some fantastic people to work with and the stud dogs they owned brought some great genes and beautiful color (chocolates, tri-colors, blacks) to the enterprise.  One of the things I value the most about the stud owners that agreed to work with me was their willingness to share their knowledge and time with me.  They have been so gracious in educating me and encouraging me.  I am appreciative of their friendship and kindness, and I take that spirit into my dealings with other dog owners.

At present, I have Bethany Pearl’s grandson “Valor Prince of Morning Glory Acres” who has a pedigree filled with champions, and his mother Madeline Grace Pearl.  She has given us two lovely litters and is now in “retirement.”  As I search for a “wife” for Valor, I have come up against the frustration of there being very few AKC cocker spaniels in my state and surrounding area.  I know that since I am committed to not flying a dog again, I will have to be open to the idea of driving within a certain radius of my home to get one. 

With the current COVID19 health crisis, people are buying dogs because they and their children are home-bound.  I am concerned for these “matches” because when people go back to work and kids go back to school, what happens to the lonely dog at home?  Are these people prepared to deal with the various ways that dogs “tell us” they are lonely and bored?  Are they ready to give the dogs the attention and activity they need to prevent acting-out behaviors?

Also during this crisis, I am disappointed to see a handful of breeders pricing the dogs so high (mostly Puppy Brokers) that they are beyond the reach of the average family.  It is important that we not take the “opportunity” of the pandemic to gouge the good people who may end up being the very same people that lose a job down the road.   That puts the dog at risk of being a “luxury” that a family may give up if their cash flow gets too tight.  It may be timely to have a conversation with prospective dog owners about assessing the stability of their employment before taking on a dog during this period of time.

 In the course of my current search for a female pup I had two separate calls related to a very important topic in the dog breeding world:   Puppy Mills.  My next article will deal with that.  Stay tuned ….

############

Entertaining Angels .... in some way

Her teeth were what originally threw off my ability to respond.  They were badly discolored – yellow, some jagged, one a dark brownish.  I made a mental note to not stare.  I had to just listen to her and figure out what was going on.   

I live in the middle of nowhere.  It has been a phenomenally log day.  I had been to a morning doctor’s appointment with a friend who needed a driver.  From there I ran in to work for a few hours.  I ran home to get on a conference call to take minutes. I pushed myself to work until 5pm so I could feel that I carried out my full responsibilities to The System for the day.  My head was kind of in that floaty sort of stage when your blood sugar is deciding how to punish you by shutting down stuff.  I had just finished boiling angel hair and de-frosting sauce I had frozen in a baggie back when I had some energy and zeal about being quarantined as a nation.  I had vowed then to take care of myself since there was no one else jumping to help with that task in the last few decades.  

The kids out there in the Land of Cool have devised a word:  “Hangry.”  It means you are so hungry, truly in need of food (as opposed to wanting to just eat junk) that you get angry.  Well, more like cranky.  I was moving into that zone.  I reached for something in my dish drainer and, as I turned, out of the corner of my eye, saw something in a heap at the end of my driveway.  It was colorful and it looked like a person.  I put my eyeglasses on.  (that’s where we are with midlife vision.) 

My brain crunched:  Why was a grown woman sitting next to my mailbox, barely off the street?  I thought for a moment… I have no prior life experience with this.  I pushed the dogs back in the kitchen, lifted the porch gate and called out:  Can I help you with something? 

“I’m just resting.”  Really.  On my driveway out in the middle of cow country and she is “just resting.”  I walked out to her.  For some reason, I forgot we are supposed to wear masks and be six feet apart.  She had a small day bag on her the size of a little girl’s back-pack.  She had a cell phone and some sort of pink drink.  I asked her what the story was. 

She claimed her boyfriend kicked her out.  He lived in Canastota and she is walking to Syracuse.  She claimed she was walking for three hours and wanted to rest because she had no one to give her a ride.  A mighty long walk was ahead of her.  For a moment I entertained the idea of ….. well, you know …. In a perfectly safe world where no one has a revolver in their day bag or a knife or whatever …. Could I give her a ride?  To her credit, she didn’t ask me.  But with the voice of a petulant child she kept repeating, “I need to get to Syracuse.”  Also, she kept texting someone, then alternating with hanging up on someone else and swearing because her phone was running out of juice.  It was concentrated drama. 

I asked her one question:  You don’t plan to go back to him after he kicked you out, do you?  She said, “probably.”  I said to her, “No real gentleman treats a woman like this.  If you go back to him, you should be taken to the psych ward.”  Not my finest moment of compassion.  But I was trying to give her a concept that resembled human dignity via my challenge.  It was also my deciding point on driving her anywhere:  if she, after walking allegedly 3 hours in 80 degree heat, would entertain going back to an abusive situation, then me making any part of this easy for her is not the tough love and real life she needs.  Maybe I was a jackass in another life. 

I got my phone to help her and brought her a peach iced tea.  She drank it in preference to whatever pink drink she had that somehow, in my moral stupor, I had overlooked.  Her hair was an admirable shade of red-from-a-box and the tattoos on her arms probably would tell me what was important to her if I stopped to look but I just wanted her back on the road and me back with my cold spaghetti. 

My friend’s daughter – an adult – drove by and pulled over to see if this traveler was hurt.  Really it was also to tell her she was standing too close to the road.  Not much else was happening.  I used my cell to call this young woman’s sister, and then her father, and no one answered – a clue for me:  a text from her sister.  “Is she still there?”  That was significant. Meanwhile, for lack of a better idea, I explained the road ahead to her. 

First, I told her that when she passes a certain intersection she will find the State Police barracks.  I suggested she may talk to them.  She said, “They aren’t going to give me a ride to Syracuse.”  It is likely that she did not want to interface with the police.  (come back to that statement later; it’s brilliant).  I replied that maybe they were having a slow day, you never know.  Actually, I was hoping that they might have some better ideas for her.  As she pointed out, she had no credit card, so Uber and Lyft were not options.  Her sister, I found out later, had tried to get a cab for her but was unsuccessful.   

At some barely-below-moral-consciousness level I was working other thoughts through my brain.  In random order, these are some of them:  I’m a hypocrite.  I’m not talking to her about Jesus.  I’m an idiot.  She could stab me right here in my driveway.  My neighbor is trimming his hedges out front so I am safe.  She’s not raving like a crazy person so I guess that’s good.  She’s not ready to get her life together if she thinks she will go back to him.  (It never crossed my mind that SHE might be the bad guy, not her boyfriend.)  I wonder if the dogs ate my spaghetti yet?  How can she make it to Syracuse walking?  Reassessing:  if it took her 3 hours, as she claimed, to get to my yard from where she started, something is wrong with her math.  I’m a bit overweight and I could make it in an hour.  I wonder if she used a bathroom lately.  I can’t let her inside my house because she is, at some level, unstable.  Her insistent verbalizing of, “I just want a ride to Syracuse,” is an attempt at asking me to take her but I just can’t do it.  I can’t bring myself to do it.  

The next thing I suggested to her was that a couple of miles down the street is a mini mart.  She can have another rest break there.  She thanked me for trying to help her get in touch with her family.  I said one parting thing to her that I hoped would stick in her brain:  “If you get to the point where you think of going back to him, I want you to remember This Day.  Remember how tired you are.  Remember the long walk, your aching feet.  Remember how hard it was.”  She began walking away.  I watched her for a moment, and then looked down at my phone.  Her sister had written me a very long text message.  What I had presumed was going to be no response told me everything I needed to know:  the story was inaccurate. 

Key points:  Not exactly sisters, step-sisters from childhood but more recently out of touch.  Boyfriend did not kick her out.  He was at work.  She was heading to Syracuse for one purpose:  to get drugs.  He cared about her and called the step-sister to say that she really needed to go to rehab, to get help. 

And there you have it.  All the Bad Guys in the story were actually the Good Guys.  And by me not driving her to Syracuse, well, perhaps it delayed her getting the drugs she was seeking.  So my reticence to drive her was most likely my Guardian Angel putting his hand on my shoulder saying, “Not in the plan.”  

Isn’t it curious how even when we think we failed to help someone, we’ve actually done a better thing for them?  As I finished reading the text message, I looked up and she had vanished from sight.  And that is strange for someone who allegedly walked so slowly that it took her three hours to get to my driveway.  I went next door and talked to my neighbor for a few minutes and then walked inside to eat my cold spaghetti. 

The next day I told one of my closest friends that when I pass, I want my favorite quote written on my tombstone:  “You can’t make this stuff up.” 

################