Student Request- Dog Politics

There are two topics that dominate about 75% of my non-professional conversations and they are dogs (most especially my dog, Max) and India. In today's FYS class our discussion somehow meandered to the topic of animals and consciousness and then moved along to dogs. I have very strong opinions on most things dog related so I steered the conversation away from that. But after class a student asked me what, exactly, my dog politics are and if I would be willing to write about them. So here goes...

My dog Max is a little, tan shelter mutt. If I was forced to guess I would say he is part Dachshund and part Jack Russell Terrier. He is so not what I thought my first dog would be like, but in many ways he is even better than I could have imagined. He is a funny, grumpy-sweet, cuddly dog and every day I am amazed at the depth of the bond we have formed.

In the beginning of my journey towards becoming a dog parent I talked endlessly about getting an Affenpinscher puppy. Preferably a little girl. You probably have no idea what an Affenpinscher is, so let me post a picture of myself at the Westminster Dog Show geeking out over meeting a real, live Affenpinscher:

Me and Banana Joe, the Affenpinscher, and his world class handler.

Known also as the monkey-faced terrier or the "mustachioed little devils", these little dogs have spitfire personalities. They are also pretty uncommon, meaning there are few breeders and very few dogs available in rescue. It is not uncommon for Affens to have litters of just one or two puppies. These puppies can also cost upwards of $2000 because they are so rare.

Still, when I was a young, naive undergraduate I thought I'd look into it. I stumbled upon a website, which shall remain nameless, and was so excited to find Affenpinscher puppies for just $750! And they would ship a puppy to me for a very reasonable price! If my roommate at the time had allowed me, I would have pulled out my credit card in a second. But she said no, so it was another year before I actually got a dog. Which was a lucky thing because as I would later find out, those puppies were most likely being sold by a puppy mill or other profit-minded, unsavory breeder. They may not even have been real Affenpinschers.

The year I got Max I was in graduate school. By now I was paying for everything myself and had taken out school loans so I knew a $750 puppy, even if it seemed like a bargain, just wasn't going to happen. Also I wasn't sure if a puppy was the best route for me. I started scouting out the shelters and when I saw Max's picture and read that he was house trained and a good choice for apartment dwellers I was sold. I went down to the shelter the next day, met him, fell in love and put down a deposit on the same day.

My sweet little laundry gremlin, laying in a pile of freshly washed clothes.

And then I went home and had a panic attack. How in the heck was I going to take care of a dog all by myself? Being a resourceful librarian-type I turned the internet and began reading everything I could. At first I mostly wanted answers to practical questions about what food is best, how to crate train and just train in general. Later, I got drawn into the debates about mutts vs. purebreds, the world of dog shows and what constitutes reputable breeding.

These issues all relate to the same set of questions: With so many homeless dogs in the world is it ethical to buy purebreds? Are purebreds "better" than shelter dogs? What kind of standards should a dog breeder have to meet?

To say these are complicated questions is an understatement. There is one camp that is absolutely morally against purposely creating new dogs when so many dogs die in shelters every day. There is another camp that says that shelter dogs are fine, but that puppies are better (and harder to find in shelters) than adult dogs. Still another says dogs are discarded into shelters because they are "defective" or ill-behaved. Of those that believe purebred dogs are superior, there are some that think show breeders are pretentious and that hobby breeders are fine, some that think pet stores are an OK place to get dogs, and some that would only go through a "reputable" show breeder that does health testing.

What do I think? I think that the most important factor is the health and happiness of the dogs and the strength of the relationships that can form between dog and owner. It's certainly ideal to give a shelter dog a loving home, but it's not the right choice for everyone. If you have your heart set on a certain breed of dog, provided that it's for the right reasons (meaning not just that it's "cute"), then you should be able to get a purebred dog without feeling guilty.

That said, I do buy into the whole "reputable" breeder thing for the most part. A reputable breeder, to me, is someone who breeds dogs deliberately, with a plan, and after health testing to ensure that none of the common genetic defects in a particular breed are likely. They don't necessarily have to be involved in the world of dog shows and competitions, but they should be something more than someone who happens to have a dog that they think is terrific that they wish there were more of. As any human parent will tell you, genetics is only one component of personality formation and even genetics can be a crap-shoot.

Worse than naive owners who want clones of their family dog are the pet stores, designer dog breeders and puppy mills. The common denominator between these three things is money-- they are in it to make cash and they treat living beings as commodities. The other thing they have in common is lies. Pet stores will try to tell you that the dogs they are selling are from reputable breeders and that because they have papers they are somehow prestigious purebreds.

First of all, no reputable breeder would give their puppies to a pet store. The conditions in pet stores are often not healthy for the animals and if they aren't adopted as puppies many of the dogs get sent to shelters. A reputable breeder will have a clause in their contract that asks if the dog needs to be re-homed and a new owner can't be found that the dog be returned to the breeder. A reputable breeder has invested a lot of time and money into their animals and will go to great lengths to avoid having their animals end up in shelters or bad home environments. A reputable breeder, and reputable shelters for that matter, will ask for information to make sure a prospective owner understands and is ready for the responsibilities of dog ownership. In a pet store any jackass with a credit card can buy a dog.

As for designer breeds and breeders, there is a myth going around that mutts are healthier because they pull from a wider genetic pool. Which is not always true. If you breed a Great Dane and a Golden Retriever who both have hip displasia then there is still a good chance that their mixed offspring will have hip displasia too. Not to mention the outrageous claims of the breeders of poodle mixes (like the so-called Goldendoodle or Labradoodle) who claim that their puppies are hypo-allergenic. They are claiming that the puppy will have the best of both breeds, but that's not how genetics works. You can't guarantee that you will get a dog with the personality of a lab with the non-shedding qualities and intelligence of a poodle. You might get a dog that looks like a poodle, sheds like a lab and is hyper like a lab. You just don't know.

At the end of the day there is an element of unpredictability with any dog that you get. Genetics play one part in a dog's development, as does the upbringing. Purebred dogs are more predictable in their personality traits, but then again when you get an adult dog from the shelter (especially those shelters that do temperament testing) you can also already tell a lot about what their personality will be like. The most important factor in all of this is the owner and how they form their relationship with their dog.

If that's not a strong human-dog bond, then I don't know what is...