Dogs

Correct, there are enough dogs, except once the shelters are empty, people have no choice but to go to breeders. We've seen this happen before. That statement does not exemplify for lawmakers how to regulate an industry that is permanently a part of our society. It doesn't tell buyers to consider their plans to get a dog seriously. It doesn't encourage shelters and breeders to engage in ethical placement of their dogs.

An increase in adoption from shelters is something we can all agree on, but a decrease on intake to shelters is where the homeless dog problem is taken on directly. Looking at half the equation only helps dogs half of the way. Dogs deserve the best lives and that includes preventing them from ending up in a shelter to begin with.

This is about preventing dogs from going into shelters. Surely you don't want more dogs in shelters, yet this rhetoric ignores all of that.

There hasn't been a single time that blanket generalizations and slurs against a demographic of people have ever led to positive social change. Given that everyone in this thread is a proponent for the ethical treatment of animals, let's have a civilized conversation free of disgraceful attacks, please.

This minor change in wording quantitatively teaches people what a responsible breeder is.

Enter "adopt and shop responsibly" into any search engine, and it will list articles that educate buyers to try to adopt if they can. If they won't, it will list the many standards that help them find a responsible breeder.

A responsible breeder will: · Raise the puppies in a house, not a facility · Begin the socialization process and habituate them to people and children · Won’t overbreed the Dam. · Raise them until at least 8 weeks of age. · Vet checks the puppies and provides records of all vaccinations, deworming, and veterinary attention the puppy has received. · Maintain a clean and safe environment with proper food and water · Honesty and transparency will let you meet the Dam and the puppies where they are raised. · Ethical placement, vetting their clients, ensures the dog enters a home appropriate for their temperament and breed. · Contracts require clients to agree to spay or neuter the dog and return it to the breeder, not a shelter. · Genetic and health testing will ensure that the Dam and Sire don’t have genes that combine to create known genetic diseases and conditions. · Following best practice breed standards for health and ensuring the Sire and Dam are temperamentally suited for breeding the kinds of dogs they offer. · Warranties for the dog’s health up to 5 years for things like eyes, joints and common hereditary genetic issues.

Nobody can argue that the above standards are worse than those of a backyard breeder, yet this is how people behave.

If I apply the same logic that "if all dogs are adopted, there will no longer be dogs in shelters," then "if all dogs come from responsible breeders that never relinquish dogs to shelters, there will no longer be dogs in shelters." The black-and-white thinking that adopted dogs and responsibly bred dogs are somehow mutually exclusive is not true and is harmful.

People WILL keep getting dogs from breeders until the end of time. Making sure those people act responsibly and only ever seek an ethical breeder is called harm reduction, and it keeps dogs out of shelters every day. Missing opportunities to educate people on seeking ethical breeders will funnel those people to backyard breeders instead. Holding breeders accountable to the above standards is much more effective than calling them bastards. Dogs deserve better than half measures and hate. They deserve to be treated with respect at all points in their life, and in every aspect of our society.

You do know that having any dog that isn't spayed/neutered that makes pups makes you a breeder, right?

The only difference between a breeder and someone letting their dogs make babies is that the breeder has some idea of what the puppies will look like.

And, since breeders can be divided into two or three "camps", with two of those keeping records of past breeding, the pups resulting from those efforts are going to have known issues, rather than random ones.

Like it or not, dogs are shaped by humans. The only question is how much control is applied to the process. in theory, breeding would be a well regulated process focused on the health of the dogs as the primary goal. If we could ensure that, it would be superior to adopting mixed breeds in that regard.

I get the idea you're working from, and I support it. But trying to pretend that random dogs reproducing is better than controlled breeding is absurd.

Breeders will always exist, and so will their customers, as they always have. If it's only financially viable for breeders to be held accountable for their actions, that's another way of keeping dogs out of shelters. I'd rather live in a world where breeders always adopt their dogs back, always ensure they find a home instead of overwhelming shelters, charities and communities work together to make owning dogs more affordable so they don't get relinquished during financial stress, AND shelters exist. In a world where shelters are the only hope for dogs, dogs are left behind.