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NO MORE COMPLAINTS ON PUPPY MILLS
by Barbara J. Andrews

That’s it!  Shut up!  I’m weary of all the pontificating about puppy mills.  Aren’t you?  Don’t you wish someone would either “do something” or everyone would just shut up and accept that they are not going to go away?   We know they aren’t getting smaller.  They aren’t doing less business.  In fact, they are growing, nurtured and fertilized by the registries we support.

You know it.  I know it.  An Advisory Board member for TheDogPlace.com now knows it.  She was researching puppy mills and even as I answered her questions, I could find no justification for the hypocrisy.  Dr. Lee is a very learned woman but she was incredulous when I had to admit that “puppy mills” have the same registration rank, i.e. privileges, as the most highly respected breeders.  The more I tried to rationalize the reality of the situation, the more I squirmed.

Let me put it in perspective.  The “Big Three” spend millions developing some of the best-est, safest, most stringently tested cars in the world.  Still, they all have a cheap, bottom end starter-car “designed” to fall apart after 36 payments. Detroit has to reach both ends of the market and rightfully, they assume that if you pay 38 grand for a car, you know it will be appreciably better than one for $8,000.  Turn on TV, browse any print media and you can’t help but know that a Cadillac has more to offer than a Ford Escort.  Conversely, not one penny of the fifty million bucks we send to AKC every year gets spent on TV spots or educational PR.  So how is a family supposed to know that the $900 pet shop puppy is inferior to the one that the top breeder sells for $500??!!   

What do the “Big Three” Registries do to advise the public of the risk in purchasing a “puppy mill” puppy?  What do any of the registries do to make the public aware of the abject misery and suffering attached to that cute little fuzz ball in the pet shop? 

Nothing.  Well, unless you count very muted lip service.

Incomprehensible?  Hypocrisy to the extreme?  Treason against the show and performance breeders who invest so much time and money into doing it right? 

Profitable for the Registry?  Clever avoidance of moral and ethical responsibility?  Insulation against legal action by puppy millers?

OK, if you answered “yes” to all of the above, you score 100%.  You also came face-to-face with the reality of the puppy mill problem.

If, like the auto manufacturer, Registries stressed the value of the carefully planned, crash-tested, well designed, rust-proofed, signature series auto/puppy, that would help.  But no, they are in effect, telling buyers that the el cheapo model is “just as good.”  If GM tried that, they could be sued when the family that bought a GEO instead of a Suburban was severely injured in a side-impact crash.  Instead, the Dealer tells a customer that the Lexus is a superior auto, crash tested by independent labs, road tested and rated by (whatever!) and that it is simply a better car than the entry-level _____ sitting next to it.  No problem.  It’s true.  The Buyer can then make an informed decision without recourse or resentment. 

If the Registries would just publicly admit  that commercially bred puppies are not expected to be as genetically healthy, emotionally sound, structurally “well built” and laden with chrome as those carefully planned dream-babies individually reared by an accredited breeder, well, gee, wouldn’t that be a fair way to do business?

If the Registries had an independent testing lab and some experts to “test drive” randomly selected models (breeding stock), they could state that overall, pups from “A” rated breeders would likely be better than those from “B” or “C” rated kennels.  But wait, we do have an independent testing process!  It’s called the dog show; different venues, different conditions, different opinions.  All of which adds up to validation of quality at least insofar as body style and performance features.  So what’s the problem?  Why doesn’t AKC take the initiative and do the common sense, obvious thing??

Maybe it is because most of its income is derived from puppy mill registrations and Heaven forbid, no financial empire would want to annoy their best customers.  Remember, that is not you, it is the powerful puppy mills.  In addition to establishing their own registry as was recently threatened, the millers might file a class action suit.  Breeders won’t.  They will just keep paying ever-increasing registration fees (do the millers get discounts?) and supporting the sport through competition, donations, and commerce with hundreds of peripheral enterprises, photographers, suppliers, ah well, you get the point.  If we carried the same clout, the same unified voice as the puppy mills, we could get “somebody” to “do something” about puppy mills.

We could strongly suggest, by withholding our $$ as did the mid-west puppy miller’s association, that AKC or UKC take the initiative and institute one of the oft-discussed two-tiered registration systems.  It could be as simple as accrediting breeding programs based on a combination of championships (bench, field, or performance) and basic health clearances.  What can be so hard about that?????  They have computers.

For that matter, so does TheDogPlace and finally, there is a unified voice.  Forcing an issue is called a Project and Registration Reform is Project #2.   If this sounds like a promotion for TheDogPlace, it is.  If it sounds like a criticism of our registering bodies, it is.  If it sounds like “put up or shut up” it is! 

Let’s quit talking about the horrors of puppy mills.  It is time we quit supporting Registries that put the interests of puppy mills over those of hobby breeders.  It’s time we demanded the Registries do something affirmative and constructive. 

  Reprinted from  ShowSight Magazine © 6/2000