I spend a lot of time on Facebook dog groups or as we sometimes call it, “Dog book”.
One thing I’ve noticed is a trend towards very black and white thinking about breeding. You either tick all of these boxes and you’re an Ethical Breeder, producing wonderful healthy puppies who will be perfect with no health issues or you don’t tick those boxes, and you’re an evil backyard breeder or puppy mill, and every dog you produce is destined to die young, cost you a fortune in vet bills, and try to eat your children.
Here’s the 2 fold problem with this narrative.
First, half the people espousing this are not dog breeders or even seriously involved in the dog world. They’re average pet owners who have never had any real interaction with the “upper level” of the dog world. They’re parroting things from an echo chamber. They repeat what they’ve heard, but they aren’t actually educated on what they’re talking about. These are the people who will say things like “only backyard breeders will breed a bitch back to back” because they aren’t actually involved enough in canine reproduction to know that this has been debunked by modern reproductive specialists who *recommend* back to back breeding as long as the bitch bounces back.
Second, even when you hear this from reputable sources, it does more harm than good. I say this because it causes cognitive dissonance in many people. Stick with me, this will make sense. The vast majority of us did not grow up around the well-bred dog world. MOST of us grew up with farm dogs, backyard breeder dogs, dogs bought out of the newspaper etc. And when some “snooty high falutin show breeder” starts claiming that all BYB dogs will be horrible pets, we instinctually recognize that as being “wrong” because we got Fluffy from the pound when we were 5 and he was the best dog we ever had and lived to be 18. This makes these people immediately suspicious of everything else that breeder has to say, because we know from personal experience that a dog doesn’t have to come from a show breeder to a healthy, loving pet.
Breeders, stop exaggerating and being an extremist. The world is full to the brim of “backyard bred pups” who live long healthy lives. I right now at this moment have a 16.5yr old chihuahua from a backyard breeder who has never been a sick a day in her life, a 12yr old puppy mill rescue Pomeranian who is healthy as can be and a farm-bred Anatolian mix who, you guess it, has no issues. Heck my FOUNDATION BITCH is farm bred, with no titles or health tests on her parents. She’s been phenomenal and has great testing results, not to mention beating AKC champions in the conformation ring.
Backyard breeders sometimes can and do produce good healthy dogs who are decent representatives of the breed. While this may be more by accident than by plan, it happens fairly often actually.
Don’t take this as a support of BYBs. IT IS NOT. I am saying that we must stop speaking in extremes if we want to reach the average pet owner. We are making ourselves too off putting with this extremist viewpoint. We must understand and be compassionate about the fact that some people simply can’t afford a thousand dollar dog. They just can’t. This doesn’t make them bad pet people and it doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a dog. There are breeders in their price range and if they are willing to take a chance on a questionably bred dog, that’s their choice. I won’t shame them for it.
We need to verbalize that while our dogs may be more expensive, they are *more likely* to not have health problems. They are *more likely* to look correct to the breed standard. They are *more likely* to have a correct temperament. When you buy from a good breeder, you are stacking the deck in your favor. It isn’t a guarantee. Dogs from excellent breeders get hip dysplasia. They develop temperament issues. They get cancer. It happens all the time. An expensive puppy is not a guarantee of a good pet.
And beyond the argument of “BYB vs Ethical Breeder”, how do we define an ethical breeder? I can promise you, the dog world fights about this constantly. I fully health test my dogs, title them from one end to the other, and have reputable practices in my opinion. But I know people in the breed who will criticize many aspects of my program and call me a backyard breeder.
I think we can all agree that puppy mills that keep dogs in abusive, neglectful environments are unethical. A dog living in a cage with filth is not ok. So that’s way over on one end of the spectrum. Everything past that is frankly open to debate. I have *my* definition but so does everyone else.
Is the higher volume commercial breeder who keeps animals in clean, impeccable conditions still a puppy mill? If we say yes (and I WOULD say yes), what about the *show breeder* who does the exact same thing? I’ve known of show breeders with 20 dogs kept in outbuildings who get little to no attention unless they’re actively showing or breeding. They’re fed. They’re physically healthy. But are their mental needs being provided for? Is this breeder who doesn’t provide for their dogs’ mental happiness more ethical than the backyard breeder with 2 beloved pets who live happy, joyful lives?
You see, it isn’t cut and dry.
I think there are “best practices”, “acceptable practices”, and “poor practices.” But even these things differ from person to person. How many “poor practices” does it take to be a “BYB”? One? What if you use 10 best practices but have 1 poor practice? What if you have 10 acceptable practices and NO best practices? Where do we draw the lines? What if you do everything right, but you charge based on color? Does that negate all your other ethical practices?
Is the farm breeder who knows his lines going back 30yrs and therefore doesn’t health test, an “unethical breeder” in comparison to the show breeder who health tests but breeds dogs who are completely incapable of doing what the breed was designed for?
What about the breeder who health tests and titles in sports but has a dog who is an inch over standard or has a little too much white on his face?
I know breeders who health test, title, and have beautiful dogs but get accused of being “BYB” because they choose to use a registry other than AKC. Is that a fair statement? I personally don’t think so.
We simply must stop labeling people so quickly and start looking at the whole picture.
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