Some breed clubs are so unbelievably snotty, it’s a wonder they don’t drown in their own phlegm. And yet on the other end of it, those same clubs will tolerate a show breeder who is simultaneously producing puppies in near-mill numbers and conditions, to support her dog show habit.

The GSDCA and Andrew Hunte being only the extension of this phenomenon to its logical absurdity.

I am going to agree with Christie’s take. Small home based breeders who care about their dogs but don’t really have a breeding program or purpose per say are often very willing to adjust and use contracts and do some screening when they breed if it put to them as the reasonable and responsible thing to do.

Not only have such breeders produced many well loved pets, they also help serve as a valuable genetic banking system for some breeds.

Reaching out with information, support and education in a positive manner allows those who may be willing adopt responsible breeding practices to do so. Some, those who see breeding as a way to make a few bucks and don’t take any long term interest in the dogs they own or breed won’t likely change but there are many loving and responsible owners out there who may not participate in an organized canine activity who are or could be excellent sources of well and lovingly bred pets.

Anne, well, some true tightassed show breeders might say so, but I think most people would just say she’s breeding for performance.

“BYB” covers a lot of ground, and it’s on my list of terms I want to never hear again, LOL, but I’d say the most common definition of it is someone who breeds for pets and doesn’t have a contract and doesn’t have a breeding program, they just want to have puppies.

Clearly your friend has a breeding program, so I don’t think anyone would really be able to argue she’s a “BYB.”

I’m suggesting that in the hypothetical future world, where there are no puppy mills and we don’t kill animals in shelters for population control, the casual but responsible breeding of family pets by people who do not have a breeding program — in other words, people who aren’t trying to preserve and improve the breed, produce working dogs, improve with each generation, produce show dogs, etc., but simply want to breed nice family pets to make more nice family pets — would be a very good source of companion dogs.

And they may even make a few bucks that way, if you’re talking “garage sale” type money and not commercial breeding type money.

So there’s some room there on price, clearly.

And as to costs, yes, cutting them sucks, but a lot of the costs we tally up when we’re doing our “we’ll never make money at this” math are things pet owners who aren’t in the fancy would do anyway — feed their dogs, take them to the vet, etc. If they are breeding for companions, then they won’t have showing, handling, field trialing, and other related expenses. Getting a temperament test doesn’t cost anywhere near what it costs to campaign a dog.

Then there’s testing for different conditions. This varies SO wildly by breed it’s hard to generalize, but at least for some things, simple cheek swab tests are going to be replacing more costly diagnostics, so we may end up with much less expensive and still BETTER ways of screening for genetic conditions — thus, costs are cut quite ethically.

I know lots of breeders who, if you take JUST the stud fee and the immediate expenses of a litter where nothing goes wrong, do make a profit or break even, at least some of the time and depending, again, on breed, as well as on litter size. For many casual breeders, that’s really all they think of when they think of “making money” on a litter.

It’s like garage sale money. Of course we don’t “make money” on a garage sale; we paid far more for our stuff than we’re selling it for, and if we treated it like a business, it’s obviously not profitable.

But it’s still cash and it still defrays expenses, at least some of which we’d have had anyway.

So I don’t think it’s as black and white as cutting costs and raising prices. There are a lot of other factors at play here.

There’s a ceiling on how much the general public will pay for a puppy (although I’m astonished at the prices pet store puppies can command).

So that leaves the option of cutting costs, which is where it gets worrisome. Which costs and how much are okay to cut under your scenario, and where do things cross the line? (Asked somewhat figuratively - I don’t necessarily expect you to pop out with an answer!)

Although she didn’t include it, I think that among those “other sources,” in addition to high volume commercial breeders (and even some not-so-high), are shelters — the availability of dogs in shelters is becoming less, more notably in some areas than others. So let’s assume that source, too, in our hypothetical future, has become limited or even dried up.

I believe that the answer is complex and has as much to do with how we think and talk about this issue as changing what we DO.

First, “responsible breeders” and fanciers and people like us have to stop demonizing people who treat their dogs well and either take, or would be willing to take, responsibility for the animals they bring into the world.

I think many casual breeders — who we might call “backyard breeders,” typically a slur — really care about their dogs, and while they might not use contracts or put things into the same terms “we” do, their hearts are there… all we need to do is stop demonizing them and reach out to them; I suspect many of them would be quite willing to tweak their practices towards contracts if they saw a reason to do it.

In that way, small, home-based breeders could fill the need and desire for lovingly bred puppies. People love to have puppies, and it’s not always impossible to make a little money on a litter — we in the “responsible breeders” world sometimes over-state the impossibility of that because it’s part of our message, that dogs aren’t products or commodities. And they’re not.

But you know, surgeons save lives and they make a profit. We pay therapists, pediatricians, teachers, childcare workers, even ministers. The freaking world won’t come to an end if someone manages to do right by their dogs and the puppies they produce, and also makes some money, too.

But I think it’s a far cry from that to someone setting out to make producing puppies an industry. Look what’s happened to farming and food production as they’ve been industrialized; it’s not good for us and it’s not good for the dogs we bring into our families, to raise them like crops or livestock.

So my model for the future is a mixture of sources — some rescue and shelter dogs, some dogs bred for a specific purpose or form of work, and dogs bred as companions, in homes and on a small scale, but not stigmatized by local ordinance or national law OR the attitudes of “responsible breeders.”

That way the “one time only backyard breeder” would stop being a stigmatized source of puppies, and more people would feel comfortable letting their dog have that one litter. (Let me remind everyone ready to kill me that this whole thing is a hypothetical “what if” for the day we’ve gotten rid of puppy mills/pet store sales of dogs AND shelter killing for population.)

That’s what I see as the future of dog breeding in the United States, once we’ve eliminated high volume commercial breeders and brought an end to shelter killing for animal population. And it’s one of the reasons I so adamantly oppose so many of these restrictions on small home breeders in the name of ending “pet overpopulation,” because it just perpetuates bad framing that’s going to be harmful down the road, reinforces the schism between one set of home breeders and another, and forces many responsible breeders out of the battle for their rights because they think, wrongly, that they have to get in bed with puppy mills to protect their right to breed and a future for companion dogs in this country.

McKenzie is of course eating four times (or more) her normal amount of food because she’s nursing puppies now. I went up to buy food, and my friend said, “Bet you can’t wait until you can sell the puppies and get your money back.”

I’m going to be waiting a long time for that. Total investment in this litter is about $12,000, and the monetary value of the litter (which, incidentally, I do not own) is $3,600.

But I can’t tell you how many misunderstandings there are about what good breeders do. Take, for example, having buyers lined up. A person at work asked me if I’d be putting a note on the company bulletin board to sell the puppies. She was astonished when I told her that not only was I not doing this, but that some people on our waiting list have been waiting for years. A couple of others have suggested — some very snottilly — that I was using the popularity of this blog to sell puppies. Um, again … no. These puppies have been sold four times over before they were even conceived.
But I think of all the things people don’t get, the fact that there’s no money in this is No. 1 … and No. 2 isn’t even a close second.

It’s frustrating, trying to fight the “breeder is a breeder is a breeder and all are greedy scum” attitude that’s so prevalent.

If you take away the mass producers of puppies, how many breeders do you think are going to make and sell puppies at a financial loss?

ALL of them.

That is, all them that are doing it right.

Responsible Breeders almost invariably take a loss on what they “make” from the any given litter.