In defense of ‘unlicensed breeders’
By Christie Keith
April 1, 2009
I have a list of phrases I’d like never to hear again: “People food.” “Dumped their pets at the shelter.” “Irresponsible pet owners.”
And here’s one more: “Unlicensed breeders.”
To understand just what’s wrong with that phrase, you might have to consider for a moment something that has nothing to do with dogs. Let’s try gardening.
You love orchids. You’ve been growing them for years, in a big kitchen window. Maybe you even have a greenhouse in the garden, a small plastic-walled building with controlled light, heat and humidity. You spend time out there every evening after work, and on the weekends. It relaxes you.
You also go to orchid shows, where you socialize and talk with other orchid growers. You belong to six orchid email lists, read a handful of orchid blogs, and have a t-shirt with “In the marsh pink orchid’s faces/With their coy and dainty graces/Lure us to their hiding places” on it.
After you’d been showing orchids for a few years, you began getting booths at a few orchid shows, and selling some of your best efforts — at least, the ones you could bear to part with. Orchid growing, cultivation, and preservation had become your life.
Then one day, your local city council determined that local orchid growers are using too much water, electricity, and other town resources. Some exotic orchids had escaped from cultivation and started to out-compete native orchids in the wild. The fertilizer used to make them bloom was putting a strain on the local sewage facility. And there was also the problem of sales tax — were some of these backyard-and-kitchen orchid growers cheating the state and county out of revenue?
In the way of lawmakers everywhere, the city council had come up with a plan: local residents needed to get a license to grow orchids. And because orchid growing is obviously a hobby of the elite, that license was going to cost, oh, five hundred bucks a year. And if you had a greenhouse out back? Double.
The huge orchid growers — the ones with their gigantic glass houses and insecticide misters and big trucks coming to take the orchids off to your local supermarket, where they would be purchased on impulse by someone who thought orchids were purty and had no more idea how to feed, water, or preserve them than they knew how to fly — were delighted. Oh, not that they really saw the little orchid fanatics as competition, but in these tough economic times, every dollar helped.
The home orchid growers freaked out. They didn’t have a lobby, had never thought of what they did as a business or something nefarious or dangerous. Why on earth were they suddenly being regulated? Who could have imagined such a thing?
So they talked and wrung their hands and posted passionately to their orchid lists. They vowed to bring all their orchids indoors, get shades that let in the light but blocked the view and start buying their orchid food out of town. After all, they reasoned, it’s not like the city would go door to door looking for them. Lay low, that’s the ticket.
That’s pretty much what happened in the world of hobby dog and cat breeding back in the 90s. And it keeps happening, because laying low continues to be the first response of most people when they perceive a threat. And laying low means no communication, no organization, and no dissent.
And just as the growers in my imaginary orchid world discovered that yes, the city really was going to go door to door and look for suspicious greenhouses and window shades and excessive use of electricity, hobby breeders realized that local animal control was actually going to come into their houses and check their kitchen cupboards and call their veterinarians to find out what kind of care their pets were getting and count noses to make sure limit laws weren’t being violated and monitor the number of poop piles in the backyard.
And like the orchid growers I invented, the hobby breeders had no lobby. They weren’t organized beyond the levels necessary to figure out who was going to be at the annual breed picnic every summer. They had no fund raising machine, no sense of “us against them,” no cultural identity that might have unified them. They were liberal and conservative, religious and atheist, old and young, and not in the habit of doing things like protesting or calling their legislators — or really, even knowing who they were.
They were caught entirely by surprise to find out that their local government thought they needed to trot down to City Hall and register their names, addresses, and numbers of pets, explain which animals had reproductive organs, pay extra for the privilege of letting them keep them, and humbly supplicate themselves before an animal control officer who couldn’t tell a Norfolk from a Norwich terrier, let alone judge which dog or bitch was breeding quality, in order to get permission to do what they and many generations before them had been doing for hundreds of years: have a litter of puppies or kittens.
Imagine their shock to further discover that this was happening in towns, counties and states all over the nation. That it was being driven by an aggressive campaign to end the breeding of cats and dogs, and that it was focusing its efforts not on the big factory farms of pet breeding but on the people doing it in their kitchens — the ones who had no lobby, no organizational structure, little skill at fighting back.
Now, let me ask you one question: is any of this a scenario under which you would feel comfortable going down and registering with the local authorities as an orchid grower, er, I mean, breeder? Or even as someone who has intact animals?
Because animal control has not shown itself to be your friend; to the contrary, in many places, animal control is hostile in the extreme to anyone who breeds or shows dogs or cats.
Your local city council members or state representatives have no understanding of what’s going on — probably even less than you do. So when someone suggests to them that restricting, licensing and legislating breeding will control animal suffering, reduce impact on the shelter system and bring in revenue, they’re all for it. When you tell them what’s really going on, they think you’re being paranoid. They say you’re a conspiracy theorist. So what trust you might have had in them is gone.
Even your friends who don’t raise orchids dogs or cats don’t understand why you’re so against this. If you have nothing to hide, they say, what does it matter that they want you to get a license, register with them, or let them come into your house and inspect your greenhouse kennel bedroom?
In vain you wave your copy of the United States Constitution in the air. Don’t you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Aren’t you supposed to be free of unreasonable searches?
That’s when their eyes narrow. So, they ask, do you have something to hide?
And that, dear readers, is why I’m against licensing dog and cat breeders. Because it’s intrusive, wrong, and it isn’t going to do what its proponents claim it will. It doesn’t increase revenue — to the contrary, San Mateo County found that its breeder licensing program decreased license compliance after they instituted it in the 90s. There is no evidence it decreases shelter numbers, and it does nothing but drive good, caring breeders underground or out of the hobby, surrendering their turf to the factory farms of pet breeding — who are, by the way, licensed breeders.
Of course, there’s at least one way in which this analogy is flawed. Orchids aren’t sentient creatures and don’t suffer if thrown on the compost pile or deprived of water and light. Nor is the orchid being tenderly raised in someone’s kitchen happier than an orchid being grown in a huge commercial greenhouse. (Well, I actually know a lot of gardeners who tell me that’s not true, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is.)
But from the point of view of the dog or cat fancier, the analogy is pretty apt. Except that orchids don’t love you back the way dogs and cats do, so I’d say their passion for animals runs even deeper than the orchid grower’s passion for her plants.
Dogs and cats aren’t plants, and they deserve our protection. So by all means, let’s continue to have laws against the abuse and neglect of animals, and let’s actually try enforcing them, too.
But licensing dog and cat breeders does nothing but put a group of people who love dogs and cats — love them fiercely — at odds with those with whom they share the goal of seeing fewer animals die in shelters and improving the lives of dogs and cats. They end up hiding instead of running breed rescue groups and driving in transport relays for rescued animals and raising money for animal welfare and volunteering at the local shelter and whelping the puppies of pregnant rescued animals and fostering orphaned kittens.
So the next time you think it odd that dedicated small dog and cat breeders don’t want to be licensed, try to put yourself in their shoes, and ask: is this really a good idea? Does this really help animals? Or does it just frighten, intimidate, and anger animal lovers?
Well written argument, Christie. You might well have used any one of hundreds of personal freedoms we take for granted. Like a driver’s license, for instance. When is the last time it kept someone from speeding? Will someone without a license ever get behind the wheel and injure someone else?
Who is quietly stalking the hobby breeders of the USA?
Comment by eli — April 1, 2009 @ 2:11 pm
Eloquent and accurate. Thanks for summing it up so well.
Comment by Susan — April 1, 2009 @ 2:13 pm
Well said. I am going to spam all of my friends with a link to this.
Comment by Linda Kaim — April 1, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
You are right. The dedicated breeders are not the problem. The people who love the breed, take excellent care of a few breeding dogs, and whose puppies are the pride and joy of their family. I don’t know what the licensing requirements are, my guess is they very by state. The problem are the puppy mills, the breeders in it for profit and not the love of the breed, and the people allowing their intact pets to run free all over town.
My question is, what would you like to be done instead?
Comment by Stephanie Russell — April 1, 2009 @ 2:28 pm
The discussion about “breeders” went off the deep end long ago, and the “animal welfare establishment” fans the flames with a lot of sloppy rhetoric. I have a neighbor who shares my vet. She is planning to let her lovely spaniel have a litter. The puppies are already spoken for; in fact, there’s a “waiting list” of us ready to step in if someone cancels on her. She said she was feeling guilty about it, until the vet said, “She’s a great dog, why wouldn’t you want her offspring?”
Comment by Barbara Saunders — April 1, 2009 @ 2:46 pm
brilliant
You just forgot the part where cities authorize private citizens (“humane society” volunteers or staff) who are subject to no public authority and have no training, to administer these laws.
Comment by EmilyS — April 1, 2009 @ 2:54 pm
My question is, what would you like to be done instead?
About breeders? Nothing legislative or regulatory, just continued education of the public about good places to get animals, and enforcement of animal cruelty and neglect laws across the board.
About animals dying in shelters? Systemic reform of the animal control and shelter industry to end the use of population control killing and utilize proven programs such as low cost/free/incentivized accessible spay/neuter, TNR programs for feral cats, behavior and training help for those who have pets, compassionate and non-judgmental adoption and surrender policies AND ATTITUDES at shelters, aggressive adoption outreach including advertising, satellite adoption programs (malls, fairs, etc) and convenient locations and hours for adoption centers, good relations with local media, positive and enthusiastically supported foster programs, working with rescue groups including breed rescue, and the end of divisive, unhelpful, failed approaches such as blaming animal owners for everything, acting as if the problem cannot ever be solved, and in general being part of the problem instead of the solution.
You know, basically all the things I’ve been writing about here for the last year and a half.
Comment by Christie Keith — April 1, 2009 @ 2:57 pm
You know, basically all the things I’ve been writing about here for the last year and a half.
Comment by Christie Keith — April 1, 2009
As in … the stuff that actually works.
And isn’t REALLY about a 95 percent kill rate on the road to pet extinction.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — April 1, 2009 @ 2:59 pm
Good analogy.
I heart unlicensed breeders.
Comment by YesBiscuit! — April 1, 2009 @ 3:02 pm
BRAVO! I don’t breed and probably never will, but I fight for the rights of those that do, especially since I often count on them to be able to have a puppy for me! Of my 4 pets, 3 are the product of irresponsible breeders/owners, the other from a very responsible breeder. I adore all of them of course, but am glad I support a shelter that has positive placement policies, realistic acceptance policies, and one that is willing to work with breed rescue as well. I chaired the first “big” S/N effort for the shelter, and that program evolved into targeting the highest “random” breeding animals in our area. Penalizing responsible pet owners will never make sense.
Comment by Janet Boss — April 1, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
PAPERS? PAPERS! Let me zee your papers.
I would never buy a dog from a licensed breeder. If you need a license, you’re simply producing too many dogs, IMO.
I looked into it when I bred my first litter and all the language and the requirements say “factory farm” or “puppy mill” instead of anything beneficial or helpful for a “hobby breeder.”
To me, it’s rather like saying that orphanages are the only ones qualified to raise children.
Comment by Christopher — April 1, 2009 @ 3:25 pm
Brilliant, Christie! Brilliant! This article should be required reading for anyone who has a pet, loves pets, or ever lived with a beloved pet. Once all the breeders of purebreds are gone and all of the mixed breeds are altered, where will puppies and kittens come from?
Comment by New Biggest Fan — April 1, 2009 @ 4:19 pm
New Biggest Fan asks the question we all are asking ourselves. The AKC has gone to the dark side, the Media believes the spew from Ingrid Newjerk and her ilk, so we have to start organizing ourselves and barking vociferously if we want to have responsible, ethical sources for the dogs we love!
Case in point: my PBS station runs Terry Gross’s Fresh Air at 7 pm. Tonight’s offering was http://www.npr.org/templates/s.....=102594087. I had no clue who Michael Shaeffer is/was, and wasn’t impressed, so I sent an email saying that if Terry wanted to do something meaningful, she get Nathan Winograd on.
And should I get a response, I am going to suggest she interview Christie, Gina and Patrick for further takes on the war pet ownership and breeding of healthy pets is facing. I suggest you all do the same. The louder we make our voices and the more united we are, the more we will be heard. Yes we can!
Comment by Anne T — April 1, 2009 @ 6:38 pm
Great post, Christie. As a person who used to be into orchids in a big (hobby) way, the analogy was a good one. I must admit, I was irked by the dismissal of plants as not suffering, it reminded me of those who say “It’s just a dog/cat/rabbit/horse, not a human” but that’s me being hyper-sensitive about my second love, plants and horticulture.
It’s too bad the big kennel clubs weren’t quick off the mark to thwart the fanatics. It’s also too bad that legislators are too busy or lazy to do some shallow digging to find out what’s what.
As for where dogs will come from when our ‘friends’ in the pseudo-animal welfare camp succeed, why, from them of course. They’ll own all the shelters and continue to ‘raid’ breeders who are on the books to steal their dogs and puppies, then sell them as rescues or adoptions. It’s called cornering the market.
You know, even breeder friends of mine, some very long-time fanciers, are pretty blasé when I warn them about all these laws. They think it’s fear-mongering, sensationalism, tinfoil hatting - until it hits them. Breed bans are so last century now, only the hicks in the hinterland are still buying it. There’s too much pushback, too many facts have come out. Mandatory neutering isn’t going very well either, thank Dog.
Easy to target those evil, smelly, greedy breeders though, isn’t it? I presume you’ve seen Yates’s latest - 179 Bills in 34 states all involving warrantless searches and other intrusive policies.
Breeding/selling dogs is becoming a crime. It won’t be long before owning them is, too.
Comment by Caveat — April 1, 2009 @ 9:03 pm
“Caveat: Breeding/selling dogs is becoming a crime. It won’t be long before owning them is, too.”
lol but not in a funny way.
for example this excellent blogger: http://caveat.blogware.com/blo.....andShoveIt
;-)
Comment by EmilyS — April 1, 2009 @ 9:34 pm
Okay, part you left out.
Environmentally conscious small orchid growers — because of their hard-earned expertise — find themselves in a position where it is not only reasonable, but seems an ethical obligation, to expose the practices of the giant orchidariums to consumers, to law enforcement, and to lawmakers.
Small orchid growers don’t want groundwater pollution and invasive orchids and lingering pesticides any more than do regular “civilians.” So some of them become particularly vocal critics of orchid mass-production, using their special expertise to explain the problems to ordinary houseplant owners and non-owners.
But the big orchidariums have lots of financial clout, and heavily influence the orchid-growers’ national club. They also have clubs of their own, and hire lobbyists and PR men. And what they hammer at, over and over, is We are all exactly the same. If the government regulates Megalorchids, Inc., in any way, it is coming into your kitchen. All orchideers must hang together. It’s traitorous to criticize Big Orch. All orchid growers have the same interests, and we big guys are going to tell you what those are.
And huge numbers of kitchen orchid growers swallow this kool-aid, and become cannon-fodder for Big Orch, while viciously attacking their environmentally-minded fellow hobbyists.
“Where are regular consumers going to get orchids if they aren’t available in the Walmart garden center?” they demand to know.
Meanwhile, the forces of orchid liberation, and frank orchid haters, press forward with laws to hobble the kitchen growers in every town. “All orchid-growers are the same. They are all just in it for money, and don’t care at all about the impact of their product. Look at their own advocacy groups — they are the ones saying it!”
Comment by H. Houlahan — April 2, 2009 @ 7:16 am
Here in Maine there is a (possible) new law that is targeting puppy mills. If passed it will punish the “orchid” breeders by charging $450 per unpayed female.
Comment by Nancy Freedman-Smith CPDT — April 2, 2009 @ 7:51 am
Good points, Houlahan. Here’s another:
The commercial orchid growers are licensed federally, under the USDA. Therefore, they are exempt from state commerce laws relating to agricultural pursuits. What’s more, red tape and exorbitant fees don’t faze them at all - it’s just the cost of doing business. Since mass production leads to greater efficiency, more advanced systems and larger profit margins, they carry on as usual while writing off business-related expenses.
It’s the little guys who do it for love, not money (the definition of an amateur) who get the shaft. They are easy targets, as Christie points out because if they are associated, it’s a very loose thing. They don’t make money and usually it costs them so they are not a business in the taxation sense. They don’t have fancy equipment, most of it is cobbled together through trial and error and lots of scrounging. They know that what they are doing is harmless so they can’t envision society turning against them, being legislated into second-class status and ending up criminalized for doing what they love - bringing happiness to others and teaching them to appreciate the newest and most highly evolved plants on Earth.
Incidentally, orchids don’t tolerate much fertilizer or water (with a couple of exceptions), they prefer what we call controlled neglect, so the runoff issue is kind of a non-starter. Power consumption, maybe, because big greenhouses ain’t cheap to operate. Growing plants that can’t be eaten could be another hook for the enviro-nazis.
I fully agree with Christie, legislation should be a last resort. Public education and peer pressure carry a lot more clout than some half-baked, poorly written piece of law that, per usual, will only affect law-abiding citizens - the ones who aren’t a problem in the first place.
People need to learn that buying a dog from a pet shop isn’t a good idea and doesn’t mean what it used to mean. Those dogs are bred for only one purpose - to make a profit for the big outfits - you know, the ones who are usually exempt from animal liberation-inspired legislation.
Comment by Caveat — April 2, 2009 @ 9:07 am
Let’s not forget that he cultivation of orchids is also a crime against nature, the new colors and hybrids of different forms that don’t exist in nature but are forced, against their will to exist and reproduce.
Orchid growers are therefore exploiting the orchids, forcing them to reproduce in an unnatural setting, exploited as playthings.
Therefore orchids should be allowed to die out of cultivation and only be appreciated in nature. The only orchids it would be ethical to “caretake” would be those rescued from foreign or domestic abandonment situations.
But since most humans are probably not up to the awesome requirements of responsible orchid guardianship, most “rescued” orchids are best off being destroyed by self appointed orchid right advocacy groups right of the bat because people should be able to enjoy a picture of an orchid as much as the real thing. Wanting an actual orchid is just “selfish”.
Comment by JenniferJ — April 2, 2009 @ 9:54 am
Friends thought Sean and were nuts for moving out here to the middle of nowhere. We had no choice, though - we wanted to get a kennel license (yes, even though we only have seven dogs), and we had to come 2 hours outside Toronto to get one, because the restrictions any closer than that are INSANE.
Want more than three dogs in some areas? You need a **100 ACRES** of land - 100 acres, for seven 24 lb Frenchies. Add on top of that restrictions about distance from road and property line that your average cattle ranch might be able to conform to, but not anyone else, and it all combines to make it impossible for a hobby breeder to breed dogs legally.
So, we’re out here in Mennonite country, because the Mennonites have lobbied - HARD - for almost NO restrictions on their right to keep 300 dogs in their barn. Like most municipalities, no distinction is made between a hobby breeder with one to two litters per year, and a volume breeder with one to two litters per week.
Until we can convince them that there IS a difference, breeders like me will either have to hide, or live in areas where we’re only protected because of laws that allow people to warehouse hundreds of dogs in dismal conditions. It’s not a happy compromise, trust me.
Comment by FrogDogz — April 2, 2009 @ 9:54 am
Simply excellent post - this post/essay should be submitted for print in various papers and given to the dog sportsmen alliance !
Comment by Lisa C — April 2, 2009 @ 12:32 pm
We have come to the point in this country where we will have to fight fire with fire. I have purchased a gun and intend to use it if my constitutional right to be secure in my home and against unreasonable search and seizure are threatened. That might bring some needed attention to the problem. I am 80 years old and have bred and shown dogs for 54 of those 80 years. I have a lot of dogs, most of which are old like myself and deserve to be treated with the love and respect I expect for myself. Some are intact and some are not ( what difference does it make for a ten year old bitch or a 15 year old dog. Anesthetizing them to do that procedure would be a death sentence.They will take my dogs over my ( and their) dead body. And that is not a threat, it is a solomn promise.
Comment by Betty Adams — April 3, 2009 @ 8:34 am