Pet Breeds

[Crouton]

Foster homes are different, children are sent to families to live with them, usually no more than one or two kids. Where as animal shelters are just hundreds of animals kept in small cages. It's closer to an orphanage, which aren't as common now but some countries do still have them.

Maybe they should have the right, but they should have to fight for it. Everyone breeding whenever they want, and whatever they want is one of the biggest problems that lead to this situation of millions of animal death every year to begin with. People shouldn't be able to just breed when they feel like it.

What I'm mostly saying is that we should be doing the opposite of what we are doing now. We should be trying to breed curly tails and squashed faces out of pugs, not into them, we should be trying to breed shorter spines and longer legs into sausage dogs, not into them, we should be trying to breed all those rolls of skin out of shar peis, not making them worse. Many breeders are doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing to breed healthy animals, and there's no law saying they can't. They are just making the situation worse and worse, to the point where some breeds of dogs are now sick from birth basically until death, it's not fair on those animals.

[sjfaerlind]

Like everything else that is based in economics, dog breeding is a supply and demand market. If people stopped buying dogs with pushed in faces and too much skin, there wouldn't be any incentive for anyone to breed them. The responsibility rests not just with the breeders for breeding healthy dogs but also with the public. Individuals have the right to buy what they want but they rarely think about the consequences of buying what they do.
As for shutting down breeders because animal shelters are overflowing, I can't see how that would work in a practical sense. How are those people going to earn income to feed their families if you take away their livelihood? Good breeders have usually pre-sold any puppies from a litter before they're even born (they have a waiting list of potential buyers). These are puppies with guaranteed homes that are coming into the world. If they've done a good screening on the buyers of those puppies and got a good, solid contract in place (mandating that if the puppy is not a good fit for the home that it must be returned to the breeder), those are not the dogs that are going to end up in shelters eventually. The ones that do are the "spur of the moment/impulse buys"... the "awww those puppies are so cute, let's get one" when someone sees them for sale in a box pen at a flea market somewhere and decides that 50 bucks isn't that expensive to pick one up. 6-12 months later when they have a large, active dog that is wreaking havoc on their lives because they had no idea what they were getting into by adopting a puppy, they decide that it has to go. Likely they had no idea how expensive it was going to be to vaccinate that puppy or to get it spayed/neutered so none of that has probably been done. Those are the dogs that are most likely to end up in a shelter, hopefully before they get a chance to beget more unwanted puppies. God forbid they don't end up in a shelter and are left to roam loose or are confined and neglected. The really sad thing about it is that these dogs often have great personalities and temperaments but have very little training and so they sometimes have behaviour problems. An 8 week old puppy jumping and slobbering all over you is kind of cute. A 9 month old 75 lb German Shepherd doing the same thing isn't quite as cute, especially if it's stir-crazy from being confined where it won't bother anybody for most of its life.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you can't get great dogs from accidental breedings (ie: mutts) or from shelters either. Certainly, great dogs can be found anywhere. I just don't like the lack of responsibility some individuals take for their choices regarding their pets. As far as I'm concerned, if a person is going to allow their dog to breed, they should be fully aware of the consequences of doing so and take full responsibility for all of the puppies. Why would we want to shut down people who are doing a good job of this? I don't care if they're breeding purebreds, crossbreds or mutts as long as they're being responsible about it. It's the ones who aren't being responsible that are contributing to the pet overpopulation crisis.
Adopting a pet is a huge responsibility and it is a luxury, not a requirement for life. I don't think we recognize that fact very well as a society. If we did, people would think about it more carefully before they adopted a pet: Can I afford to look after it? What kind of time commitment will I need to give it? Can I handle training it or can I take classes to learn how? Do I travel a lot or work long hours and is that going to affect my pet's quality of life? Is the kind of pet that I think I want going to fit with my lifestyle? Seriously, how many people actually consider this stuff before adopting a pet? *sigh*

[Crouton]

Yes, it is all about money, that's what I've been saying this whole time. Greed of humans and money is the only thing pushing this industry foward, and making it okay to breed diasabled and unhealthy mutated dogs by the millions. It's simple, humans care about appearance and money above all other things, and because of this our animals are suffering.

Haha, most breeders I know have other jobs and breed on the side. And a lot of the ones who do breed as their only job have puppy mills which need to be shut down anyway. I think it's only a very small percentage of breeders who actually do it as their only income, so saying "how will the poor people feed themselves" is a bit dramatic.

SJ can you add more gaps in your text next time, empty lines between paragraphs. Having that huge block of text like that is hurting my eyes and it's making it hard for me to read. I think it's something to do with the black font on the green background as well, but when it doesn't have lots of spaces it's hard for my eyes to separate and read everything. I tried to copy it into Microsoft Word but it still came out green, and I couldn't figure out how to read it. And now I'm struggling too much to read the rest of it sorry. I really need new glasses.