It Can't Happen Here

Dear Readers of Raised by Wolves:

Please read the second part of my December 29 post before commenting, linking, or forwarding this post.

Seriously, do.

The Mirror, 27 December 2010

House of Horrors Puppy Farmer Wants Another Pup.

Convicted Tax Dodger and Puppy Farmer Says She Has Been Rehabilitated

Swindon -- Convicted tax evader and notorious puppy-farmer Victoria Michaels has begged Wiltshire courts to let her go back to owning dogs. At present this would be a violation of the terms of her probation. The wealthy estate agent has told Judge Simon Walcott that she has been rehabilitated, returning to her career selling luxury homes, and has donated over £15,000 to the RSPCA, as well as paying the bill for her tax crimes.

Michaels came under police scrutiny in 2006, when a complaint from a neighbor about a bad smell and swarms of flies revealed a house of horrors behind the wooden fence of her smallholding outside the quiet village of Goatacre. Michaels was well-known for over a decade in Kennel Club circles for her “Powderpuff Kennel.” She entered several of her animals in dog shows, and sold surplus puppies to fanciers.

Authorities seized over fifty breeding dogs -- mostly bichons frise, a small and cuddly white breed that can sell for up to £1000 at pet stores. The dogs were kept chained to metal barrels or in rabbit-hutches in a dirty yard. Michaels was not licensed to breed dogs, and had forged documents in order to sell puppies to brokers and pet stores throughout Britain.

But what officers found in the shed and manure pile at the back of the dog yard was to shock the nation. Hidden under the manure pile were bodies of dozens of dogs that Michaels said had died of “old age” or distemper, but they showed signs of having been beaten, stabbed, strangled, smothered or electrocuted.

Inside the shed authorities discovered a bloody crowbar, a bloody nylon noose hanging from a beam, plastic bags and twisted wire that prosecutors say were used to suffocate unprofitable dogs, and an electrical cord that had been modified with clips, which they say she used to electrocute several stud dogs that had proved infertile.

Michaels’ co-defendant, Anthony Taylor, occupied the cottage on the property and served as kennel manager, feeding the dogs and arranging the sale of the puppies.

Taylor and his associate Lawrence Phillips gave evidence against Michaels, telling police and prosecutors that Michaels was ruthless in culling non-performing breeding dogs and unsaleable puppies. She seemed to take revenge on animals that disappointed her.

Taylor described the death of one bitch whose puppies had been born outside in December and later died of exposure. “I don’t have time for bad mothers,” Michaels reportedly told him, before grabbing the little dog by the back legs and striking her head repeatedly against the corner of the shed, then dumping her body on the manure heap.

Reject puppies with defects like cleft palates, broken limbs, and hernias, were hung inside the shed and dispatched with blows from a crowbar.

A bitch that did not conceive and fought with the stud dog had a plastic bag wired over her head and was left hanging by the neck in the shed overnight, after Michaels told Taylor “They either pay their rent or they get out.” When Taylor discovered the dog alive the next morning, Michaels allegedly laughed and told him that “She’s earned a holiday in Texas” -- a reference to the electrical cord that Michaels then used to “execute” the still-conscious animal.

Prosecutors eventually brought charges against Michaels for over £30,000 in unpaid taxes on her illegal puppy sales, as well as charges of operating an unlicensed breeding kennel. In return for withdrawal of animal cruelty charges, Michaels relinquished ownership of the surviving dogs to the Swindon and District Animal Haven.

Michaels served eight months in Holloway and was let out on probation in October 2009. As a condition of her probation, Michaels is not allowed to own or or have animals under her care.

Michaels’ solicitor has appealed against this condition, arguing that:

“Ms. Michaels has paid her debt to society, and sincerely repents of her crimes, as is shown by her personal and professional conduct since her release.

Ms. Michaels owned at least one bichon frise from when she was a small child, and wishes to once again enjoy the companionship of a dog, just as so many families enjoy the companionship of the puppies supplied by Powderpuff Kennels. In addition, Ms. Michaels is now caring for her elderly mother, Brenda, who was forced to put down her own bichon frise when she moved in with her daughter. Brenda Michaels had no part in the commercial operation of Powderpuff Kennels, yet is being denied the comfort of a dog in her final years.”

The RSPCA supports Michaels’ plea. An RSPCA spokesman told The Mirror, “We have been working with Ms. Michaels since her time in Holloway. Ms. Michaels has been eager to help the RSPCA in our ongoing efforts to educate the public about the abuses of illegal puppy farms. Such efforts are important to prevent vulnerable dog fanciers from falling prey to these enterprises. We believe that Ms. Michaels, with her many years of experience caring for dogs, would provide a good home for a puppy.”

Agent X-10 Reports for Duty

Today, November 30, is The Shelter Pet Project's "Celebrate Shelter Pets Day."

If you have a Facebook account and a dog, cat, ferret, rabbit, pony, gerbil or manticore who came from an animal shelter or rescue, please share his or her story there, and tag The Shelter Pet Project in your note. (You have to "like" TSPP first. And what's not to like? Contrast the positive, clever, pro-animal and pro-adopter message that The Ad Council has devised to promote adoptions with the weepy and fraudulent attempts to dun TV viewers perpetrated by the ASPCA*and HSUS**, and tell me which one has actually helped animals.)

I could tell you about my first shelter pet, Shannon, the golden retriever puppy dumped in a ditch suffering from mange. The one whose need for training led me down a less-traveled path when I was eleven years old. Shannon deserves her story on her own time.

There was Kuttatoa, good old cat. He came from a shelter in the north suburbs of Boston that doesn't seem to exist any longer, or has changed its name. We'd just bought our first puppy, and no one at the shelter seemed worried that our intact German shepherd pup would miscegenate with the kitten, a curious notion that now prevails at at least one Pittsburgh-area shelter.† Lilly and Kootie were fast friends. He was not a bright cat, but the job description of "family pet" does not require or favor genius, evil or otherwise. He got along with everyone, every species, even pesky puppies. For the last seven years of his life he endured several chronic health conditions that required daily pills and periods of regular SQ fluids. He took the pills without drama or complaint, and sat on my lap and purred when I poked a large-bore needle under his skin to give him fluids. Seventeen years of loving companionship.

We now live with five dogs. Two cats. Six goats. A colony of rabbits, and countless poultry. (Literally. I haven't tried to count in a while.) Foster dogs and other temporary residents come and go.

None of them are pets.

Some of them are pets.

There are a couple of laying hens who are welcome to stick around when their productive years are over. The barn cats have an open invitation to the house, which they accept when the weather gets really wicked, and are affectionate lap cats when I have a moment to sit in the barnyard. The goats have names and abundant personality.

But everyone here has a job. I extract the rent in milk and eggs every day. A goat who eschews brush-clearing to scream for the grain-bucket will find himself hungry. A rooster who doesn't protect his hens makes excellent curry. A non-mousing kitteh would probably find herself re-situated as a house cat somewhere else.

And then there's the dogs.

Pip and Sophia are the two currently-operational SAR dogs. That's a full-time job; anything either of them contributes to the workings of the farm or to my training practice is gravy. Pip provides a lot of gravy. Sophia does try with the goats, and can sometimes be borderline useful.

Moe is medically retired from SAR and from assisting me with client dogs. Before the farm, he was unemployed, unfulfilled, and bored. Here he has naturally taken on the duties of Director of Homeland Security. He does delegate quite a lot of the critter duties to the youngsters, but when there's a serious threat, he's the one leading the charge.

Rosie is long-overdue for testing to operational status as a trailing dog. Also a full-time job. She is also my farm shadow and chief goat-beater-upper.

We did not need a fifth dog.

We've had, I think, twenty-two foster dogs pass through our home. Several who I really liked, who fit in beautifully, who people predicted "Oh, you're keeping that one, how could you let him go?"

And they've all moved on -- Rudy and Zippy and Teddy, Spike and Gary and Sparks, Mr. Barry White. I've loved them all, and I've let them all go. Some have needed help from the deepest pockets of my trainer's bag of tricks, and some have just needed a place to take a deep breath before moving on to a forever home.

I've written about Cole before. I tend to get a bit sappy when I discuss the little dude, and the condition is fairly contagious.

When he was seized from his abuser, Cole was about four or five weeks old. (I estimate, based on his presumed litter seeming to be about seven or eight weeks old when I first met them a few weeks later.) Yellowstone County gave a letter designator to each location on the property where animals were found, progressing alphabetically, and a number to each animal prefixed by the location designator. One day I'll write about the legendary "J" pen.


The trailer where Cole and a dozen other pups were found was designated X. The last place from which living or dead dogs were removed. Cole was the tenth pup removed from the X trailer. To Yellowstone County, the law, the judge, the keepers of proof, he became Evidence #X-10 in Case #DC09-018.‡

I've never found out who named him Cole. I'm just grateful there was someone who cared enough to do so.

The shelter where Cole lived for the next nine months was unique. On the one hand, the consistent nature of the sheltered population and the dedication of the employees and many of the volunteers simplified the work of raising and rehabbing. On the other hand, Evidence #X-10 could not go for a damned walk. The law in Montana would not permit his caretakers to take him out from behind the walls that formed the sheriff's perimeter. He couldn't be fostered in a home. A good-faith legal effort to have him declared fungible property, post a bond for his "value," and release him for adoption failed. He and his relatives continued in limbo.

I'm told that initially normal dogs who spend a long time in shelters develop "cage rage," become depressed, are rendered unadoptable.

Maybe. Maybe in your "shelter." Maybe if no one cares enough to exercise, play with, and train the dogs. Maybe if there is no volunteer program, because volunteers are troublesome. Maybe if the staff and volunteers are presided over by decision-makers who assume they are stupid and untrustworthy. Maybe if there's no commitment to ensuring that every dog who comes in "normal" gets out alive, and -- dare we expect? -- no worse for the experience, and perhaps improved significantly.

I've watched ordinary people with little or no dog-training experience do extraordinary things in the past two years. Enough so that I now question the idea that anyone, properly motivated, is "ordinary." Certainly there are stupid and untrustworthy people. They need to be fired to make room for the others, the ones who will rise to meet extraordinary expectations.

Despite the significant problems that Cole developed as a result of growing up in a kennel environment where he could not take a damned walk, stretch his legs, have some peace and quiet, he was not "ruined." Despite the fact that in just about any shelter in the land he would have been snapped up at eight weeks -- that puppies growing up in a shelter kennel is, under normal circumstances, simply unnecessary and easy to avoid -- he came out ready to flip into greatness.

A word about getting working dogs from shelters. SAR, specifically, since that's the world I've lived in for nineteen years.

Generally, I'm bearish on it. For first-time handlers, especially those who don't have significant experience training and observing the training of a wide variety of dogs, there are too many pitfalls. It's not as bad as buying a dog from show lines or taking a show breeder's ego-donation, by and large, but taking a shelter pup of unknown provenance does not bode well for your prospects of finishing out as an operational team.

The dog's genetic heritage matters. It just does. When we assess purpose-bred little puppies as working prospects, we are assessing them against a background of their parents' and other relatives accomplishments, and their known upbringing. We have a good idea of the pups' eventual size, health, and athletic potential, and can make reasonable prognostications about his temperament, drives, and amenability to training. We stack the odds, and it usually works. Doesn't mean that the handler can't screw up -- most higher-order failures to become operational are handler issues, not dog issues -- but he's swimming with the current, not against it.

That said, the side-of-the-road litter of "I think these are mostly ______" has yielded more than a few good operational dogs -- mostly for experienced handlers, or SAR-experienced or dog-experienced first-timers who had good supervision in both selection and training.

For experienced handlers, there are many treasures to be found among adolescent dogs in pounds. The failed pet may be the working dog waiting for his employer. While the shelter's belief that Joey in run 14 would make a great SAR dog is seldom a spot-on assessment, there are plenty of good prospects for the patient, persistent, experienced, dog-savvy handler and trainer to consider. The important quality for a handler who decides to choose his next partner from the shelter or rescue population is the ability to say no. He will pass on many dogs before seeing the genuine glint of diamond.

The thing to which I say hell no, as a training director, is the half-baked notion of a first-time handler that she can take a troubled dog -- often a shy and fearful one -- from a shelter (or anywhere -- I see as many coming from show breeders) and simultaneously rehabilitate that animal and progress towards operational status in SAR with him. The two projects are not compatible. There's plenty of room for sentiment to drive one's altruism in both fields, but some laudable sentiment is not the same thing as unrealistic romanticism or a generalized savior complex.

So I've always personally started with purpose-bred puppies. Twice I've made my own -- pups who were started on SAR conditioning as soon as they left the womb, if not before.

But once in a while -- Once in twenty-two times? Once in two-hundred-twenty-seven chances? -- a dog will come along who won the genetic lotto, even if his breeding was random, or ill-considered, or whoknowswhat. He's likely to be characterized as "troubled" in ways related to "too much dog" by the shelter or rescue workers, or at the very least, considered a pill in the kennel.

With the right guidance, he may be just the guy to report for duty.


_____________

* One animal shelter, in New York City, only for animals confiscated from New York City, and not very many of them. Most homeless animals in NYC languish or die in the pound run by public ACC.

** No animal shelters. Five times more money goes into the executive pension fund than is disbursed in wee grants to animal shelters. And yes, I know they provide some money to the SPP. As long as it flows in just one direction, we're good.

† No shit. We were turned down to adopt a neutered cat because we have one unspayed bitch. I'll write more on this later.

‡ That's his actual seizure-day photo. For scale, the sign is, I think, standard 8.5 x 11 cardstock.

On Notice

One thing I really like about Blogger, Wordpress, and some proprietary blog software is the name-links.

Commenters can choose to set up a link to their own blogs or other urls, thereby taking the opportunity to establish credibility and accountability.

A man or woman who stands behind his or her words with both name and credentials counts for a lot more than an anonymous commenter, or even the user of a consistent pseudonym.

But know this.

Any spammer, scammer, puppymiller, conspiracy theorist, or any other category of thief who comments here as a way of getting his name link "out there" and hawking his wares will find himself in spam hell and publicly called-out.

That is all.

What's wrong with this picture?

This is a partial screen-grab from a SF Gate article on a political topic unrelated to animals.

I bet my readers can find ever so much to say about the page layout.

A Quick Thought, California

A field-bred Labrador makes a great pet for anyone who bought a raffle ticket on a lark. God told me so.

The California assembly is once again using The People's Time and The People's Money (of which they no longer have any) to give unwarranted parliamentary benefit to a hairbrained scheme to sterilize every privately-owned dog and cat in the state. It could even pass the assembly.

You can read about it here.

And here.

So here's a thought, Californians who claim to love animals and have their welfare at heart while ignoring every data point about what happens when the gubmint mandates the surgical sterilization of privately-owned animals ...

Why not use some of that misplaced energy -- the time and effort you put into trying to get into your fellow citizens' private bidness, and their pets' very private gonads -- to make puppy raffles illegal.

The way they are in every other semi-civilized place. But not California.

This kennel announced in this Facebook post that they are raffling off a pup.

When questioned on this choice -- a curious one for a self-styled "premier breeding, boarding, and training center" that specializes in field-bred Labradors -- the proprietor responded that

I have never been of the attitude that it is my responsibility to vet people to see if they meet criteria set by us to be worthy of owning a dog. Over the yrs. I have seen kids helped by sympathetic adults win a puppy they otherwise couldn't afford at a DU dinner. In the past our dogs have always went to not only good people but the best! I believe it is God's duty to sort out people.

I wonder if The Almighty has consented to be unilaterally assigned that "duty" by this kennel owner. Most Judeo-Christian scripture seems to place the duties of animal husbandry and animal welfare firmly on the shoulders of the earthly owner of the animal. I am taking a risk here and assuming the proprietor is not a Jain or an Animist or something.

So what say you, Californians? This should be a no-brainer. Outlaw puppy raffles in the next session of the assembly, bringing California into line with 1970's-era animal welfare standards. It literally costs the state nothing.

The Big Door Prize

You don't volunteer for charity work with the expectation of getting something fungible or material in return.

If you do, it's no longer charity, and you are no longer a volunteer, you are a poor businessperson or a disappointed office-seeker or a swindler or something else entirely.

At the same time, it is ungracious to refuse that which is spontaneously given in appreciation of your work.

Maybe just that enameled fifteen-year-service pin. A bottle of good wine. Souvenir t-shirt. Sixteen-year-old single malt. A sincere thank-you. A hug, if it's not the bad touch kind.

And that which just grows out of the work.

Friendship.

Adam Smith notwithstanding, not every human interaction is an exchange.

My training colleague and friend Douglas, rejecting my self-characterization as a relative non-geek, challenged me to produce one friend from the past ten years I had not first met online.

As it happened, I had several. I would, however, be harder-pressed to come up with many who did not in some way come my way in the context of volunteer work. A few clients-turned-friends, co-workers, and neighbors about covers it.

When my friends in NESR made the commitment to the Operation New Beginnings dogs in December 2008, we anticipated much of what was to come -- the time commitment, lost income, days and nights of worry, scraping for funds, even the still-ongoing harassment.

We did not plan for the way in which our lives would be enriched by the friendship of other volunteers, adopters, donors. This was a gift unlooked-for.

When we agreed to foster dogs whose needs were significantly greater than any "normal" foster animals, it was for the sake of the dogs.

Back in January of 2009, we anticipated a fast(er) resolution to the ONB dogs' fates. Everyone expected that Linda Kapsa would cut a plea agreement within a few months at the most. Everyone expected that, before that time came, other rescue organizations would step up and help with fostering, rehabbing, and placing dogs.

Neither of those things happened; eight months later it was NESR with full responsibility for all the dogs. Not until they were adopted -- until they were adopted and then forever after, if any dog needed a new home at some later time, or any owner needed help in order to keep a dog.

On my first trip to Billings, Susan, an ONB volunteer was asking about how adoptions might be handled, and I ventured that some would be handled locally by local groups, and NESR would take as many dogs as we could.

"So you will take the really promising ones and adopt them to people who want an English shepherd?"

I was taken aback, but had to remind myself that not everyone knows how rescue groups (should) work.

"No, we will most likely take the least adoptable, since we have the foster homes that can handle them. We're not as worried about the easy-to-adopt ones."

I think she was genuinely astonished.

As it happened, the most troubled ONB dogs were divided (for foster or adoption) between the most capable of the ONB volunteers and the most experienced NESR foster volunteers.

"Troubled" is relative. There were the dogs such as Harry and Barry White, who had been in the worst condition when seized and/or made the least progress in custody. Dogs who suffered such severe kennel stress that they were difficult to parse in our interviews. And any dogs who exhibited worrisome aggression that had not been resolved while they were in custody.

One of those came home with me.

Unlike his presumed brother Charlie, Cole was not aggressive towards people.

His pathological aggression towards other dogs started when he was about eight weeks old. I witnessed the three brothers from what we believed to be one litter try to kill one another, with commitment and enthusiasm, when they still had only baby teeth that were fortunately not up to the job. They were three of seven young pups whose mother(s) could not be identified at seizure, and they wasted no time establishing Lord of the Flies protocols amongst themselves.



Later, as a teenager, he'd latch onto another dog so hard that, picked up at the height of the fray, he'd bring his victim into the air with him. The mere sight of an empty food bowl could elicit a balls-to-the-walls attack.

Cole was in solitary for months. At the ONB reunion, one of his caretakers said something that I'd somehow not appreciated before now: Cole had lived alone in the dark for twenty-two hours a day.

It pained those who loved this cheery, cuddly, playful teenage pup to know that he was so troubled, and was not only unjustly confined like all of his relatives, but isolated for their protection and his.

Douglas and I saw something else, something besides his seek-and-destroy attitude towards other dogs and his snuggly nature with humans. We saw an inborn desire to partner up with a human for a goal, and the self-assurance to make it as a working dog.

So Cole came home with me in September.

Within three weeks, he learned to put his damned tail down and get along with the resident dogs. Who liked him -- the clearest sign that the young fellow did not want to be That Dog.

Within two months, he was politely meeting strange dogs on the street. Pip adopted him as her son -- as if she didn't already have enough of them.

Within three months, he was controlling Sophia, our gormless social-climbing German shepherd, and enforcing a good pack order. Also working as our designated turkey hound. Progressing with SAR training. Ummm ... sleeping on the bed. My side.

After twenty foster dogs -- short-term fosters, long-term fosters, fosters with medical needs, fosters needing extensive training, perfect fosters who needed nothing but the right family -- we experienced a foster failure.

His Gotcha Day is Memorial Day. Best $200 I ever spent. A cheerful, loving, devoted, forgiving farm dog, SAR partner, and pack enforcer -- all for a couple of Benjamins.

This interaction with NESR may be an exchange contractually, but I did not get anything equivalent to my donation. It's as if I sent fifty bucks to the public radio and instead of a tote bag they sent back Tom and Ray in a wooden crate.

I went to the party to wait tables, and walked off with the biggest surprise door prize of all.

It gets better.

We took our first really big road trip. Perfesser Chaos, Pip, Rosie, Cole and me, two weeks with the popup trailer, to Montana and back.

Had I not had enough of Montana? I had not. Nearly six weeks in Montana last year, and I got out of Billings for one evening. I had never seen Montana.

And there was the occasion of the ONB Reunion, on the anniversary of the dogs' release from custody. So many human and dog friends who I'd never seen outside of the stress and deadlines of trying to do right by so many dogs with so few resources and so little time.

At Janeen's, part way, Cole got reacquainted with his brother, and declined to renew their nemesis relationship.

In North Dakota, he hiked the grassland, flushed grouse, and slept in the camper for the first time.

He was a Very Good Dog during the roadside emergencies occasioned by two trailer-tire blowouts. (Brand-new Carlisle brand Sport Trail tires, in case you were wondering.)

He got a stern lesson in campground etiquette from PC in the Custer National Forest after a serious lapse of judgment. I didn't say he was perfect.

And at the reunion, the boy who had been locked in solitary appointed himself the glad-handing Mayor of Dogville.

Now, no mistake -- when others offered to engage in hostilities, he was willing to return fire. I pulled or pressured him out of two scuffles, one directed at him and one between others, where he may have come to "support" me in breaking it up.

But overall, he stotted around the girl scout camp climbing into laps and offering play bows, depending on the species of each new or old friend.






He earned his CGC on Sunday, a clean and honest pass, no fudging. We had not prepared.

On Monday he advanced to a more advanced SAR task, in an unfamiliar and arid terrain, surrounded by cows, and working with PC, who is Not the Momma.

On the way home, we stopped at Janeen's again, and worked a bit with brother Charlie and maybe older sister Maddie, who each have their issues. After a few minutes, I took him off the leash. He continued to work, because I did.

And I finally saw that he is destined to be my next dog-training assistant. Not just a demo dog -- a job that can be done by any well-trained animal -- but a real partner.

He will step into the the massive pawprints left by Mel. Mel who used to bring clients to tears as she delicately calmed their fearful or ferocious beasts. Mel who thought ill of no one, but always had my back. Mel who could do her job without direction, while my full attention was riveted on our troubled student.

He will one day be that good. Not the same, but that good.

That day I got a call from a friend who had just been savagely ambushed by grief when she picked up her late dog's ashes. Listened and talked about the Old Man, these Great Dogs and what they do to us, requiring that we become better humans by believing we already are.

They create these magnificent places in our lives and hearts, and maybe one day, after they are gone, another Great Dog comes along and moves into that vacant space. Not to replace the maker, but to help fill the space with life rather than echoes.

And there was my Little Dude, romping on the lawn and flashing me a tongue-lolling grin that would make any other dog look like a dullard. On Cole -- who has shivered on a pile of frozen dogshit, who lived 22 hours a day alone in the dark, who once found an empty bowl to be grounds for attempted murder, and through it all has always believed that there has got to be a pony in here somewhere -- it just looks happy. All that knowledge, and he chooses happiness.

The biggest prize of all.

Falling Through When the Whole Damned Thing is Cracks

The USDA has released a report on its own puppy-mill inspection results and practices.

You can download the PDF here.

From the report's executive summary:

In this audit, one objective was to review AC’s (Animal Care's) enforcement process against dealers that violated AWA (Animal Welfare Act). Accordingly, we focused on dealers with a history of violations in the past 3 years.

Another objective was to review the impact of recent changes the agency made to the penalty
assessment process. We identified the following major deficiencies with APHIS’ (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) administration of AWA:

• AC’s Enforcement Process Was Ineffective Against Problematic Dealers. AC’s enforcement process was ineffective in achieving dealer compliance with AWA and regulations, which are intended to ensure the humane care and treatment of animals. The agency believed that compliance achieved through education and cooperation would result in long-term dealer compliance and, accordingly, it chose to take little or no enforcement action against most violators.

However, the agency’s education efforts have not always been successful in deterring problematic dealers from violating AWA. During FYs 2006-2008, at the re-inspection of 4,250 violators, inspectors found that 2,416 repeatedly violated AWA, including some that ignored minimum care standards. Therefore, relying heavily on education for serious or repeat violators—without an appropriate level of enforcement—weakened the agency’s ability to protect the animals.

• AC Inspectors Did Not Cite or Document Violations Properly To Support Enforcement Actions.

Many inspectors were highly committed, conducting timely and thorough inspections and making significant efforts to improve the humane treatment of covered animals. However, we noted that 6 of 19 inspectors did not correctly report all repeat or direct violations (those that are generally more serious and affect the animals’ health). Consequently, some problematic dealers were inspected less frequently. In addition, some inspectors did not always adequately describe violations in their inspection reports or support violations with photos. Between 2000 and 2009, this lack of documentary evidence weakened AC’s case in 7 of the 16 administrative hearings involving dealers. In discussing these problems with regional management, they
explained that some inspectors appeared to need additional training in identifying violations and collecting evidence.

• APHIS’ New Penalty Worksheet Calculated Minimal Penalties. Although APHIS previously agreed to revise its penalty worksheet to produce “significantly higher” penalties for violators of AWA, the agency continued to assess minimal penalties that did not deter violators. This occurred because the new worksheet allowed reductions up to 145 percent of the maximum penalty. While we are not advocating that APHIS assess the maximum penalty, we found that at a time when Congress tripled the authorized maximum penalty to “strengthen fines for violations,” the actual penalties were 20 percent less using the new worksheet as compared to the worksheet APHIS previously used.

• APHIS Misused Guidelines to Lower Penalties for AWA Violators. In completing penalty worksheets, APHIS misused its guidelines in 32 of the 94 cases we reviewed to lower the penalties for AWA violators. Specifically, it (1) inconsistently counted violations; (2) applied “good faith” reductions without merit; (3) allowed a “no history of violations” reduction when the violators had a prior history; and (4) arbitrarily changed the gravity of some violations and the business size. AC told us that it assessed lower penalties as an incentive to encourage violators to pay a stipulated amount rather than exercise their right to a hearing.

I'm not going to have a chance to read the whole thing tonight.

However, I have one question.

In what universe does the person who kept this dog in this condition for at least a week:

Not get arrested on the spot for felony animal cruelty?

I'm serious. If your neighbor's pet was chained in the yard suffering from this festering, untreated injury, would he not get a visit from the law? Would you not make this happen? Are federal employees conducting licensing inspections not mandated reporters when they observe a felony in progress?

Not the Big Bad inspector who can write you up. The big bad policeman with the gun on his hip who takes you to jail. Where the bikers and potheads and bar-fighters take a dim view of people who hurt children and animals.

This willful act of cruelty took place in Oklahoma, which does have a first-offense felony animal cruelty law. The federal inspector -- our tax dollars at work -- did not trouble himself to notify the appropriate local law enforcement officials. And at the time the report was written, the puppymiller had not even been fined for the license violation.


This willful act of cruelty, also in Oklahoma, similarly resulted in no criminal charges, no write-up for a "direct violation," and no documentation by the inspector that would allow the agency, "to identify the animals during re-inspection to determine if they were treated or just disposed of. "

What's wrong with this little dog? I thought she had an untreated suite of tumors or cysts, or some exotic skin condition, until I read the caption.

Her face is covered with engorged ticks. So many that the inspector who didn't see fit to cite the puppymill operator for the violation was, "concerned about their hematocrit [a red blood cell ratio indicating anemic conditions].”

Concerned, but not concerned enough to, you know, do her goddamned job.

I'll be going over this report thoroughly tomorrow. For an internal agency document, it appears to be blunt and honest about the shortcomings in the current inspection system. It correctly identifies, as well, the enormous loophole presented by direct-to-consumer internet sales of puppies. I'm hopeful that it represents a commitment to agency reform, to requiring inspectors to do the job the taxpayers pay them to perform.

If federal and state inspectors did their jobs, if police and humane enforcement officers, prosecutors, and mandated reporters did their jobs and enforced the cruelty laws, if citizens reported violators and ensured that law enforcement followed through, we'd be light-years further along in meeting our barest obligations to the animals who depend on us for everything.

Time to Shower in Boiling Clorox

Homeless, or hot property?

Sitting here, freshly scrubbed after a wet, dirty day of SAR training, I started checking some ads in a regional agricultural newspaper's online site.

Way leads on to way, and impulsively googling phone numbers from some questionable dog ads in the livestock section led to roads I wish were less taken, especially by me.

The pets/dogs classifieds of the Holmes County Bargain Hunter -- which serves eastern Ohio's Amish country -- made my skin crawl off to hide. I need another shower already.

Commingled with a modest number of the usual backyard breeder and bailing pet-owner ads is the commercial narrative of the new rural economy, one of the few facets of animal agriculture that is not yet vertically integrated, the new millenium's Mortgage Lifter:

BROKER LOOKING FOR Toy breed puppies...any kind. 10 years experience. Have lots of references. Paying $150-$300. 814-331-0247.

KENNEL SELLOUT. YORKIES, Bichons, Pomeranians, King Charles, Poodle, and Shih-Tzu. 1-4yrs. old. (423)345-3042.

LOOKING FOR LITTERS of puppies, we could pay up to $60 a pup for pure or small breeds. Call us at (330)466-7276.

ONE 9MO OLD Pom male. One AKC Pom male. Two Pom females. (740)622-1109.

PUPPIES WANTED: BOOKING litters. Cavashon’s, Schnoodles, Cavapoo’s, Cavalier King Charles, Morkies, Shorkies, Cockapoos, Shihapoos, Bichon’s and Bichon mixes, Maltishons and Maltipoo’s, Maltese cross, Puggles, Havanese cross, Yorkipoos, Yorkie mixes. Small Poo breed mixes. Designer breeds. 330-280-4531.

PUPPIES WANTED: BUYING some now, and booking ahead. Pugs, Puggles, Yorkies and mixes, Morkies, Cavashons, Havanese and mixes, Shih-Tzu’s and mixes, Bulldogs and mixes, Bichons and mixes, Maltese and mixes. We always pay and we always pick up. 330-518-9516; 330-559-9211.

THIRTY 2-1/2’X4’ WIRE dog cages made by Raber Kennels. Six 16ft sections, two 12ft sections with automatic water nipples. Can deliver. (270)528-1537 or (270)531-3751.

WANTED TO BUY: Adult kennel breed sellout. Yorkies, Maltese, Pomeranians, Shih-Tzu’s. (330)359-0245.

WANTED: SOFT-COATED WHEATON, also Brussel Griffond adults and/or puppies. Also, someone to raise Bulldogs and I will supply the dogs. (724)254-4594 or (412)289-9498.

Bad enough, the brokers looking for $60 puppies that will miraculously appreciate ten or twenty-fold by the time they reach the deli case in a week or so, the sellouts of bulk-priced breeding stock, the indelible image branded on my brain of the thirty canine livestock who have and will spend their entire miserable existences in those banks of 30" x 48" cages (with water nipples). These ads infuriate, but do not surprise. Not like some others.

There's the famous canine repro specialist vet in Cleveland I keep hearing about.

ATTENTION DOG BREEDERS
Two hour seminar by world famous canine reproduction vet, Dr. Hutchinson. A rare opportunity to learn from one of the top Veterinarians in the country. Tuesday, May 18th at Farmstead Restaurant in Berlin at 7:00pm. For information call (330)674-0810.

I don't think we'll be taking our veterinary business to the good Doctor Hutchinson; courting the custom of the puppymilling community in and around Holmes County means he will be much too busy keeping those bitches profitably whelping away in their 30" x 48" cages to bring his full specialist attention to any AI's we might one day want to have done.

In addition to building vinyl storage units, the disembodied phone number that is organizing this meeting of minds has some six-week-old Australian shepherd pups for sale. Because those pups get stale if you let them sit on the shelf too long.

Then there's the new wrinkle on "rescue:"

AA1 RESCUE now accepting puppy litters. Call when young to assure placement. Will find loving homes and spay mom. (330)242-5137.

This one is fishy. I've never heard of a rescue placing an ad looking for dogs. It's not like there is, you know, a shortage of dogs and puppies in rural eastern Ohio. I have been to the pounds; they are well-populated, and many of them are only too eager to release animals to legitimate rescues.

AA1 Rescue does not have a Petfinder listing, nor a website, nor a mention on anyone else's website, nor is it registered as a 501(c)3 with the IRS.

The only place it turns up in a Google search is in this free ad in a Cleveland publication:

AA1 PUPPY RESCUE
Lab mixed puppies, 6-8wks. SUPER SWEET, shots, dewormed. $100. 330.242.5137

The phone number, similarly, only appears in this ad. It is a cell phone in Medina, OH.

Like I said, fishy. The "rescue" that pays for ads looking for pups, but whose only web presence is in one free ad offering puppies for sale for $100. Presumably unneutered, as they don't specify the way they do for the $3 inoculation and the $.50 worming.

Then there's so-fishy-I-smell-low-tide:

GUARDIAN
ANGEL
RESCUE

Accepting puppies & dogs. We are a well-respected rescue with 12yrs. experience. We will pay up to $50 per puppy. (330)656-3524.

A rescue that pays a newspaper for an ad so they can buy puppies? At about the same price offered by the puppymill brokers in the same ad column?

Rilly?

In those twelve years of experience garnering respect, "Guardian Angel Rescue" has apparently not gotten around to getting registered as a tax-exempt charity; my fruitless search of the IRS dB reminded me, though, that there is a well-respected group in Canfield, OH, Angels for Animals, that helped out NESR with low-cost neutering on five English shepherds we once sprung from one of the rural pounds they serve.

There are Guardian Angel Rescues in Memphis, TN and Tampa, FL. Presumably not trolling rural Ohio for $50 puppies. Otherwise, no website, no Petfinder listing, no mention on anyone else's website.

The Northfield, OH cell phone that is the only point of contact for this and some similar puppy-solicitation ads, shows up on the other side as well, with paid ads that give some idea of the strict placement criteria and great care that Guardian Angel takes with its procured puppies:

A Big Puppy Sale FREE Shots. FREE Life Worming. Rescue Puppies. $35 up. 330-656-3524. 5/12/2010

There is more of the same in Akron-area ads, most of them coming up on Google but not properly cached.

Presumably, the $35 "bargain" puppies cost the guardian angels less than the $50 top price offered in the other ad. Or they are old and shopworn. The inclusion of "up" suggests that there may be no ceiling on the potential price for intact "Rescue Puppies."

I've long cautioned dog-shoppers to be as skeptical of rescues and shelters as they should be of breeders.

To make sure that the animals have had appropriate health care, that the facilities do not promote disease, that behavior and health assessments are performed appropriately and the results used to determine appropriate placements and also shared transparently with potential adopters, that dogs who need training to become adoptable receive it, that the rescue provides follow-up support as needed, including guaranteed take-back. To determine that the rescue is well-run, fiscally responsible, clear-headed as well as (reasonably) soft-hearted.

I had no idea how excessively high I was setting the bar, because I didn't know how low you could go.

I think we've got enough evidence to add, now -- Make sure the rescue is a rescue, and not a bottom-feeder among bottom-feeders, a cut-rate dog broker out to make a quick two bits on kyootness.

The Emperor's Striptease

Until about 2006, the American Kennel Club published its registration statistics every year -- how many dogs of each breed registered, the comparable number from the previous year, each breed's relative position in popularity rankings, and the overall number of individual dogs registered.

Once the interwebz had evolved, those statistics were easy to find, handy to access on the AKC's site -- and announced with fanfare and fatuous press releases every January -- "Labrador Retriever is America's Top Dog Fourth Year in a Row -- Yorkshire Terrier Closing In."

But starting in 1992, the statistics tell a more interesting story than the timeless drama of poodles vs. Rottweilers.

From what is itself an outlying peak of over 1.5 million registrations in 1992, the numbers went into an immediate tailspin -- not a slow, steady decline, not an accelerating curve, but an impressive nosedive. By 2002, AKC registered fewer than a million new dogs -- over a one-third reduction in registrations over the course of a decade.

One institutional response to this extraordinary development was to circle the wagons and stop putting those registration statistics out where people like me could see them. That will fix it!

According to the AVMA, in 2001 Americans owned 61,572,000 dogs. 36% of American households included one or more dogs. By 2007, 37% of US households owned 72,114,000 dogs. And the average number of dogs per dog-owning household increased from 1.6 to 1.7.

Dog ownership rates increased slightly over that six year period, the human population increased, the number of households increased, and the total number of owned dogs jumped by over ten million animals! During the same period, AKC annual purebred registrations dropped -- as I've just learned, by 300,000.

No wonder they've circled the wagons.

But, you say, wouldn't a well-run business try to find out why they were losing market share, and then do what they needed to do to change that?

Of course it would. We'll get back to that.

I was surprised to find that the AKC recently allowed a gross account of its registration statistics to be published here.

No surprise, the tailspin has not abated.



(And yes, I tried to embed these figures here -- fair use -- and they won't go. I found a workaround to display the gif images. I get the distinct impression of an organization that is still desperately trying to control the message.)

In 2008, the AKC registered the same number of dogs it did in 1965 -- the year I was born. Even more dramatic, when the data controls for the size of human population -- number of dogs registered with AKC / human population -- the potential revenue loss shitstorm from 1992 to 2008 is more on the order of 62%.


Now, the article from the ag-industry astroturf organization NAIA would have us believe that the reasons the AKC's registrations are dropping are:

• New laws and regulations that target breeders
• Imports of purebred puppies*
• 30 years of bad publicity about breeders

Reality: none of the above.

AKC isn't drowning. It's in quicksand. It jumped in by itself. All of its witless struggles just send it deeper. And as it screams abuse and curses at its former subjects, fewer and fewer of them are feeling inclined to throw it a rope and get pulled in themselves.

The real reasons for the drop in registrations have something to do with general cultural trends and consumer behavior, and quite a lot to do with the behavior of the AKC itself, past and present. These factors interact with one another, form feedback loops, weave into a full picture and become effectively impossible to parse out into separate threads. Nevertheless, I'll give it the old college try.

Top Ten Reasons the AKC's Registration Revenues are Down the Shitter

10. Televised Dog Shows

Does watching the Miss USA pageant on television make you want to run right out and buy a JonBenet Ramsay Junior Pageant Whore-Baby kit for your daughter?

Really?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Westminster and other televised dog shows do nothing to encourage regular dog owners to become "dog fanciers." While they are moderately popular with viewers -- so are reality TV shows featuring freaks, misfits, drama queens and assorted object lessons.

As your teacher tried to tell you, They aren't laughing with you, they are laughing at you.

The viewers -- mostly dog lovers -- who watch for the weird dog haircuts, unfortunate handler fashion decisions, strange misshapen breeds, and tiny dogs with absurd names that weigh more than they do, are not gaining a higher opinion of the ACK, dog shows, and dog fanciers. The whole exercise in artificial glamor and hype for the cameras makes that world seem even more remote and bizarre.

9. Shelter Adoption

The last two decades have seen a revolution in attitudes towards dogs in animal shelters. Dogs that were formerly killed are now adopted as pets.

None of those dogs are producing purebred offspring to be registered. All of them are occupying a growing, but still finite number of slots in family homes.

There's a special place in my own black little heart for breeders who bitch about rescue because rescue adoptions deprive them of puppy sales. (Yes, really, I've had breeders complain to me about this, as if they would find a sympathetic ear.)

A registry that pisses and moans about essentially the same thing is no better.

8. Puppymills

Consumers began to become aware of the puppymill/pet store connection in the 1970's; awareness continued to grow through the eighties and nineties. The pet stores went on the defensive, with marketing spin that all their puppies came from USDA-registered breeders. (Read: puppymills.) "We buy our puppies from local breeders, not puppymills." Etc. The puppymill marketers and consumer consciousness have been in a sort of arms race of spin versus cognition for over 30 years, but in general, ordinary dog owners and would-be dog owners are aware that puppymills are bad and cruel and to be avoided.

Sadly, many dog buyers discover the provenance of their dog after the fact, when they are standing in a vet's office with a sick or psycho puppy and folder containing the receipt from Petland, a useless warranty, and the puppy's possibly fraudulent AKC "papers."

The postwar marketing scam that had duped American consumers into believing that "AKC-registered" was synonymous with "quality dog" was unraveling.

The AKC was not only willing to register pups that had passed from massive mill to wholesaler to retailer to unwitting pet buyer, it actively courted those revenues. Even when the little sales units weren't individually registered by their ultimate buyers, the AKC took a cut every time the beastie changed hands -- much more lucrative than a hobby or show breeder who sold a puppy just once to a pet buyer. Without the massive revenues of the puppymill industry to subsidize the swank Madison Avenue HQ and glittery dog shows, ACK would have been forced to scale back or require its vassal fanciers to bear the actual cost of their hobby.

Related post: At Least, Don't Buy This

7. Puppymill Registries

Ironically, the biggest hit on AKC registrations came as a direct result of ACK's single arguably good deed.

If the central function of an animal registry is to keep an accurate account of the pedigrees of the animals registered, the AKC was failing because of its long-standing policy of rubberstamping whatever the puppymills reported. It was an open secret that the sale of "papers" for breeding stock and the sale of the animals themselves were two independent and unrelated transactions in puppymill land. If a production unit breeder dog died, its papers were still a lucrative property. This was not limited to simple fraud about identity. Especially in the case of expensive and delicate small breeds, it becomes convenient to cross the breeds, with a small sire caged with some bigger-breed bitches in order to maximize litter size and survivability. No one knows how many Petland "Maltese" are the offspring of a bichon mother and a Maltese father, but by the time the switcheroo becomes apparent, they are in little danger of being returned to the store -- if the owners ever figure it out at all.

The AKC's core constituency -- dog fanciers whose hobby is competing in dog pageants -- was understandably miffed about the open secret that their core values of pedigree accuracy and breed "purity" were overwhelmingly compromised.

In response, the AKC instituted their frequently used sires program, requiring that males that engendered more than a certain number of litters (it is now six, or three in one year, though I believe the initial thresholds were higher) be DNA typed.

The puppymill industry's reaction was to vote with their feet, and create their own papermills with cheaper fees and no questions asked. Not only do the ACA, APRI, CKC, et. al. issue bogus pedigrees for their core constituency, but they are happy to keep on doing so for the mill-puppy buyers turned backyard breeders whose classified ads are the last thing keeping dead-tree newspapers out of bankruptcy.

So now, most puppies bought at pet stores are not AKC-registered, and fewer and fewer of the pups sold by casual breeders and local direct-to-consumer puppymills are. Yesterday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette pet classifieds included 58 ads for pups registered with AKC, as against 37 that mentioned no registry, 23 for cross-breds (almost all deliberate "designer dog" crosses) and 18 that mentioned "other" registries -- puppymill industry registries. However, most of the ads for deliberate crossbreds and many of the ones for ACA, WWKC, and other papermill-registered pups bore the field marks of direct-to-consumer mills -- websites, takes Visa, multiple litters listed in one ad -- so the number of pups sold per ad in that category is indubitably higher than the single litters listed.

No question, the Frequently Used Sire Program and concurrent crackdown on records violators -- steps the AKC took to assure its delegates and core customers that it was doing job they pay it to do -- severely cut into the profits. And there is probably no way for them to take it back without digging the hole deeper. Not that they aren't capable.

6. The Return to Normalcy

The practice of sending money to a stranger and accepting in return a sheet of paper that repeats the information you sent along with the money is a curious one, and it only goes back a little over a hundred years in this country. It was initially an indulgence of wealthy fanciers, and remained exclusively so for decades.

The wealthy fanciers also set the habit of paying someone to tell them what they could and could not do with their dogs -- the Government of Dogs proclaimed that there would be no race-mixing, that thus and such color or shape or fur texture was anathema, that ears must be amputated for this dog, but never for that one -- and their subjects jostled one another aside to be the first to obey. (Still cheaper than hiring a dominatrix or Frank Lloyd Wright, and the welts and structural defects are on the dog, not you.)

It wasn't until after the Second World War that very many ordinary middle-class people were convinced that they needed a "pedigree dog." (And there were never more than six AKC registered dogs per year per one thousand Americans, even at the outlying peak of registrations.)

The practice of registering dogs with, and paying obeisance to, an organization that is designed to indulge the hobby of a tiny proportion of dog owners, is a historical blip in the culture. Choosing not to register, not to follow "the rules," is more in keeping with the way that Americans -- humans -- have always kept pet and working dogs.

Rather than ask why Americans no longer register their pets with the AKC, we might seriously ask how it is that they were persuaded to do so, for no apparent benefit to themselves or their animals, for nearly fifty years.

5. Michael Lemonick and Mark Derr

In the March 1990 issue, The Atlantic published the first mainstream media critique of the institution of fancy breeding of dogs. Mark Derr laid out the harm to animal welfare and human needs that follows from selection for physical uniformity, closed studbooks, and exaggerated type in "The Politics of Dogs." (Not available online without paying $$ to The Atlantic.)

More than a decade later, Time's Michael Lemonick laid it all out again in the cover story "A Terrible Beauty."

While most mainstream media coverage of doggy matters remains firmly in the realm of fluff and fatuousity, the horse has left the barn. Even the shallowest treatment of show dogs and "The Fancy" now typically includes some mention of the evils of rewarding only for beauty, inbreeding, ignoring health and temperament. Sure the journalettes have no idea what they are talking about, and get it mostly wrong, but there is some obligatory embedded backlash nevertheless. The reading public is reminded that AKC papers "are best used to housebreak the puppy" at regular intervals.

The popular perception that purebred dogs are inbred (largely true) and that mixed breed dogs are healthier (also on average true) has fueled the market for gormlessly crossbred "designer dogs." While consumers misunderstand the precise nature of the problem, and have definitely fallen for a marketing scam with the "solution," they are to some extent on the right track.

4. Gen X, Y and Z

We don't need your stinkin' certificate to tell us we got a dog, dude!

Oddly enough it was Boomers -- yeah, you're all revolutionaries, sure you are -- who obediently sent in the check for their pets' papers in unprecedented numbers.

That swan dive starting in '92? Right around the time my generation started settling down and getting their own dogs. (Yes, I am 44 years old. That is Generation X. Seriously. Few tats, no piercings. Lotta Gulf War veterans. Look it up.)

3. People Like Me, You, and This Here Lamppost

I used to encourage my clients to send in their dogs' registrations, just in case they might want to go into the obedience ring one day.

I haven't done that in years.

Now, when a client asks, I discourage them from sending in the money. The boys on Madison Avenue don't need your fifteen dollars. Spend it on a nice leash. If they want to know about the pedigree, their breeder should have already provided it. If the breeder won't give a pedigree, that's about all we need to know about that breeder.

I talk about the shortcomings of the ACK -- including a lot of the ones listed here -- to all sorts of people, not just dog hobbyists who seek out a blog like this.

It boils down to advancing the idea that the AKC offers no value for money spent, and is actually bad for dogs.

Viruses spread. Most of you regular readers have spread this one.


2. The Dog Wars

Once upon a time, the gentlemen of independent means from the Westminster KC who actually call the shots at Madison Avenue HQ had some pretty strict criteria for "recognizing" a breed.

A club of fanciers had to come hat-in-hand to the back door, present a studbook that established the unassailable "purity" of their breed, and sing a cool island song to melt their hot hearts, or whatever, in the hopes of being granted permission to send money to the AKC in exchange for a piece of paper that tells them what they already know -- and especially, being included in the honor of having someone who knows nothing about their dogs tell them which ones are wonderful and which are shite.

There were even a fair number of disappointed office seekers. My own breed was dismissed from the servant's entrance for being inadequately pure and insufficiently "standard," some time in the 1950's.

Whew! That was close!

This changed in the early 1990's. 1992, I think it was, when AKC announced that it would "recognize" the Australian shepherd.

Except, the Aussie owners' club had no interest in being so honored. It was doing just fine by itself, with a registry, pageant shows (there was their mistake -- a topic for another day), and open-to-all obedience and working trials.

But AKC was in an acquisitive mood. It cobbled together a little group of Aussie owners who wanted to enter the big pageants, declared them the official club, and to Hell with the studbook -- they'd just take your word for it on the pedigree.

Most of the Aussie people I knew at the time took a fatalistic view -- they didn't like it, but basically rolled over and peed themselves. "I guess I have to double-register, or else lose puppy sales. They're going to close the studbook." (Edit: I do not mean to imply that all Aussie owners went this way; I was just shocked and disappointed about the ones I knew at the time, who all did.)

And they were off.

Next in the sights was the border collie.

Their owners did not roll over and pee themselves.

They "lost," in that they could not prevent the ACK from appropriating the name "border collie" for their transvestite show dogs, nor from capturing the registrations of dogs from working breeding whose owners were addicted to the rush of kicking ass at agility and obedience trials.

But the thing about a little guy who gets beaten by a bully -- all he really has to do is give the thug a bloody nose, and he's won. Better yet if a whole crowd of people watches the fight. It not only clearly reveals the bully for what he is, it plants the seeds of resistance in all of the spectators' minds.

The ABCA continues to register over 20,000 border collies a year -- more than ten times as many as the AKC. Most of those latter are "captured" agility and obedience dogs, and many of those are dual-registered.

The AKC's "standard" version of the "border collie" is widely referred to as the "Barbie collie," and recognized for the pale imitation that it is.

Nowadays, when the AKC announces that it is fixing to "recognize" a working breed, it is universally (and accurately) assumed that this is a hostile acquisitive action fronted by a tiny hollow shell group of wannabes who do not work their dogs.

The involuntary quality of recent annexation is even true of companion breeds, such as the Coton de Tulear, Cavalier King Charles spaniel, and Leonberger.

The boards of "rare breed" clubs no longer present themselves at the service entrance and tug their forelocks while handing over the sacred studbook for scrutiny. Yet AKC keeps trying to make up for lost registration revenues from the Labrador and fox terrier columns by grabbing up rare breeds and declaring them "recognized."

It leaves a foul taste in the mouths of even the most die-hard pageant fanciers. Some object only to the untrustworthy pedigrees and opportunities for fraud. But most see how shabbily their Overlord treats those who don't get with its program.

1. Institutional Arrogance

The AKC cannot make up its mind whether it is a Most Anciente and Exclusive Order that has charged itself with governing a small, fanatical, and timorously obedient cadre of social-climbing dog-pageant addicts, or the divinely-ordained Government of Dogs in all of America.

One identity is primarily insular and snobbish. The other is primarily totalitarian and expansionist. They commingle gracelessly into something resembling a Stalinist Switzerland.

Virtually every disastrous decision the organization has made traces back to one of these two identities, or to the grating disharmony between them. But both identities are grounded in over a century that fanciers spent cultivating institutional arrogance -- starting in the dark-wood-and-leather smoking rooms (No Girlz Alowd!) where men who needn't work for a living decided How It Was Going to Be over cigars and sherry.

Arrogance underlies the presumption that "just a registry" has the right to tell the owners of dogs of every breed which dogs are worthy and which impermissible, whom they may breed to, from where they may import an animal.

It defines the conceit that what is important, exciting, and worthy about a dog of any breed is what can be seen in a few seconds by a man in a penguin suit or a matron in sequins who has never owned a dog of that breed, never worked one, never seen one work.

It is indispensable in maintaining the unsupportable faith that purebred dogs are exempt from the principles of genetics that apply to all living beings, and that the answer to the disaster of the closed-registry systematic inbreeding "experiment" is more of the same purge-and-purify insanity.

It drives the see-want-take impulse behind almost twenty years of hostile takeovers of breeds and the imperious treatment of the unconsenting human beings who own the actual dogs and the ephemeral creature that is "the breed."

It governs the institution's imperious dealings with its core constituents as embodied in its own delegates -- and even the previous presumption that their puppymiller gravy train would roll over and keep sending the munneyz when the paper-peddlers no longer winked at the wholesale fraud and unconscionable animal abuse that has paid for so many silver cups and Landseers.

It underlies the transparently grabby attempt to take credit for the achievements of working dogs. ("To qualify, the purebred dog must be AKC registered or an AKC recognized breed ...")

If the AKC wasn't fueled, steered, and simultaneously blinded by its own stupefying arrogance, not only would it avoid the consequences of its own oblivious decisions, it would be much less susceptible to the loss of respect and revenue that has been driven by cultural evolution.

_________

* Total about 70,000 young pups in 2006. No hard figures given for prior years. So no way of knowing a baseline (say, 1992) figure for puppy imports. Some of these pups -- I think a lot -- are English and French bulldogs bred in Russia or other Eastern European countries. That's a new phenomenon; most of these pups aren't going to be AKC registered. Some will be German shepherds and other working-breed dogs born in Germany and imported by private American buyers or pretty much legitimate brokers. Many of those will be registered with the AKC -- probably many more than are native-born GSDs for the neighborhood pet market. That import market has been around for a long time. Some are dogs bred by fanciers or working breeders in Canada and Mexico, sold to private pet and show and working buyers in the US -- again, a well-established practice along those porous borders. Just as likely to be AKC registered as a comparable native-born pup. Some are like this guy. Definitely registered.

I don't think there's any damned way that 70,000 imported pups, many of which ultimately are registered with the AKC (which presumably knows the exact number), and which may or may not represent an increase in imports, account for much of the > half a million fewer dogs registered in 2008 v. 1992.

The Other Pageant / Puppymill Connection

On this week's themes of pageants -- For Your Consideration:



Keep watching ... keep watching ... no, seriously, it gets much worse than you think it can.

According to The Examiner:

But what happened after the pageant? Did Makynli, in fact, get to keep the puppy, or was it given away?

"Yes, she kept Petey [the puppy] and they were crazy about him," Makynli's pageant coach, Christy Cosby, tells Pet News Examiner. "Unfortunately he was ran over just a few weeks ago and the family was devastated."

What is wrong with you people?!

Anniversary

One year from the day that Cole, Jasmine, and Barry White were confiscated from the abusive hands of their former owner:

Blog Remix: Gaiting Away from Omelas

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the singing.

The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes--the child has no understanding of time or interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the eyes disappear.

These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Pedigree

H/T to Patrick over at Terrierman for this post about the AKC's streamlined merchandise-handling software for puppy-mill retailers.

Seems that I remember a few years ago, the AKC hacks backed down in the face of a torch-and-pitchfork mob of breed club delegates who objected to a speshul marketing program designed to keep puppymill products on the AKC rolls, the better to profit from the money-for-paper scam that pays those Madison Avenue salaries.

What they did, of course, was just transfer the scheme to an administrative hidey-hole and quietly go forward with their attempt to re-capture market share from the puppymillers' new, no-questions-asked "registries."

Reading the PDF instructions for Petland clerks on how to instantly register "inventory" with the AKC -- a nice cut of additional revenue for the retailer, and the only way Ron Menaker is going to make his boat payment -- I was struck by this clause under "Adding a Dog to the Store."

Dogs can also be added to the general inventory by the AKC based on the AKC’s assessment of the dog’s pedigree. The store will fax pedigrees for non-AKC dogs to the AKC and the AKC staff determines if the dog is eligible for AKC registration within two business days. Eligible dogs are automatically uploaded to the inventory.

Wow.

Just, wow.

The one thing that AKC could reserve for its dubious bragging rights was a claim of "purity" and "pedigree integrity."

What this meant in paperwork terms was, if an owner neglected to properly register his dog or bitch within the allotted time, if he lost the registration paperwork, or for any reason all the i's weren't dotted and the t's crossed, that dog's offspring could never be registered. Nevermind that the dog was clearly purebred, that the owner had the dog's pedigree, might even own the dam himself. Did not matter.

And puppies from unregistered parents in most breeds could not command anything like the price for registered pups.

Which is, you know, deranged. Regardless, this created a powerful incentive for owners snap to it and fill out the paperwork and send their money to Madison Avenue each and every generation.

This obedience to unelected authority has always been very important to the dog fancy set. A "reputable" breeder has his paperwork in order. A dirtbag BYB doesn't send in his registration fees.

But a puppymiller did -- until the "industry" discovered that they could make things much easier and cheaper for themselves by creating their own "flexible" no-questions-asked money-for-paper schemes.

Now I'm pretty sure that an ordinary pet owner who has a "pedigree" for his purebred dog, but no litter registration slip, is still hosed.

But apparently a pup from unregistered parents can now "qualify" almost instantly for AKC registration -- for inclusion in the "pure" gene pool of whatever breed. Just so long as it came from a puppymill and is being sold at retail from the deli case at a mall near you.

No DNA testing. No photographs. No review by experts from the breed club. No investigation into the paperwork irregularities. No punitive fees for the special case.

Because getting a cut of the profits from the living "inventory" is going to goose the bottom line this week way more than being a stickler for record-keeping is.

As for next week -- well, I guess that depends upon who finds out and what they do about it, doesn't it?

How do you dog-fancier breed-club snobs feel about the Missouri-born inventory getting an instant administrative upgrade to "pure" and "AKC-registered?"

If contemplating each puppy's mother languishing her whole life in a wire-floored crate so that the registration fees for her lifetime production output can help support your dog show habit has no goddamn effect on your conscience.

If you don't give a rat's ass about the health and behavior of these little units of inventory once they are bought and installed into your neighbor's home as "members of the family."

If you meekly accept that you are being held to a higher standard of record-keeping than Helga the Kansas puppy farmer.

Can you at least give a shit that your precious "purity" -- the last thing that your Overlord In Dogs has to offer you -- is being tossed away on the say-so of Tammi at Petland and some faceless clerk in Raleigh?