Pedigree Dogs Exposed: US

The BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed will air tomorrow -- Thursday, December 10 -- on BBC America. 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central.

Check now to see if your cable or satellite system carries BBC America. Set your recording implements! This is not one to miss.

I believe this may be the "international edition" mentioned by filmmaker Jemima Harrison. If so, we may see our friend Dr. John Burchard.

In Britain, the airing of this documentary elicited lawsuits, shrieks, and recriminations from the Dog Fancy and its bureaucratic superstructure.

But it also backed them into a very tight corner, and has forced reform that would have never occurred otherwise.

The US Fancy Establishment, primarily embodied in the American Kennel Club, is larger, more contaminated by the puppymill industry, and even more arrogant than the British Kennel Club.

Will they attempt reform? Or continue to circle the wagons in the face of registration revenues that have been shooting down the crapper for over a decade?

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?

Blood Boiling

A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.

Proverbs 12:10

YesBiscuit posted this story about a mother and son who left dogs in their vehicle on a hot day. The dogs died, and the two were arrested and charged with animal cruelty.

Were these people negligent? Did they demonstrate terrible judgment? Should the state punish them for the cruelty they carelessly inflicted on their dead pets?

Of course. Stupid is no excuse.

Were they intentionally cruel?

Doubtful.

But while I was off working with doggy friends this week, came this story.

Reader's Digest version: Show dog handler, who is being paid by the owners of said show dogs to take them places where they can win the ribbons and points and placements that prove that they are better than all the other dogs who don't have those things, leaves seven large, mostly hairy, dogs in a van overnight. Confined in crates. On a day when it reached 90 degrees by 9 am.

By 9:30 in the morning, six of them were dead.

The times do not add up. What happened to the three hours between when the woman claims she found the dogs in distress and when she arrived at the veterinarian?

Sweet dreams, sleepytime princess.

If "the garage was too hot" what about her friggin' house? Where she was sleeping? Where are these moneymaking status symbols beloved pets stored housed when "off campaigning with the handler?"

Now, if a couple of ignorant Phish-following transients become criminal scum when their dogs suffer and die from being left briefly in a vehicle that is their only home, what is a paid dog-show handler who is too lazy to provide proper husbandry to animals that are in her power? A canine professional who cares for her own needs for eight hours before considering the animals that are caged and helpless in her vehicle?

I guess we'll find out.

Someone who takes money to "care" for animals needs to be held to a higher standard of husbandry than a down-and-out pet owner. This young woman grew up in the world of "the fancy" and vehicles crammed with crated dogs. The facts about heat stroke in canines cannot have been obscure to her.


Update: Charges filed.

We had to destroy the village to save it

I can haz ... oxygen?

The British documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed was aired shortly before the birth of Raised By Wolves.

You can view the whole thing here.

The producer's stance? Purpose-bred dogs are worthy of preservation. The breeding practices enforced by Kennel Clubs, grounded as they are in disproven 19th-century eugenics theories, are destroying the genetic health of pure breeds, and causing unimaginable suffering in the products of "selection" for show-ring exaggeration. If we are to enjoy the company of purpose-bred dogs in the future, the Kennel Clubs are going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the reality-based world.

(Raised By Wolves' stand on the AKC, UKC, KC, etc.? Let 'em dig their own graves. I'll give them the shovel. Hell, I'll rent them the backhoe if it will go faster. Purpose-bred dogs and their owners will do much better without some central government telling them what is "correct," dictating who may mate with whom, and handing out rewards for brainless conformity to groupthink. The faster these bloated bureaucracies implode, the easier it will be for people who actually like dogs to get on with the project of conserving, perpetuating, and enjoying the particular kinds of dogs they like.)

Now (HT to Patrick the Terrierman), the zombie army over at PeTA is trying to lamprey itself onto the message of Pedigree Dogs Exposed.

And the producer of of the documentary, Jemima Harrison, is having none of it.

“PETA is a bunch of crackpots who do not care about anything but publicity and making money. They have not bothered to contact us - and, indeed, if they did we would make it very clear we do not want their support. It devalues and marginalises a film that raises a serious issue that needs to be addressed, and quickly.”

You go girl.

Here's where you expect the lecture about the difference between "Animal Rights" and "Animal Welfare."

Here's where I'm supposed to remind you that the death-worshippers at PeTA kill just about every animal they get their hooks into, that they practice theft by deception in order to get more animals to kill, and that they are committed to the extinction of all domestic animals.

They will destroy the village and pronounce it saved.

Okay, consider it done.

More important is the message that we must not let lunatics distract us from reality. We must reject the fallacy that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

PeTA protests outside of Kentucky Fried Chicken? This does not mean that the broiler industry is A-OK on animal welfare, environmental quality, and human health.

PeTA screams that fur is murder? Does that make leghold traps humane? Does it mean that mink farming is not a cruel enterprise that caters to the vain and callous?

PeTA pisses off MAD with an anti-milk, pro-beer campaign? This does not mean that those California Cows are "happy."

PeTA claims they hate puppymills? Well so do I.

It's become all-too-easy for the calculating frontmen for agribusiness, the fur industry, the puppymill industry, and all manner of commercial animal abusers to convince dog owners -- especially dog hobbyists -- that "users" of animals must present a "united front."

If you don't support farrowing crates and shooting wolves from airplanes, goes the propaganda, they will come and take your dogs.

And dog hobbyists -- some still call themselves "fanciers" and identify as "part of The Fancy" -- who are thoroughly trained to obey a faceless entity over which they have no control -- the dog hobbyists fall for this bullshit.

By criticizing any atrocity -- veal production, canned hunts, Japanese "scientific" whaling, egg factories -- the animal lover is "playing into the hands of PeTA."

So, command the industrial animal abusers, shut up!

And that's where a lot of the screaming from "The Fancy" about Pedigree Dogs Exposed comes from.

We've heard it before. When this article was published, for example.

And this book.

To be sure, much of it is pure defense, from the people who are personally engaging in ongoing animal abuse by breeding what they know to be unsound animals in order to win ribbons. You can't expect someone who doesn't care that the dog he deliberately created cannot, by design, breathe, walk, see, hear, or pee normally to suddenly see the light.

But more telling is the squawking from dog hobbyists who consider themselves "reformers" and "mavericks," who actually train their dogs, who brag about "titles on both ends," who take part in dog sports (as opposed to the hilarious "Sport of Dogs.") The people who tch tch and turn away sadly when they pass by the German shepherd pageant ring on the way to their rally entry. It's a real shame what they've done to those dogs ...

The squawking is scripted by the political arm of the animal abuse industry and read by hysterics. It goes

Don't bring attention to our dirty laundry. Going public about the genetic abuse of animals we purport to love plays into the hands of PeTA. If we just keep deceiving the public, it will all be okay. We can fix this all without systemic reform or any scrutiny from the outside. Purebred dogs are ours. Nevermind that we sell the extras to ordinary people as pets, and that we've spent the last sixty years selling the unfounded idea that our sickly culls are better pets than "mongrels." The Code of Silence is our only hope.

Sorry guys. Your wagons can't bend into that circle. You've spent too much time agreeing with one another about what makes a good dog, and no time at all in the reality-based universe. Science passed you by a hundred years ago. Popular culture is catching up. Sometimes that takes the form of a new stupidity -- all hail the Labradoodle -- but the trend is always to strip you of your unearned authority on matters "dog."

A Critique from Within?

I got a low-salt spam from Amazon.com today. They think I might be interested in this (not yet published) book:

SOS Dog

Maybe they are right. The primary author, Johan Gallant, has written a book on schnauzers and one on African dogs. The former, published twelve years ago, appears to be the regular run-of-the-mill breed book sort of thing. The latter has no reviews on Amazon.

Anyone know about the author? Is this one likely to be worth pre-ordering?