Papered Pomposity

From the desk of Tarma Shena 

“I called the breed club closest to me and explained my situation, my lack of knowledge, and asked for help. In hindsight I should have taken that first experience for what it was, an introduction into the world of "papered pomposity. “

This is a quote from an article I recently wrote for our online training platform talking about an experience I had more than twenty years ago when I bought my first registered horse. But brain worms are insidious with me, as we all know, and a recent conversation with a Rescue and another Breeder got me mulling as usual.

Now, we all know that there are good and bad apples in every bunch, and that includes Rescues and Breeders. We know that there are irresponsible breeders making mutts and poor specimens of the breed and we know that there are Retail Rescues importing dogs from overseas, buying litters, and even breeding their own dogs.

I am always interested in how things started, how did we get where we are today? An offhand comment about breeders selling puppies for profit has been sitting in my brain for a while now and I see random conversations about it on other platforms.

Why do these people get into breeding willy-nilly whatever they have?

Perception, that’s why.

Breeders are not transparent nor willing to help new people interested in possibly breeding. So from the outside it looks much different.

Look at all the things a responsible breeder does, health testing, possibly showing and all of the costs associated, owning multiple dogs, and even things like fancy kennels and gear that goes along with certain breeds. Those things cost money. If you are on the outside looking in, the only logical conclusion is that selling puppies must make you enough money to do these things.

Take it one step further and you can increase your profits if you don’t do all these things and just sell the puppies. Or you can give your mutt a cute name, say it’s something new and improved, and jack up the price because expensive things are inherently valuable and you’ve got a winning business model. People who want the next shiny bauble, the next fad, the next new thing, will flock to your door to buy one.

The hard part is that they are right. Being a responsible breeder is not profitable. When you can sell a doodle for more than I can sell a purebred for and carry none of the associated costs it IS profitable.

So I have to ask myself why that is, beyond the obvious of course. I think there were a number of factors involved but the first link in the chain was the “elitism” of breeders. It was and is their downfall. When pet quality dogs stopped being at pet prices and Breeders started thinking their dogs were too good for the average pet owner.

Whenever you create a demand in a market, someone is going to step in and fill that demand. However, these low quality breeders did not do all the things good breeders did, like spay/neuter contracts, “best fit” over FCFS, and “take back” clauses and dogs started entering the shelter system at an exponential rate.

Add the elitism of some rescues now and you can’t adopt Fifi without being independently wealthy and spaying your cat and pet rabbit before they will let you “adopt” a dog for the low low price of more than what I paid for a purebred, registered Cairn Terrier puppy to be our farm ratter.

They’ve made it a status symbol and used their ability to euthanize to corner the market on “good citizenship”

“Thou shall adopt a dog… “ or we’ll kill it.

And here we are….