This is the foyer of the American Kennel Club's office on Madison Avenue in New York City. In order to pay for this level of build-out and the fabulous salaries of top AKC officials, the AKC cultivates and apologizes for puppy mill operators and pet store puppy vendors .
[Permission to cross post. Also see: this related story ]
The AKC has signed a contract with Petland Discount stores to get them to register the dogs they sell as AKC animals. That's right -- the AKC is making the sale of pet store puppies a core part of their business plan.
The AKC business plan is that the stores will charge the AKC registration fee at the time of sale and register the puppy online. My understanding is that the Board of Directors of the AKC voted 12 to 1 to enter into this contract.
To read the AKC spin on all this, see >> http://www.akc.org/news/blocks/print_article.cfm?article_id=3004
To read the real truth, see >> http://dogblog.dogster.com/2006/09/18/akc-endorsing-petland-and-supporting-notorious-puppy-mill-hunte-corporation
Guess who supplies Petland with their pups? The Hunte Corporation -- the country’s largest distributor of puppy mill dogs.
As the AKC apologia suggests, the AKC's taking money from the puppy mill trade is not something new -- this travesty simply codifies what has been going on for decades, and makes it open and transparent.
In fact, the AKC has always gotten better than 10 percent of its revenue from puppy mills, and the AKC counts on puppy mill misery to subsidize both dogs shows and their plush Madison Avenue digs.
The AKC is a not a small player in the puppy mill business and the Club seems to be ramping up now to include puppy milling as a core foundation of their new "revenue enhancement" efforts.
For example the AKC is a "Platinum Sponsor" of the Missouri Pet Breeders Association, which is one of the largest associations of commercial dog breeders in the country.
In recent years, the AKC has been actively "reaching out" to the puppy mill industry in order to get them to generate more money for the AKC. As a frantic notice at the Missouri Pet Breeder's Association notes, "the AKC outreach program is ending soon" and with it the waving of late fees and penalties for puppy millers. Sign up now while puppy mill operators get special dispensation!
For those who wonder what the dogs and conditions at Petland look like, see >> this video. Note that these pictures were not taken by PETA or some other organization with an agenda -- they were taken by a couple of idiot school girls who are exactly the kind of people Petland (and the AKC) hope to palm these dogs off on. For too many of these dogs, the next stop is the local dog shelter or rescue.
So what can you do? Not a damn thing, except to send people to this web site or cross post this information to other lists or email groups.
People who think the American Kennel Club will "wake up and smell the coffee" are either naive, fools, or very inexperienced with the Kennel Club.
The AKC is not about dogs -- it is about money, and the AKC makes money by leaning hard on an essential human weakness -- ego. What the AKC has to offer has nothing to do with dogs, but has quite a lot to do with salving brittle human egos that need a continuous application of ribbons and pedigree papers.
For more information on the AKC and why working dog bred clubs reject everything it stands for see >> The AKC & Working Dogs
For a better understanding of why the rise of the Kennel Cub has resulted in a decline in canine health, see >> "Inbred Thinking"
[Permission to cross post. Also see: this related story ]
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