I notice that some of the AKC Border Terriers folks are all atwitter over the fact that Oprah Winfrey is going to be doing a segment on puppy mills.
It seems that Mainline Animal Rescue sponsored a billboard four blocks from Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios in Chicago, which got Oprah and her producers interested in exposing the puppy mill industry in America.
Now some of the Border Terrier folks are suggesting "Oprah's new cause has the potential to negatively impact responsible breeders."
Which has me rolling on the floor laughing.
Responsible breeders in the American Kennel Club? It's an oxymoron.
The closed registry system of the American Kennel Club is one of the primary reasons the quality of Kennel Club dogs is going into the toilet.
I have written about this at some length in a post entitled Inbred Thinking, but I am hardly the first. Time magazine devoted a whole cover article to it.
So are the Border Terrier folks pushing for an open registry? They are not.
Are they pushing to pull their dog out of the AKC? They are not.
And yet, it was an open registry that created the Border Terrier, was it not?
And, for the record, it's an open registry that keeps the Patterdale Terrier a working terrier and keeps the Jack Russell Terrier working too. Just look at the "Parson Russell Terrier" if you want to see how fast the Kennel Club can wreck a breed. Astounding!
Most folks who hunt any breed of dog generally run away from Kennel Club stock. As I have noted in the past:
"The number of working dogs ruined by the AKC grows every year. Irish setters, once famed at finding birds, are now so brain-befogged they can no longer find the front door. Cocker spaniels, once terrific pocket-sized birds dogs, have been reduced to poodle-coated mops incapable of working their way through a field or fence row. Fox terriers are now so large they cannot go down a fox hole. Saint Bernards, once proud pulling dogs, are now so riddled with hip dysplasia that it's hard to find one that can walk without surgery in old age."
And don't kid yourself; it wasn't "puppy mills" or "unscrupulous backyard breeders" that did this. It was the same kind of people who are on every AKC breed list-serv; folks who do not work their dogs, and who judge a dog mostly by how many times the word "champion" shows up in its pedigree.
And so I have to laugh out loud. The Border Terrier folks are concerned that Oprah Winfrey's little show "might negatively impact responsible breeders"?!
Right. Let's be honest here for a minute, eh?
The Border Terrier community is part of the problem when it comes to the wreckage of dogs in America.
This is a Border Terrier community where almost no one actually hunts their dogs.
This is a Border Terrier community where "protect and preserve" the breed really means protect and preserve the price structure, not the true working abilities of the dogs.
And these folks now want to take inventory of Mainline Animal Rescue which seems to simply be looking to find good homes for dogs in serious distress?
Ha!
When will they take inventory of their very own AKC which subsidizes every dog show with revenue from puppy mill misery pups?
And so pardon me if I do not hyperventilate over what Mainline Animal Rescue is all about.
There is no way they could be doing any more harm to dogs than the American Kennel Club and its rosette chasers are already doing.
Of course, as is so often the case, the fish stinks from the head down. As I wrote in piece for Just Terriers magazine some years back, the "experts" you find judging AKC terrier trials are, for the most part, a laughable group of fantasists.
In the AKC, for example, most judges are experts in a half dozen breeds. In the terrier ring, it's almost a guarantee none has ever owned a Deben collar or cut a shoulder into a trench in order to get down another two feet. As a rule these authorities are experts by dint of having spent far too many nights in bad hotels attending show trials. In 20 years of owning dogs, they have logged a thousand miles bouncing around show rings in plaid skirts and blue blazers. They may have driven to the moon and back to pick up rosettes, but few have driven 10 miles out into the country to even see a fox den, much less put a dog down one or dig to it.
A few will claim expertise because they have bought an airplane ticket and attended a mounted hunt or two in the U.K.. They have seen "the real thing" they will tell you, and know what is required of a working dog thanks to their two-week vacation in Scotland! Just don't ask them how to extract quarry from the stop-end of a pipe or how to treat a bite wound.
And so you will pardon me if I am laughing because the Border Terrier community is all atwitter over the fact that Oprah would dare to talk about puppy mills.
My God, she she might talk about the long-standing nexus between puppy mills and the American Kennel Club.
She might talk about how many AKC misery pups it takes to subsidize an AKC rosette.
Damn, I hope so! Bring it on Oprah!!
I do not fear Oprah's expose of the dog breeding business in this country, any more than I fear the morons and lunatics at PETA. Oprah, at least, might do a little good.
No, I do not fear Oprah.
What I fear are rosette chasers at the American Kennel Club and the scores of thousands of nodding know-nothings and "hump and dump" breeders who say their goal is to "protect and preserve" a breed with a closed registry system.God save us from them!
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44Some related posts on this blog:
- AKC Loves Puppy Mills ... and the Naïve
- AKC Depends on Puppy Mills to Subsidize Shows
- A Terrible Beauty: The Ugly Side of Show Dogs (Time magazine)
- The Kennel Club Wrecks More Than Terriers
- Inbred Thinking
- The AKC and Working Dogs
- Hump and Dump Dog Breeders
- Joe Bowman's Patterdale
- A Bit More on the Border-Patterdale Connection
- Old and New Border Terriers?
- Autopsy of a Standard (Border Terrier)
- The Thin Portfolio of the Working Border Terrier
- Out of the Ring and Into the Den
- The Saints of Rescue
- Overbreeding: Beware of Simple Answers
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