Ten Tips to Finding the Right Dog

Illustration by Kevin Brockbank for the Oct 2010 issue of Dogs Today.


Terrierman’s Tips to Finding
The Right Dog from a Good Breeder

One of the reasons dogs are in such a mess is that consumers who buy dogs are almost completely uninformed when they start the process.

The advice given is always the same: "buy the right dog from a good breeder."

But what does that mean? The right dog? Right for what?

In fact, most people do not live lives very well-suited to dogs. Unlike a bicycle or a shotgun, a dog cannot be tucked into a storage closet, and forgotten. A dog requires attention several times a day, every day, rain or shine, vacation or not. Is your life really that stable? Is anyone’s these days?

And a good breeder? What’s that? No one ever says.

So where to start? Consider these ten tips as a starting place for anyone looking to get “the right dog” from a “good breeder.”


1. Remember that a dog is not a hat to be tried on and discarded.
A dog is a life-long commitment, and it must mesh well with your life as you live it, not as you wish it to be. In short, do not get a dog that needs a lot of daily exercise if you are a couch potato, and do not expect a dog to do well if it is crated eight hours a day while you are at work. Highly-motivated working dogs rarely make good pets, as few owners are able to give them the exercise, work and emotional release they need. If you are young, and your living arrangements and finances are unstable, skip a dog entirely and get a cat -- they won't mind long periods alone, and are much cheaper to care for.

2. Get your priorities in order.
If your first inclination when purchasing a dog is to buy an all-breed book and begin flipping through the pages, you are already making a mistake. The goal of all-breed books is to fill your mind with a romantic ideal of a brand-name dog. The danger in doing this is that once you get this picture locked in your head, you have already "chosen your breed," which means you have rejected healthy non-pedigree dogs without even considering them. It also means you have probably chosen a canine registry. With breed and "registration papers" occupying the first and second slots in your priority list, gender and coat color typically fill slots three and four. That means health and temperament fall to level five and six. No wonder so many people end up with unhealthy dogs! Remember that all-breed books are the dog market equivalent of a sales brochure; they offer lovely pictures and descriptive puffery, but they are not Consumers Report or Which magazine. You would not buy a car based on a sales brochure. Why are you buying a dog this way?

3. Kennel Club paper does not mean quality; it often means defect.
All-breed books are often full of nonsense, copied from one to another, and none tell you very much about health problems and temperament challenges. If you flip through an all-breed book, for example, you may fall in love with the Golden Retriever, but the book will not tell you that 40 to 60 percent of these dogs come down with cancer, or what it will cost to treat that cancer. If you insist on a pedigree dog, take the time to really study the diseases and genetic problems associated with each breed. Look at real longevity data, and ask a veterinarian what it will cost to fix a pair of wrecked hips, to treat chronic heart disease, or to remove a dog’s eye if it has a luxating lens.

4. Realize that breed clubs are trade associations.
The main function of breed clubs is to create and rationalize an artificial market for show dogs bred in a closed registry system. The second function of a breed club is to serve as a marketing hub for puppies sold to a public who are told that breed club affiliation is the first sign of a “good” breeder. In fact, breed club membership is little more than an indication that a breeder has the patience to suffer through breed club politics. Most breed clubs require no health or performance testing of any kind, and offer up only weak ethical guidelines related to the age and frequency of mating. Many good breeders can be found in breed clubs, but breed club membership alone tells you nothing.

5. Be prepared to wait, and be prepared to say no.
Go slow! Study up on breeds and types. Read with a very skeptical eye. Above all, steel your heart and your resolve before you set out to look at dogs in the flesh. If you cannot drive two hours into the countryside, walk into someone's living room to see a mass of wriggling puppies, have tea with them, and walk out without buying a dog, you are not emotionally ready to make a sensible purchase. You are a mark, not a serious consumer. If you must take your spouse and children with you to look at puppies, be sure to agree beforehand that you will drive away without making a purchase no matter what. You can change your mind and come back later, but only after everyone has sat down at a table and talked it all out. Remember that when you set off to buy a dog, you are not looking to make a new friend; you are looking to buy a healthy dog that will be with you for years to come.

6. Accept that dog breeders often have a casual relationship with the truth.
If a breeder says the sire and dam of your prospective pup has been health-tested, ask to see those test scores and know what the results really mean. If they say the sire and dam have worked well in the field, ask for photographic evidence of that work. Remember that dog dealers are not more ethical than car dealers. Dog breeders hope the dog they sell you works out, but if it doesn't, that's your problem, not theirs!

7. Look for danger signs.
If a breeder will not show you the kennels, walk away. If they will not show you the sire and dam (or at least provide contact information for the owner of the sire), go elsewhere. If you ask about health problems in the breed, and they seek to minimize them or say they have never tested their breeding stock because they have "never had a problem," hold on to your wallet and really think hard. If you are looking for a working dog, but the breeder does not work their own dogs, you are at the wrong kennel. If you examine a five-generation pedigree, and the same dog appears more than once, ask yourself if you really want an inbred dog?

8. Disenthrall yourself from puppies and consider dogs that have been "run on."
All breeders hold back a small percentage of their best prospects to see how they develop, with the eye to keeping them for breeding purposes themselves. These dogs, which have been "run on" for five or six months to see how they develop, are often available due to kennel crowding and the smallest of faults that have nothing to do with substance. There is often real gold to be found here, and it generally comes with several added bonuses: semi-adult dogs that have had all their shots, can control their bowels, and may have rudimentary training. And have no fear: if you acquire one of these dogs, they will learn a new name in a week or two!

9. Value is not the same as price.
Some of the best dogs in the world can be had for a song at your local pound or shelter, while some of the most expensive and miserable genetic wrecks are sold for thousands of pounds by Kennel Club breeders. Caveat emptor! As a general rule, an "expensive breed" is one that is a genetic mess because it has a small heavily-inbred gene pool, or else it is a conformation disaster with most pups born caesarian. Oddly enough, many of the dogs found at shelters are dogs that benefit from a certain amount of hybrid vigor -- a fact reflected in lower health insurance premiums for non-pedigree dogs.

10. Money-back guarantees are virtually worthless.
If a dog dealer offers you a "money-back guarantee," be advised that such a guarantee is worthless unless you are willing to return the dog to be euthanized on the spot. No breeder will pay for a hip operation or double cruciate ligament repair on a two-year old dog that you insist on keeping.

The bottom line: purchasing any dog is a calculated risk, but if you use your head rather than your heart, you can reduce the risks and improve the odds of a happy match for owner and dog alike. Select in haste, however, and there is a very good chance you will regret in leisure.

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• This article is a "what to look for" piece written for Dogs Today.
  
  It's analog is a piece I wrote one year ago entitled Terrierman's Top Ten Tips for Avoiding Expense & Misery.

The Glory of British Dogs

From the August issue of Dogs Today.

The Enclosure Movement made
British dogs, and its political legacy
may determine their future.

Have you ever wondered why so many dog breeds originated in the U.K., or came to prominence here?

Whether terriers or herding dogs, fox hounds or bird dogs, the United Kingdom has produced more than its fair share of great breeds.

Why?

The answer lies in the history of the land, and especially the advent of the Enclosure Movement.

The War on the Poor

The Enclosure Movement began in the 12th Century with the enclosure of royal lands for deer parks, but did not roar into prominence until the late 18th and early 19th centuries when much of rural England was swept clean of subsistence agriculture and human settlement.

It was during this period that most large woods were cut down and the land was repopulated with sheep hemmed in by stone walls and thick hedges.

To say the Enclosure Movement was a shock to the economic and social system of the U.K. does not do it justice. In England alone, some 6 million acres, or one-quarter of the cultivated acreage, was enclosed by direct act of Parliament. Another 4 to 7 million acres is estimated to have been enclosed privately by the wealthy. Every part of the United Kingdom was effected by this "rich man's land grab" which pushed millions of poor tenant farmers and squatters off the land into squalid cities and towns.


The Rise of the Mounted Hunts

The Enclosure Movement was a crushing misery for people, but it was a boon to dogs, especially fox hounds, collies, and terriers.

Prior to the Enclosure Movement, squatters and inholders living on common land made fox hunting with hounds difficult. Once people had been moved off the land and replaced with sheep and cattle, however, the number of free-ranging mounted hunts expanded rapidly.

It is not an accident that the first substantive mention of fox hunting and terrier work in English literature occurs in Sir Walter Scott's Guy Mannering, written in 1815 and set in the 1760s. This period of time coincides perfectly with the great expansion of the Enclosure Movement.


The Origin of Breeds

The Enclosure Movement did not just clear the land for sheep and mounted hunts. It also made possible the rapid improvement of farm stock.

In the 18th Century, livestock was still breeding at random, but beginning in the late 1700s, a farmer by the name of Robert Bakewell realized that by separating males from females — made easy by the rising number of enclosed fields — a farmer could select sires and, by so doing, rapidly improve the quality of his animals.

By deliberately inbreeding livestock, and selecting for desirable traits, Bakewell rapidly created new and "improved" breeds of sheep and transformed modern agriculture forever.

Bakewell’s experiments with sheep quickly spilled over into other farm stock, such as cattle, pigs and chickens, and eventually into the world of dogs.


The Boom and Bust of a Sheep Economy

Britain’s sheep economy boomed in the late 18th and early 19th Century and working collies became a lynchpin of rural economic life.

The sheep economy, however, proved less stable than hoped. Busts in the wool business followed cheap imports of cotton and wool from Australia, America, and Europe.

In a collapsing wool economy, many marginal ventures found they needed other sources of income. One that presented itself was the stocking of pheasant, grouse and partridge for the new sport of bird shooting.

The blunderbuss, which had appeared on the scene in the middle of the late 18th Century, made way for the shotgun by 1850. The great age of Victorian shooting had now begun in earnest, with a new-found appreciation for retrievers, setters and pointers.

In 1859, the first formal dog show was held at Newcastle upon Tyne, sponsored by two shotgun makers, and featuring only Pointers and Setters. John Henry Walsh, the editor of The Field magazine, was one of the judges. He later went on to found the Kennel Club.


Fancy People With Fancy Dogs

With the start of dog shows, the creation of breeds exploded.

In 1800, there were only 15 designated breeds of dogs, but by 1865 that number had grown to more than 50, and it exploded to triple digits soon after the Kennel Club was founded in 1873.

In the Kennel Club, broad types of dogs were no longer allowed. Setters, pointers, hounds, terriers, and collies had to be sorted, segmented, catalogued, and segregated.

Dog shows became social scenes, with middle class climbers purchasing "purebred" puppies to insinuate themselves up the social register. As one Victorian periodical noted, "nobody now who is anybody can afford to be followed about by a mongrel dog."

The rapid differentiation between show dogs and working dogs became more pronounced as time went on. Increasing numbers of people bought dogs, bred dogs, wrote standards, or changed them. Points were given for the set of a dog’s tail, colorful markings on coats, the color of the eye, and even a dog’s "expression."

By the turn of the 20th Century Kennel Club terriers were no longer expected to go to ground or even chase a rat. Most Kennel Club retrievers fetched nothing bigger than a ball, while owning a Kennel Club pointer or setter was more likely a fashion statement than the mark of a sportsman.

The world of dogs was changing, and not for the better!

Around 1900, the Kennel Club began to close breed registries, and inbreeding to the point of defect began in earnest.

By 1950, most Kennel Club breeds no longer worked, and rapidly rising rates of inherited defect were being observed.


Into the Modern Era

One would think that by now the pentimento of the Enclosure Movement would no longer be discernable in the world of dogs, but you would be wrong.

In September of 2002, the Countryside Alliance marched in London with 500,000 persons taking to the streets in support of hunting with dogs. This was the largest political demonstration in British history up to that time.

In November of 2004, Tony Blair used the Parliament Act to ram home a ban on fox and hare hunting with dogs, despite clear opposition in the House of Lords.

Now, more than five years later, the new Government of David Cameron has pledged to allow some type of vote to repeal the ban.

Whatever one thinks of the posturing on either side of this debate, one thing is certain: it has nothing to do with fox or hare, and only a little to do with dogs.

This is the confused legacy of the Enclosure Movement, still making history in the world of dogs – an Upstairs, Downstairs battle carried out in field, forest and fen.

The political and economic forces that began to differentiate British dogs 200 years ago, are still very much in play, and it’s anyone's guess who will hold the winning hand in the end.

If a ban on hunting with dogs stands, hounds may survive as drag packs, but working terriers probably will not. But if a ban on hunting with dogs stands for fox and hare, why not for birds?

The RSPCA will need a new cause, and no doubt their direct mail campaign is already outlined. Is the demise of working retrievers, setters and pointers just around the corner?

Only time will tell.
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What the Hell Is a Congo Terrier?

Click to enlarge. Art work by Kevin Brockbank (note dog in a pot at right!)

This piece is from the July issue of Dogs Today.

Out of Africa

A single breed - the Congo Terrier - sums up the history of dogs.


Have you noticed that in the world of dogs, names and places never quite line up?

Look at Welsh Terriers.

I know digging men in Wales, but none that use a Kennel Club Welsh Terrier to hunt fox to ground.

I know digging men in Scotland, but none that use a Scottish terrier.

Afghans?

There are no Kennel Club Afghan dogs coursing in South Central Asia.

Show line German Shepherds?

Not too many of those herding sheep in Germany!

And in central Africa, the locals are not using "Congo Terriers" that have Kennel Club papers.

A Congo terrier?

What on earth is that?


The Kennel Club's Pariah Dog

The “Congo terrier” was discovered by explorer Georg Schweinfurth on an expedition to Africa in 1869.

He called the dogs "Niam-niam dogs," which described the tribal region where they were found, and he noted they were often quite fat, as the Niam-niam people loved dogs so much they thought nothing of tossing them into the stew pot for dinner!

The dogs themselves were spitz-like and barkless, with erect ears and curled tails, as is often the case with primitive dogs. Where the Niam-niam dogs were different was in their relatively small size, their short coat, and the fact that they often featured a white band of fur around their neck.

Though Schweinfurth called them Niam-niam dogs, similar animals were found across a wide belt of central Africa, stretching from Liberia in the West, to Sudan in the East.

Like many other primitive landrace pariah dogs, the Niam-niam dog had only one estrus a year and rarely barked, but instead vocalized with howls, yodels, and whines similar to those of the wolf, coyote, dingo, or jackal.

Of course, a largely silent dog in thick cover is not necessarily an asset. No matter; this deficit was corrected by African hunters who attached a wooden "bell" or clapper to the necks of their dogs so they could more easily drive small game out of thick cover.

In 1895, the Niam-niam dog was displayed at the Crufts dog show as the "Congo terrier."

The name did not last too long.

In the late 1930s, the Congo Terrier was formally brought into the Kennel Club and renamed the "Basenji" -- a Bantu name that meant "village dog."

The first order of Kennel Club business was to craft a narrow appearance-based "standard" for the Basenji. This was not hard to do, as only seven dogs were initially admitted.

Clearly these seven dogs were perfect specimens of their type!


Inbreeding to Failure

Seven dogs, of course, is not much of a gene pool. In fact, the gene pool of the Basenji never grew much bigger than this. Over the course of the next 60 years, no more than 30 dogs comprised the entire founding stock of the breed in the U.K., the U.S., and Europe.

Inbreeding within this small stock of foundation dogs quickly led to a crushing genetic load and a rise in disease.

The first issue to raise its head was Hemolytic Anemia. When testing was started, twenty percent of all Basenjis carried this recessive gene. What to do?

The answer: Cull.

And cull they did, with about 18 percent of Basenjis weeded out of the American Kennel Club gene pool over the course of a decade.

Of course, this deep reduction in an already narrow gene pool sped up the inbreeding merry-go-round.

Within a decade, another health problem had popped up: Fanconi syndrome, a type of kidney failure. A health survey found 10 percent of all American Basenjis had Fanconi syndrome, and of these dogs, 76 percent were being bred.

What to do?


The Outcross Solution

The solution, of course, was an outcross.

The good news was that there were was no shortage of excellent dogs in Africa. After a 1988 visit to the Congo, AKC judge Damara Bolte reported that:

"In five days and 800 kilometers of driving, we saw at least 200 dogs of which only three were not Basenjis."

Could anyone driving down the road see the same number of Welsh Terriers in Wales, or Scottish Terriers in Scotland? Impossible!

In 1990 the Basenji Club of America successfully petitioned the American Kennel Club to open the AKC registry to African dogs, and 12 were admitted.

The addition of 12 African imports helped, but it was not enough. With popular sire selection, inbreeding within the Basenji gene pool continued. And how could it not, with less than a dozen dogs comprising over 95% of the Y chromosomes in Kennel Club dogs across the U.S., Europe and the U.K.?


Form, Function and Fantasy

As noted earlier, Basenjis have always been found across a wide swath of central Africa. The early dogs came from the Sudan, Sierra Leon, Liberia, the Cameroon, and the Congo.

In 1998, an American Peace Corps worker in Benin reported the country was awash in Basenjis, and that they could be acquired for as little as a dollar.

In 2004, an American imported six of these dogs, and they were shown at the 2004 Basenji Club of America Nationals. By then, however, the AKC registry had once again closed.

The Basenji Club petitioned the AKC to reopen the registry. This was done in January 2007, with a new closing scheduled for 2013.

Will opening the AKC Basenji registry a second time really matter?

Yes and no.

It will not matter to the Basenjis in Africa, which have never needed saving.

The hunting dogs of Africa are protected by those who hunt them. In this regard, they are no different from the working terriers of Wales and Scotland, the coursing dogs of South Central Asia, or bird dogs the world over.

But the Basenji community will not be dissuaded. They insist they are "saving" a breed.

But what is it that they saving, and who are they saving it from?

One thing is clear: Basenji enthusiasts are not trying to save hunting dogs in Africa.

You cannot save dogs in Africa by removing them from the continent, and you cannot save a hunting breed by not hunting them at all.

So what are the Kennel Club enthusiasts really trying to save?

Mostly, they are working to preserve a romantic notion of their own making.

For their breed to be special, a Basenji has to be more than another village dog, even if the word "Basenji" means just that in the Lingala language of the Congo.

And so, Basenji owners tighten down on what they see as the “special essentials” of their breed.

They insist no Basenji should ever bark, and never mind if some always have, and that a barkless dog is such a liability that the Africans themselves bell their dogs when they hunt.

And, of course, all Basenjis must have a tightly curled tail, and no matter that a tightly curled tail serves no function in the field.

Function? The American and European Basenji is not about function! This dog is about form and fantasy.

Hunting? What does hunting have to do with the Basenji? Nothing!

Why should Basenjis be held to a working standard when the Kennel Club Welsh Terrier and Scotty are not? This is the Kennel Club, not the African bush. Form trumps function; everyone knows that. And form is maintained by inbreeding right up to the edge of genetic failure. Why should the Basenji be any different in this regard?

And so Kennel Club Basenji enthusiasts hold tightly to a breed standard invented in England based on seven dogs. And when shown pictures of small hunting dogs in central Africa that do not quite conform to every aspect of "the standard,” they sniff disdainfully.

“Those aren’t Basenjis. Those are nothing more than village hunting dogs."

Right. No irony there!

Just ask any Welshman with mud on his boots, calluses on his hands, and a terrier at his heels. What does he know of Welsh terriers? Not a thing!

And so we come to the ultimate irony: What are Basenji enthusiasts trying to protect their American and European dog from?

Why inbreeding within the closed registry system of the Kennel Club, of course!
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They Invented Animal Training

This article was written for the June issue of Dogs Today magazine. Illustration by Kevin Brockbank.

Who invented animal training and what can we learn from them?

The question may seem silly. Animal training is older than the hills. For certain, it is as old as the dog.

That said, most of what we call animal training today fits into the folder of "operant conditioning," a term first coined by American psychologist B.F. Skinner in the early 1930s.

Chase it around the room, and operant conditioning is simply learning from consequences.

Skinner codified the basic principals of operant conditioning, and he invented a laboratory-based mechanical-training machine which rewarded animals with food when they pulled levers and pecked at spots.

Skinner's real claim to fame in the world of dogs, however, is that he hired Keller and Marian Breland -- two young assistants who more or less invented the modern art of animal training.

Teaching Pigeons to Bowl

The Breland's made their first big discovery while working with Skinner in 1943.

As odd as it sounds, the goal on this occasion was to train pigeons to "bowl" a ping-pong ball down a short alley to knock down a few pins. Keller Breland decided to use a hand-held switch to trigger a food reward, rather than a purely mechanical device. A small problem was that the pigeons had no interest in pecking at the ping-pong ball! Though Keller waited for hours for the right behavior to express itself, it never happened. In frustration, Keller decided to give the pigeons a reward for doing anything approximating movement in the right direction. To his amazement, the pigeons caught on pretty quickly, and the completed trick was learned in short order.

Thus was born "shaping," or progressive rewards based on approximating a task.

The second big development occurred in 1945. By this time, B. F. Skinner had left the University of Minnesota, and the Brelands had decided to strike out on their own as professional animal trainers.

While shaping tricks, the Brelands noticed that the animals themselves seemed to be paying attention to the noises made by the hand-held food-reward switches.

Keller and Marian Breland soon discovered that an acoustic secondary enforcer, such as a click or whistle, could communicate to an animal the precise action being rewarded, and it could do so from a distance.

The Brelands called this a "bridging stimulus," (now generally called a bridge) and it dramatically sped up animal training by increasing the amount of information going to an animal.

Thus was born clicker training.

The Rise of Commercial Animal Acts

By now the Brelands had created their own animal training company -- Animal Behavior Enterprises. Their first contract, with General Mills, was so successful that other contracts with movies, circuses, museums, fairs, and zoos soon followed.

Over the next several decades, the Brelands trained more than 15,000 animals representing more than 140 species. At one point, the Brelands had more than 1,000 animals under training at a single time -- a jaw-dropping level of production.

The Brelands did not just train animals; they also trained other animal trainers who went on to work at such venues as Busch Gardens, Disney World, and Sea World. The Brelands themselves signed contracts with such major amusement parks as Marineland of Florida, Marineland of the Pacific, Parrot Jungle, and Six Flags.

Rewards-based clicker training worked so well that in 1951, the Brelands authored an article in American Psychologist, in which they said they thought rewards-based clicker training might work on any animal to train just about anything.

And then something happened. They noticed that clicker training was, in certain circumstances, beginning to fail in ways they could no longer overlook.

When Clicker Training Failed

In a 1961 paper entitled, The Misbehavior of Organisms, Keller and Marian Breland described their first experience with the failure of reward-based operant conditioning.

It seems that when working with pigs, chickens and raccoons, the animals would often learn a trick and then begin to drift away from the learned behavior and towards more instinctive, unreinforced, foraging actions.

What was going on?

Put simply, instinct was raising its inconvenient head.

Though Skinner and his disciples had always maintained that performance was driven by external rewards or punishments, here was clear evidence that there was an internal code that could not always be ignored.

The Brelands wrote:

These egregious failures came as a rather considerable shock to us, for there was nothing in our background in behaviorism to prepare us for such gross inabilities to predict and control the behavior of animals with which we had been working for years.... [T]he diagnosis of theory failure does not depend on subtle statistical interpretations or on semantic legerdemain - the animal simply does not do what he has been conditioned to do.

The Brelands did not overstate the problem, nor did they quantify it. They simply stated a fact: instinct existed, and sometimes it bubbled up and over-rode trained behaviors.

Clearly, every species had different instincts, and just as clearly, a great deal of animal training could be done without ever triggering overpowering instinct. Still, the Brelands noted,

After 14 years of continuous conditioning and observation of thousands of animals, it is our reluctant conclusion that the behavior of any species cannot be adequately understood, predicted, or controlled without knowledge of its instinctive patterns, evolutionary history, and ecological niche.

The Problem with Dogs

What does this have to do with dogs?

Quite a lot. You see a small, but vocal and militant group of clicker trainers believe everything a dog does is learned by external rewards, and internal drives are "old school" fiction.

While the Brelands argued that a species could not be adequately controlled without “knowledge of its instinctive patterns, evolutionary history, and ecological niche," the most extreme militants in the world of clicker training now seek to minimize and disavow the very nature and history of dogs.

Dog packs? There are no such things, we are told.

Dominance? It does not exist in feral dogs or in wolves, and never mind the experts who disagree.

Prey drive? Not too much said about that!

Of course, instinctive behaviors and drives do not disappear simply because they are inconvenient.

As Keller and Marian Breland put it,

[A]lthough it was easy to banish the Instinctivists from the science during the Behavioristic Revolution, it was not possible to banish instinct so easily.

Of course, one must be careful to qualify the role of instinct.

Yes, dogs have instincts, but the history of dog breeding has largely been about reducing instinctive drives. As a consequence, most breeds have instinctive drives that are sufficiently attenuated that they are not much of an impediment to basic rewards-based training.

That said, not all dog breeds are alike. Not every dog is a blank slate, as the owner of any herding dog or game-bred terrier will tell you. Prey drive does not disappear because you want it to. Many problematic behaviors in dogs -- especially behaviors in hard-wired working dogs that are being raised as pets -- are self-reinforcing behaviors that express themselves without any external reinforcement at all!

Clicker training, the Brelands remind us, cannot solve everything.

Is rewards-based training the most important tool in any trainer’s box of tricks and methods?

Absolutely. There is not much debate there.

But the Brelands remind us that dogs do not come to the trainer as a tabula rasa, nor should we think of all dog breeds as being more or less the same, or that all responses are equally conditionable to all stimuli.

Dogs and other animals, it turns out, are a bit more complicated that white rats, and the real world is not a laboratory.

In the wild and on the farm, animals have managed to learn, all by themselves, since the Dawn of Time and long before clickers came on the scene. How did they do that? Does the real world have as much to teach us as the lab? Keller and Marian Breland thought it did.

• Related Links:** Your Dogs are a Mess (and your kids are no prize)
  ** Clickerless Clicker Training
  ** Clicker Training Does Not Require Empathy
  ** The Three Parts of Operant Conditioning
  ** Dominance Creates and Maintains Wolf Packs
  ** Cesar Millan: The Secret Is Human Training
  ** The Devolution of Dog and the Training of Man** A Short History of Dog Training** Are Useful Tools Ever Out of Date?
  ** How to Train a Cheetah
  ** How to Train a Scent Hound
  ** Catching a Mexican Wolf With a Y Pole
  ** Are You an Old School Dog Trainer?
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When Breeds are Failures

Art by the ever-astounding Kevin Brockbank for Dogs Today (May 2010 issue)

Is it time to thin the herd?

It's been said that the dog is the most successful wolf in the world -- the wolf that got man to adopt it, house it, feed it, and protect it.

Relatively docile wolves were fed and bred until, slowly, imperceptibly, they evolved into something different -- the domestic dog.

For 12,000 years, that's about as far as it progressed.


An Explosion of Breeds

Two hundred and fifty years ago, there were only about a dozen broad types of dogs.

Breeds, as we know them today with narrow written standards, were not yet known.

Your breed claims an ancient lineage?

Unless it's a greyhound, I can assure you it's almost certainly nonsense.

The Pharaoh Hound? Invented in the 20th Century to look like the dogs found on the side of the Egyptian tombs opened at the time of Carter.

The Chinese Crested? Not Chinese! Invented in America in the 1930s and popularized by burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

Terriers? Retrievers? Setters? Spaniels? Pointers? Shepherds?

Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA shows that while the type may be old, the breed is -- almost invariably -- of relatively modern origin.

It's not like we created just a few breeds in the blink of an eye, is it? No, we created hundreds.

How did we do that? Mostly by selecting for odd types and then inbreeding to "fix" those types until they bred true.

The first breeds, of course, were created by merely tweaking Mother Nature's process. Herding dogs, for example, were selected because of function rather than looks. Ditto for running dogs, pulling dogs, bird dogs, guarding dogs, and terriers.

Dogs that were best adapted to function prospered, while those that did poorly were culled from the pool. The only difference was that the hand of man was now engaged in unnatural selection -- replacing Mother Nature, which had previously been employed in the task of natural selection.

Form Trumps Function

With the rise of dog shows, however, function took a back seat to form. Now the primary value celebrated was variability. And, of course, to get maximum variability, you had to green-light more and more breeds that were extreme, and in many cases maladaptive, including dogs that were brachycephalic (flat faced) and could not breath well, and dogs that were achondroplastic (dwarfs) and had joint and heart problems.

Added to these dogs were other extreme examples -- massive giants that had weak hearts and intestines prone to twist and bloat, tiny tea cup breeds prone to hydrocephalia and broken bones, hairless breeds prone to dental and skins issues, dogs with extreme skin wrinkles, ear length, and coats, and dogs with various spinal oddities such as over-long backs, roached backs, and spines that ended in a tight mass of twisted vertebrae.

And, of course, through it all you had to inbreed and line-breed in order to set type, and you had to invent ancient histories in order to speed the sales of these new creations.

The result has been a mixed bag. Some breeds have managed to stay healthy, and a few have even managed to be useful for work.

Most, however, have come down with one or more serious health problems, and most have devolved from working dog to mere pets.

There is nothing wrong with pets. There is, of course, something wrong with breeding dogs with serious health problems. Even here, however most genetic problems are manageable and most breeds are salvageable

But is that always the case? Are there dog breeds that are not salvageable?

This is not a small question.

When humans began breeding dogs, we began to act as Gods, but we failed to accept the full mantle of the Gods.

God culls misfits; man puts his in the Kennel Club.

Canine Failures

Let's talk about canine failures. They are not hard to find.

The Dandie Dinmont is a good example of a dog that has simply failed in the marketplace. Last year, more Pandas were born in captivity than Dandie Dinmonts were registered by the Kennel Club.

Named after a fictional character in a novel, and forced to compete head-to-head with other poodle-coated mops, this dog has found few customers due to its odd-looking sway back, poor movement, and complete uselessness in the field.

Add in the health problems suffered by Dandies -- cushings, hypothyroidism, and a narrow-angle glaucoma that is unique to Dandies -- and you stand at the cusp of a question.

Factor in the fact that more than 40% of dogs are born cesarean, and the case is made for intervention.

The old working terrier from which the modern Dandie claims descent was not a product of the Kennel Club and did not suffer these indignities.

Perhaps now is the time to release this breed from the inbreeding mandated by a tiny gene pool wedded to a closed registry system.

Perhaps now is the time to release this dog from the bondage of contrived show dog standards.

Yes, let us release this dog "back to the wild" of its working roots. It has not done well in "captivity". De-list this dog from the Kennel Club's roles, and move on.

Other breeds should also be delisted, and for much the same reason -- the Skye Terrier, the Clumber Spaniel, the Sussex Spaniel, the Glenn of Imaal Terrier, the Manchester Terrier, and the Sealyham Terrier.

None of these dogs were created in the Kennel Club -- they have only been deformed, emasculated, and inbred since their arrival. Release these dogs "back to the wild". They have not done well in "captivity", and they have failed in the marketplace.

And what about those breeds that are true genetic wrecks beyond salvation?

There are not many, but let's face the problem head on, and end the nonsense.

There is no reason to try to repair a Disney castle built on sand, with a blown foundation, rotten roof, walls riddled with termites, and a dangerous boiler about to explode in the basement.

Take the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. This was a breed invented at the Crufts dog show in response to a prize offered up by an American by the name of Roswell Eldridge.

Thanks to a bad gene pool at the start, and the incredible inbreeding that followed, more than 80 percent of today's dogs end up with serious heart problems, while more than a third have a genetic brain disorder affecting the nervous system.

With this level of defect, and this thin history, why not sweep it all aside and start again?

Ditto for several other breeds with serious health problems -- the Miniature Bull Terrier (50% cesarean, dead at 6 years), the English Bull Dog (90% cesarean, dead at 6 years), the Scottish Terrier (60 percent cesarean, 45% cancer rate), the Dogue De Bordeaux (dead at less than six years).

Are there other breeds that might be "returned to the wild" through delisting and/or delisting and recreation (i.e. starting again with a healthy gene pool, scientific breeding, and a commonsense standard)?

Sure, but I think I have been controversial enough for one day, don't you?!

The question stands: Is it time to thin the herd? Is it time to end the Kennel Club's preservation of defect and failure?
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Between Two Lies, Lost Opportunity for Pit Bulls

Art by Kevin Brockbank, courtesy of Dogs Today.

From the April issue of Dogs Today.

When it comes to Pit Bulls, two lies are commonly told.

The first lie, exemplified in the U.K.'s Dangerous Dog Act, is that Pit Bulls are as dangerous as wild lions.

Because of this patent falsehood, Pit Bulls can only be kept in Britain with specific permission from a court, and can only be walked when muzzled.

The second lie, told by Pit Bull aficionados, is that Pit Bulls are no different than any other dog. If you disagree with this statement, be prepared to be called a "breed bigot".

Here's the truth: both claims are lies.

In the United States, where Pit Bulls are a common dog, more people are killed by lightning strikes than by Pit Bulls. In fact, more children are killed by their parents than by Pit Bulls.

Does this mean Pit Bulls are just like every other dog in the world?

No. That too is a lie.

In the U.S., where Pit Bulls account for 2 to 3 percent of all dogs, this breed type (it is not a formal breed) accounts for over 50 percent of all serious dog bites.

And while Pit Bull-related fatalities are low (about 10 a year), for every fatality there are thousands of hospitalizations and emergency room visits. Those who focus solely on the low number of Pit Bull fatalities are lying by omission when they fail to mention the physical and emotional scars left by Pit Bulls attacks.

So, does this mean that Pit Bulls are a problem?

Yes it does.

And part of the problem is that this breed -- like most others -- comes with a code inside it.

Of course, we all know that dogs come with a genetic code.

When we talk about Pointers and Setters, everyone knows these dogs are particularly "birdy."

When we talk about retrievers, everyone agrees this breed is particularly biddable, loves water, and has a desire to bring things to hand.

When we talk about Jack Russell Terriers, everyone agrees they hate rats, and have a natural inclination to go to ground.

But Pit Bulls?

The Pit Bull community wants us to think these dogs are just like any other! Never mind the illegal kennels here in America that crank out line-bred fighting dogs like Pez from a dispenser. Never mind the history of this dog as feral hog hunter, pit fighter, and junkyard protector.

To even suggest that Pit Bulls might have a different genetic code inside them than Pugs, Standard Poodles, Pointers, or Salukies is heresy among many breed-blind Pit Bull defenders.

Of course, canine genetics is only part of the equation. Along with nature comes nurture. In the right hands, even a Pit Bull with a lot of drive can end up being a happy, docile, and extremely playful family dog.

The sad truth, however, is most Pit Bulls in America do not end up in the right hands. This is a breed that tends to attract "the wrong types" to the point that research has shown that U.S. Pit Bull owners are far more likely to have criminal records than other dog owners.

The predictable result of too many boisterous Pit Bulls meeting up with too many ill-prepared and unstable owners is that the dogs suffer.

And in America, Pit Bulls suffer terribly.

Nearly a million Pit Bulls were euthanized in American shelters in 2009 -- more than the sum of all dogs of all breeds registered by the American Kennel Club last year.

In the last decade, about 8,000,000 Pit Bulls were euthanized in U.S. animal shelters -- approximately four hundred million pounds of dead Pit Bull.

What makes this particularly distressing is that Pit Bull euthanasia rates in the U.S. have been on the rise for 30 years, even as all other canine impounds and euthanasias have been on a steady and steep decline.

What's going on with Pit Bulls?

The problem is not Pit Bull haters.

Ironically enough, the problem is Pit Bull lovers.

After all, it's the Pit Bull "lovers" that are breeding these dogs.

It's the Pit Bull "lovers" that are acquiring these dogs.

It's the Pit Bull "lovers" that are too often abusing the dogs through ignorance and neglect before abandoning them to their death a year or two after acquisition.

You mean Pit Bull "haters" are not the problem?

No, they are not.

The problem is young numbskulls who acquire these dogs in ignorance and haste, discover that they are too much dog to handle, and who then abandon them at leisure.

So what to do?

One of the most obvious ways forward, is to do with Pit Bulls what we have done for hawks, guns, and and cars in the U.S.: require a license conditional upon passing a basic training course.

When "hunter safety" courses were mandated in the U.S., accidental shootings fell to the point that golf and tennis are now deemed to be more dangerous than hunting.

When falconers were required to serve two-year apprenticeships, the longevity of captive birds soared, and concerns about raptor abuse plummeted.

And, of course, driving courses and driver's licenses have been in place since the beginning. Do accidents still happen? Sure, but no one argues that driver's license enforcement is not Step One to improved highway safety.

With dogs, however, the assumption is that everyone knows everything they need to know about dogs at birth -- and never mind if that is demonstrably wrong, especially for large game-bred breed like Pit Bulls.

And the consequence of this crazy idea?

Millions of dead dogs.

What is bizarre here, is that you would think there would be a natural constituency for a simple Canine Safety and Responsibility Course.

After all, teaching such a course could be a small money-maker for sponsoring groups such as the Kennel Club, Dogs Trust, the RSPCA, and dog-activity clubs.

Would a Canine Safety and Responsibility Course solve every Pit Bull (or dog) problem in the world?

No, of course not.

But it would solve a lot of them, and it would also serve as the "edge of the wedge" when it comes to tackling the human problems that too many dogs face -- ignorance about costs, responsibility, health, and training.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

• Shortly after I wrote this, the Labour government in the U.K. moved to require all dog owners to carry liability insurance on their dogs. This idea does not have strong legs so far as I can tell.
  
  
• As for abandonment of Pitbulls in the U.K., while is not quite as common as it is in the U.S. (thanks to a virtual ban on the breed), it still occurs in numbers large enough to get newspaper coverage.
  
  
• Finally, there is a nascent move here in the U.S, to mandate a kind of "Canine Safety and Responsibility Course." The first tripping effort seems to have occurred at Camp Pendleton and other Marine Corps bases where existing Pitbulls, Rottweilers, Wolf hybrids (and crosses of the same) and are now required to pass an AKC "Canine Good Citizen" test or some other behavioral evaluation if they are to stay. Liz Palika notes that as the April 1 deadline looms at Camp Pendleton, not all dogs may make the grade. She says: "Now we’re seeing the dogs who have known — to their owners — behavioral problems. Far too many owners tell us their dog never leaves the house or backyard because they can’t control him. We’ve had a few walk into our training yard so aggressively we can’t deal with them at all."
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Will Patrick Bateson Lead the Way Forward?

The latest issue of Dogs Today arrived in the mailbox, and the two lead articles are on: 1) Whether the Dalmatian outcross will be allowed in The Kennel Club (article by Claire Horton-Bussey) and; 2) What has occurred in the last year since the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed blew the doors off the dog world last August (article by producer Jemima Harrison).

I also slip in a small piece on dog food, noting that the quality of the dog food matters far less than the quantity, as more dogs are wrecked by obesity than any single cause, while no study has ever shown than one dog food is better than another.

Jemima Harrison's article about the Kennel Club is excellent (I have not yet gotten to the Dalmatian article - that is for tomorrow's read). I especially liked it where she compares problems at The Kennel Club to the problems faced by the old London Zoo "which not so long ago was down on its knees, a relic of the Victorian age, run by people in the entertainment business, not conservation."

She goes on to note that the London Zoo is now a completely changed place. And what changed? The leadership at the top! Ms. Harrison goes on to note that:

"Coincidentally, it is the president of the [London Zoo], Sir Patrick Bateson, who is heading the most critical review into dog breeding prompted by Pedigree Dogs Exposed. This is the review commissioned by The Kennel Club and Dogs Trust, and so they are likely to take heed and act on its findings."

On a personal note, I have to give a huge hat tip to Dogs Today illustrator Kevin Brockbank. His art work is absolutely smashing. Jemima Harrison's piece has Kennel Club Chairman Ronnie Irving crying at his desk as he reads the Crufts press headlines following the BBC documentary. A border terrier (Irving's own breed) is chewing on his cuff, and there is even a Kennel Club logo on his coffee cup! Perfect! My own article is illustrated with a very nice homage to the breeding (and painting) of enormously fat "square" cattle during the era of Robert Bakewell, albeit with a dog as the subject of the portraint, instead of a cow. Nice!

Now let's see what Kevin can do with next month's article, tentatively entitled Counterfeit Collies and Transvestite Terriers. There's a lot of potential there!

To read that article (and see the art that will come with it), however, you are going to have to subscribe to Dogs Today.
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The Tribe of the Dog

Lakota woman with dog travois, Rosebud reservation.

This piece is from the July issue of Dogs Today.

From a great distance the indigenous people of the U.S. appear be "American Indian," but as you travel west, you discover it's not one people, but many tribes, and by the time you get to North Datoka, the question is not whether you are Sioux, but what type of Sioux -- Lakota, Yankton, or Santee?

Much the same goes on in the world of angling where we also find tribalism at work. From a distance, it's all "fishing," but in fact the 12-year old bait-baller with a cane pole on the bank has a different world view than the 60-year old man with a deep sea rod trolling for shark off-shore.

In the world of dogs, it is much the same. People obsessed with dogs may fall into any one of dozens of over-lapping categories, and move from one tribe to another over the years.

To an outsider, it is all rather confusing, and the cacophony of bitter voices and conflicting perspectives is a bit overwhelming.

Pit Bull rescuers damn the lunatics at PETA who say the only good Pit Bull is a dead one.

Vegan cucumber crunchers curse dog show matrons and their pedigree pooches, arguing that with so many dogs in shelters, “Every dog bred is another one dead.”

The small hobby breeder, only 10 years in dogs, parrots a potted history made up whole cloth 100 years ago by a dog dealer. The problem is the “backyard breeder” he says, never defining the term, but speaking in the confident tone of one who is certain he is not one. He points to a classified ad for retriever pups, $250 apiece, and a phone number.

On the telephone the woman describes her dogs as “fur babies,” and says she is not one of “those horrible commercial breeders.” Does she have hip scores for the sire and dam? No, but she has papers, she says hopefully.

The commercial breeder has hip scores – at least for some dogs. He is rather vague. What breed do you want? He has 200 dogs and raises 15 breeds, most of them lap dogs raised in battery cages similar to those used for chickens. He points out that the floors of his cages are made of plastic mesh, not chicken wire, and he says his waste management system is “state of the art.” All 200 of the dogs are taken care of by his wife and himself alone. And are there papers? Oh sure! Kennel Club papers for one price, another registry for a bit less – whichever you prefer.

In a telephone conversation, the breed club President waves off the commercial breeder. Only a fool would look there for a dog he says, oblivious to the fact that the head of the American Kennel Club says he started in dogs this way, and that he thinks the financial future of the AKC lies in more puppy mill registrations.

And so it goes, in a round-robin of blame and questions, challenged ethics, and sniffing aesthetics.

The people roar, but is anyone listening to the dog?

And what is it that we should be listening for? How do we read signs that are not written in pen? How do we translate language that is not written in words? How can we tell if we are doing good or doing bad?

One small idea is to look to original design. It is not hard to see what God intended. Left to their own devices, dogs devolve quickly to “pye-dogs” or pariah dogs weighing 30-45 pounds with short yellow coats and pointed faces.

This animal is not a Wolf, but it can breed with wolves and produce fertile young, same as it can breed with a Coyote, Golden Jackal, or Dingo and produce a fertile cross.

What can we say about these natural dogs? Well, for one thing, none have the kind of crooked or “benched” legs common to anchondroplastic breeds such as Bassets, Dachshunds, Bulldogs, and the like.

None have the smashed-in faces common to brachycelphalic breeds, such as Pugs, Toy Spaniels, French Bulldogs, Boston Terriers, and the like.

None have long coats with wild hair cascading down their sides. All have erect ears.

Most of the wild canids are sized between 10 pounds (a small red fox) and 150 pounds (a massive wolf).

In all cases, inbreeding is sharply discouraged. The “lone wolf,” after all, not a myth – it is a very young or old male driven out of the pack to find a harem of its own or die trying. The same occurs with coyote, fox, dingo, and jackal. Mother Nature prefers an out-cross.

What do we hear if we listen to pedigree dogs?

The data here is not deeply hidden. Canine pet insurance companies keep vast data sets on breeds and cross-breeds alike, and they will tell you that mutts are healthier than Kennel Club dogs, and they price their premiums accordingly.

Not only is there less inbreeding among cross-bred dogs than among their Kennel Club analogs, there is also less morphological exaggeration.

With mixed breeds you are less likely to get teacup dogs with serious teeth and neurological issues, and you are less likely to get giant dogs with torsion, cancer, and heart issues.

A mixed breed is less likely to have the skin problems found in deeply wrinkled dogs, and more likely to have the kind of muzzle that prevents eye damage and predictable respiratory and palette problems.

With Kennel Club dogs, there is not only a tendency to select for morphologies unseen in nature, but there is also the requirement that these exaggeration be maintained in a closed registry system in which coefficients of inbreeding tend to drift upward due to popular sire selection.

Of course, what I have said here is not new. Biologists, canine genetic experts, and working dog people have been making these points for decades. But their quiet message has been drowned out by the foot-stomping of those with economic and political interests.

Much the same has occurred with indigenous people the world over.

Their concerns too have been blotted out by issues of money, power, and prestige.

"The native tribes? Who cares about them? The natives don't vote and they don't pay taxes."

And of course neither do the dogs.

But does that mean we should not be listening to them?

Does the welfare of dogs not matter at the top?

Who will speak for the tribe called Dog?

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All at Sea at the AKC

AKC registrations have declined 55% in 15 years.

What happened? Nothing.

And that’s the problem

Following the showing of Pedigree Dogs Exposed on the BBC, the Kennel Club has had to face one basic question: Can it survive into the 21st Century by hanging on to 19th century theories and show ring exaggerations that are antithetical to canine health?

“Don’t rock the boat too much,” some have advised. “Look what happened in America when they tried to change things -- AKC registrations dropped like a rock.”

Well yes, it’s true that American Kennel Club registrations have plummeted. Over the course of the last 15 years, registrations have declined 55 percent, even as the number of dogs in American homes has increased.

But why the decline? It’s not because the AKC did not change, but because it didn’t!

Here’s the story: In 1987, a reporter for Parade, the largest circulation magazine in the country, did an expose on the fact that a lot of the dogs registered by the American Kennel Club were deformed, diseased, and defective. The reporter pointedly asked AKC President William F. Stifel whether the Club would register a blind, deaf, three-legged purebred pup with hip dysplasia and green fur. The answer: "We would register the dog. AKC, unfortunately, does not mean quality."

The American public heard that message loud and clear, and they soon began voting with their wallets. The movement away from AKC dogs had begun.

The decline started slowly, but was kicked forward in December of 1994, when Time magazine did a cover story entitled “A Terrible Beauty.” The subtitle summed up the contents: “An obsessive focus on show-ring looks is crippling, sometimes fatally, America's purebred dogs.”

The AKC, of course, tried to fend off its critics. "We’re just a registry” they explained. If there were problems with the dogs, those complaints should be directed to the breed clubs.

But the breed clubs have very little power within the American Kennel Club's structure. They are not able to mandate health checks because the AKC will not allow it, nor can they require performance standards for a championship, nor can they ban pet store sales.

In addition, breed clubs are dominated by established show dog breeders whose personal interest lies more with blue ribbons and commerce than in long-term considerations about breed health. There are some problems in some lines, these breeders will tell you, but never in theirs!

Ironically, the Kennel Club's "just a registry" defense sounded a lot like a business plan to small-time entrepreneurs. Armed with the newest bit of technology – the personal computer— more than 30 different dog registries sprang up offering scraps of paper with no health guarantee at all.

But wasn’t this exactly what the AKC had been selling all these years? The only difference was these new registries were selling their paper for less!

The pageantry of dog shows were not attached to these new registries, of course, but so what? Most people were not buying dogs to show them; they were simply looking for healthy canine companions and pets. Since American Kennel Club dogs were not healthier than non-AKC dogs, what did it matter if a dog was AKC-registered or not?

In fact, maybe it was better if they wasn’t! The dogs from the local pound were certainly cheaper than a Kennel Club dog, and even the veterinarians said they were generally healthier.

Look at all the inbreeding going on in the Kennel Club. And if you wanted a working dog, you had to go to a registry lke “American Field” or a specialty breeder for that.

And so, over the course of just 15 years, the market for American Kennel Club dogs collapsed.

And what has been the AKC’s reponse?

They have been completely flumoxed. Every suggestion has been met by an indignant non-sensical reply.

How about jettisoning breed standards steeped in exageration and deformity? But exaggerations and deformities define so many breeds!

How about requiring heath testing for breeding stock? But the AKC has never had health standards before!

How about mandating lower Coefficients of Inbreeding? Why? What's wrong with inbreeding?

How about opening closed registries in order to broaden gene pools? But then the dogs wouldn't be pure breeds -- they’d be mutts!

And so, left to its own devices, what has the American Kennel Club come up with for a new economic model?

Believe it or not, it’s the registration of more puppy mill dogs bred like chickens in battery cages!

As AKC Chairman Ron Menaker wrote in a September 2008 missive to the delegates:

“Today, we are losing market share at an alarming rate, especially in the retail sector… Make no mistake, the very future of the AKC and our sport is at risk.... We can all remember some of the premier ‘name brands’ and companies of the past, leaders in their field. The ones that we thought would be around forever. These giants, these household names, held the same standing as the AKC. Companies such as: Westinghouse, Pan American Airlines, Standard Oil Company, EF Hutton, Woolworth’s, Montgomery Ward, just to name a few. …. AKC used to dominate the marketplace. Even [department stores] like Macy’s and Gimbels sold AKC puppies. Many pet owners who bought these puppies, and I was one of them, tried their hand at showing and breeding. These owners who purchased their first purebred from a retail outlet, not only added to AKC’s registrations, but those who wanted to advance in the sport, then sought out fanciers to continue their journey. . . . If the current trend continues and dog registrations decline to 250,000 over the next several years, AKC will face an annual revenue shortfall of $40 million.”

And so, the American Kennel Club has decided to bank their hope on the mass-production of puppy mill dogs, while holding tight to the proven failure of 19th Century breeding practices which have wrecked the health and working ability of breed after breed.

But, of course, there’s more to it than that.

You see, while the American Kennel Club has shown no real interest in changing its system of exaggerated standards and closed gene pools, it has made peace with the idea of collecting kickback referal money from veterinarians and pet insurance salesmen

“Sure, we’ll sell you poison,” they seem to be saying, “but we’ll sell you the antidote as well.”

Of course, the American people are not buying it. American Kennel Club registrations continue to slide into the toilet, and things have not been helped by the Internet, which has made it harder to sustain lies about quality and history.

Not only can owners of wrecked Kennel Club dogs now find each other with ease, but they can also post videos and educate others about the troubles they face. Breed specific list-servs and health sites now summarize academic research, health surveys, and data gleaned from pet insurance databases.

And, of course, anyone in America with a computer can now see Pedigree Dogs Exposed, while anyone in Great Britain with an internet connection can see ABC’s recent Nightline program, which told much the same story.

All of this, paradoxically, is good news for the dogs and for the U.K. Kennel Club.

It is good new for the dogs because, finally, it appears that some change may be at hand which will improve the miserable health of pedigree dogs.

And it is good news for The Kennel Club because, if they need any spur to reform, they need only look across the pond to see the high price for failing to change at all.

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