Buck the Fad!

Last night I watched the BBC’s documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed and this morning I read “The Westminster Dog Show Has Blood On Its Hands” on the effects of a Pekingese winning the Westminster Dog Show. Together they’re a potent pair on the problems caused by breed fads. Westminster winners typically cause a storm of interest in the breed of the winning dog, and most dogs purchased in the midst of a fad will come from puppy mills. As Carole Davis writes:

1. Annually, the AKC, a “non-profit” animal enterprise, profits over 40 million tax-exempt dollars promoting the business of dealing dogs; many of them inbred with genetic malformations that are painful for the dogs and expensive for the owners (see the BBC’s special, Pedigree Dogs Exposed).

2. The AKC routinely registers puppies from inhumane dog factories (puppy mills).

3. AKC reps are a constant presence at dog auctions, making deals not to promote the well-being of dogs, but to ensure registration fees from unscrupulous breeders. At these auctions, commercial breeders buy and sell breeding dogs, their “product,” for as low as a dollar. The “product,” which should be a family pet in a loving home is instead sold to live out her sad life reproducing in a cage.

4. The AKC denies and covers up its responsibility for contributing to the millions of dogs housed in our nation’s shelter system at our expense until they are tragically killed.

5. The AKC spends millions of dollars fighting animal protection legislation in every state in order to continue to profit from the dog dealing business.

In relation to the BBC documentary, Carole goes on to say: “The Best-In-Show trophy awarded every year at the Westminster Dog Show fuels intense desire for purebred dogs. It promulgates the purebred fetish—the elitist idea that some dogs are better than others because of absurd criteria like the length of their hocks, the shortness of their snout, the texture of their fur or the protrusion of their eyeballs. Many of the genetic traits that garner prizes at dog shows are congenital malformations that cause suffering to dogs and can eventually kill them. And by the way, none of those standards are the qualities that make us love our dogs and that make our dogs love us.” And because the Westminster winner always fuels desire for the breed, buyers will order their Pekes as impulse buys. Those impulses are easy to obtain from sites such as www.nextdaypets.com, and the problems rev up in a hurry. We’ve seen the response to Westminster as well as to Hollywood and television, in cases such as Jack Russells (following Frazier), Chihuahuas (following Taco Bell), and Dalmatians (following Budweiser). The popularity of these dogs causes problems in breeding, and the dogs themselves are often abandoned or given up at shelters. The dogs look great at Westminster, but buck the fad – for the breed and for all those dogs.

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