I am Dog Woman. I’m not in the dark about how unhealthy it can be and it is to create and perpetuate extreme dog breeds.
But what fucking SICK SHIT is it when your dogs are in agony, when they can’t function, when they can’t walk?? When they need surgery to breathe because of the way you’ve bred them to each other in search of what you find visually pleasing, no matter what damage you do?
How do you DARE to claim you love dogs and refer to physically normal features as “faults”??? Like Rhodesian Ridgebacks… who are subject to serious spine problems as a direct result of the ridge…which is a deformity? How DARE you advocate killing puppies that are not deformed the way you want them to be?
And German Shepherd??? OH MY GOD FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!!! WHat sick, twisted, FUCK thinks it’s BETTER to breed German Shepherds to have such a messed up backend they walk like my epileptic dog did when his drugs were beginnning to kill him??? ARGH!!! FUCK YOU!
Unfortunately, I can’t be more interesting and amusing, because I’m too disgusted and sickened and enraged. FUCK YOU!!!
Notice how low the hips sit. That’s hip dyplasia, can lead to arthritis, back problems. It’s a very painful condition for the dog.
The problem is often the breed standard is very unhealthy for the dog. Pugs, Pekes and Bulldogs often have breathing problems because of the pushed in face.
There are others that don’t come to mind at the moment but you get the idea.
They are overbred like lots of common breeds. I love German Shepherds but the sweetest one I ever knew named Katie basically died from hip dysplasia. She could barely use her hind legs at all for the last couple of months and finally went downhill so fast one night that she had to be shot to put her out of her misery. There are fairly healthy German Shepherd lines available through reputable breeders but also lots of problematic ones.
I have no idea who came up with the idea to invent a pug and decided to follow through with that fucked up experiment no matter how long it took.
And it seems to be getting worse. I don’t remember GSD’s from when I was a kid being anywhere near as slinky as they are today. The purebreds all just look like they’re in a perpetual cringe.
Similarly, I pit people like my “friend” who drive the demand for designer puppy mill dogs (to the tune of $1200 in this case) and then give them to the humane society because the dog has behavioral issues. When she didn’t even fucking bother to try to train it. Puppies don’t come trained! They’re not like cats! Fuck you!
Are there any other types of German Shepherds these days? I thought it was mostly an industrialized country now and the term is understood to be the dog breed. I did work with a young woman from Copenhagen once and I told her she was a Great Dane whenever she did really good work but I think she understood the reference.
She was already talking about dogs before the GSD paragraph. Context is important.
ETA: In agreement with Shagnasty. At no point in my life have I ever assumed that “German Shepherd”, in general conversation, actually meant a German man who herded sheep.
Watch this part One on Youtube, it’s longer. The first part shows cavalier King Charles Spaniels with horrible brian disease because their skulls are too small to let their brains pulsate, and that’s bad enough, but it’s a disease/disorder- the shepherds are deliberately bred to be crippled - the most fucked up ones are the champions! In the video you can see CHAMPION GSDs that can’t walk properly because they are so fucked up on the back end, and some idiot saying that’s more “correct” ARGH!
Graduate School of Design? What does that have to do with purebred dogs?
I don’t know where you’re from, lone cashew, but what you call a GSD (in a snotty tone, implying that it is the ONLY name for a German Shepherd because it’s the one you know), is known as a German Shepherd around here. If I asked someone if a GSD was a good dog, they’d look at me like I’d grown another head.
I agree with the OP - breeding negative traits INTO animals for human amusement is a terrible thing to do.
My favorite ones to really scoff at are the “designer” breeds (aka mutts to people with brains - hybrids if ask the “breeder” aka puppy mill), where they take the most problem breeds and cross them, as if that’s a good thing.
Ever seen a Puginese? They sell for $800-$1200, and are pretty much guaranteed to end up with a proptosed eye, which most likely will end up with needing the eye removed. If by some grace they never have an eye pop out of their heads, they still have any of a myriad of other eye problems. Aside from being brachycephalic, which IMO is a big problem by itself.
For starters, unscrupulous breeders have no national boundaries, so whilst you pick out the UK, you could equally point fingers at any European, Australasian or American country as well.
The problem is that no matter how stupid or evil the breeder is, the puppies still make lots of $ in sale. All pups look cute when they’re 10 weeks old, and the genetic problems don’t generally arise until they are much older…by which time the ‘warranty’ on the pup has well and truly expired.
Seriously, if people stopped buying supposed ‘pedigreed’ pups from dodgy breeders, the problem would go away overnight. Sure, you can blame the Wonky Sellers but hey, they’re in it for the money, and if you’re stupid enough to buy a pup from them, well…caveat emptor etc.
If you are serious about wanting to add a new canine member to your family, do your homework, check out Adoption Programs, suss out the background/credentials of any breeders you might choose to do business with, and maybe pick a breed that isn’t quite so inclined towards congenital health problems in the first place.
IOW, the problem is less with the supply as with the demand for such dogs. How can we jump up and down screaming about the injustice of it all when it’s folks like us who create the market for such crippled pups?
