Back to the OP…
It seems that most here agree that making new laws is at best not going to be very effective at decreasing the numbers of these dogs bred for arbitrary appearances with no concern about their suffering.
Anything that might have an impact?
ISTM that demand is key and that more public awareness about the suffering fairly inherent to particular features is the least poor option?
But part of JoJo’s illness turned out to be a collar embedded in his neck, didn’t it? So he’d been handled by humans before you got him. Stray or dumped, but not a feral.
You can’t outlaw fashion. Or dictate what peeps are gonna want.
It’s sad.
Maybe we can mitigate suffering and gross dismembering of body parts.
Cat declawing has mostly thought of as bad just by making people aware of exactly what it is.
We can, but hope.
I would say that mandatory spay/neuter laws would help, with a requirement that a hefty fee be paid otherwise. That might curtail backyard breeding, but the downside would be black market puppy sales, and dogs kept hidden away to be used for breeding.
I do think that the problem lies mostly with the backyard folks, who know very little about genetics, and just want to make a quick buck. Social media is full of locals selling puppies.
There’s not a simple solution here, but we need to get creative and find one.
This was the subject of hundreds, probably thousands, of often angry posts in the early days of the internet (remember Usenet — or maybe discussion was email-based?).
Unless something has changed, the pedigree database for both AKC breeds is still combined:
We bought our late mini Aussie, about 25 years ago, from a former show breeder who was trying to breed in calmness. She would have been eaten alive on the internet for that and so did not participate.
For humans or dogs?
Given the self-imposed suffering some humans will put themselves through in the name of fashion I don’t hold out a lot of hope for that approach…
I think the problem lies mostly with serious commercial breeders and the folks who judge dog shows. Backyard breeders tend to produce mutts, not extremely bred dogs.
If we’re gonna keep another species of animal so close to us. Living, eating and doing it’s bodily functions there has to be conditions met.
They breed for dogs that shed less so we don’t sneeze.
We teach to potty somewhere they probably would rather not. I mean, who wants to pee outside in the rain. Or in public where everyone is looking.
We teach yappy dogs “no bark!” Of course they had rather bark at that annoying squirrel for an hour. It’s fun. How do you feel when someone tells you Shut-up 20 times a day?
We teach them eat this not the baby chicks or the tiny bunnies or chase the cats with intentions that are not kind. Don’t eat poop!! For crissake. Or the pizza I left on the coffee table. "Bad dog!!
You don’t like to be food restricted, I’ll bet.
We have tried to turn these actual wolves, I know altered in many ways from the original, into little people. People we control. People we make every decision for. People we require way more than they may be willing to give. Yet they do.
They have provided so much for humans. And we pluck, prod, chop, desex and change any old thing we want.
To make them fit in our lives. More pleasantly for us. Not them. Us.
After all they are dogs they could care less if they conform to some idiotic standard.
Demand for purebreds is down. Some of the breeds will go extinct. I don’t like it, but that’s an impact.
On the other hand, the proportion of purebred dogs, with pushed in faces, looks to be increasing. With the AKC not releasing statistics beyond the breed ranks, it is hard to know how it is netting out.
Re increasing popularity of mixed breeds, I wonder how inbred they are. Lots of people on the internet claim they are less inbred, but I wonder how many of the dogs at the SPCA were the product of what we would call, in human terms, sibling, or parent-child, incest.
Responsible dog breeders test for inherited health defects before breeding. But this is hard to do effectively because, by the time you know for sure the problem won’t arise, the dog is almost too old to be bred. In theory, genetic tests will solve this problem, since you can know of the problems before sexual maturity. Whether pet owners are willing to pay for that is probably questionable (although vets charge enough, once the problem arises, so that, to me, it would be worth it).
The answer to your question is education, and some sort of rating system where a breeder gets to put a gold medal on their web site if following best practices. There are some efforts like this already. It is hard to get started when, in most breeds, the number of responsible breeders is declining, and a lot of them are middle-aged or older, and a large portion of the most responsible owners, who might support health tests, think that rescue is a more moral choice.
Good point, that the dog show folks are probably the at the start of the problem. They decree that flat faced dogs are the best in all the land, and start the trend.
But, I think that (at least here in this area) there is a rampant problem with amateur breeders, who have a male and female, and breed them. Either purebreds, or the designer mixed breeds. I’m basing that on what I see on social media, the “puppy store” we have a couple towns over, the people with the “puppies” signs on cages in parking lots, and at the flea market. I somehow feel that if commercial breeders are bad, these locals are worse, and definitely not paying attention to genetics.
I think the worst kind of breeders we have around here would fall into the fighting breeds.
There’s an ugly underground fight thing going on.
They catch them occasionally and seize dogs who are normally pit/mastiff type who are never salvageable. Always euthanized.
There’s a culture of pits, bully’s and rotties getting bred in backyards and sold to the buyer with the most money. These dogs end up on chains in back yards or running the streets, hopefully not killing a pet or child while loose.
If caught or seized. Euthanized.
Not just Germany:
The Dutch ban on flat faced dogs (article dated 14 July 2023)
Violators of the various European torture breeding laws seems to be rarely punished, but here is one:
Breeder fined for short-snouted bulldogs as Netherlands tackles overbreeding (article dated 14 September 2023)
Before this thread I didn’t know about any of this.
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if any of the countries that regulate or outlaw short-faced breeds do the same for unusually aggressive breeds. Or is there some cultural factor that leads some countries or localities to lean towards attempted protection of the dogs, while others prioritize attempted protection of people from the dogs?
Is that your term or their term?
I’d also put some explanatory power to the celebrities fawning over their Frenchies. Media images drive popularity. From Lassie to Beethoven to 101 Dalmatians to Lady Gaga and others with their Frenchies.
Meanwhile many mixed breed dogs in shelters either have some Pit in them or look like they might and many are scared off no matter how sweet the dog actually is.
ETA - a request to please not have this thread become another Pit bashing thread rehash.
Huh, i would have thought some of those would make the cut, and they could still breed the ones with longish snouts. They don’t have “flat” faces like bulldogs, just shortish snouts
It’s a common English language translation of the German word qualzucht.
I have no real knowledge of how unpleasant it possibly is to be a dog with a short face, and whether the unpleasantness varies much depending on how responsible the breeder is. But I doubt it is what I would call torture.
Relevant:
Are there any healthy short-nosed dogs?
I get from the article that it is usually off and on unpleasant to be a short-faced dog. But of course it is impossible to fully know what it is like to be a dog.
I do think that having a docked tail is a nothingburger compared to breathing difficulty.
They dock tails when the pups are hours old. AIUI without anesthesia. Sometimes it goes all wrong and pup is either crippled or incontinent
Which means they can’t be sold.
I don’t wanna think about how they dispose of that pup.
I don’t find the Dutch explanation for that one, but in Norway it seems mostly due to heads being too small:
Why Norway has banned the breeding of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels (article dated 20 October 2023)
Huh. I have a friend whose son recently got a cavalier king Charles spaniel, and it’s the most excitable dog I’ve ever met. They literally pick it up and hold it when i visit, and it squirms and whines and tries to get to me. When i approach it and let it sniff me, it goes wild with excitement. I’m literally working on training the thing to sit still when I’m there.
It’s really friendly. I’m sad to learn they have such poor prospects. (Although I’d pick almost anything else if i wanted a dog. Boy is that puppy hard to train.)