As for the last, in old books I recall reading something to to effect that culling pups, with certain conditions, is a solemn duty of the breeder, or something to that effect. But maybe now the deaf and blind are given away by breed rescue.
I dislike the docked tail look, but everything in that realm has pluses and minuses. Googling, I’m finding that 1 in 500 dogs suffer a tail injury (and that it doesn’t much matter how active the dog is). I can’t find the complication rate of tail removal, but is it really higher than that? Spaying, which is commonly required by responsible American breeders, despite being outlawed in Germany and Scandinavia as cruel, seems to cause way more incontinence than tail docking.
I don’t think these European dog laws would be practical in the U.S., and, so far, am not convinced this is unfortunate.
Yeah, i wouldn’t dock a healthy trail, but that doesn’t strike me as a horrible thing to do to a tiny puppy. (Much worse to do it to an adult who is accustomed to having a tail.) Unless there are a lot more risks than I’m aware of.
And despite some moral qualms, I’ve had all my pets spayed or neutered.
My admittedly limited experience is intact male dogs are more aggressive and headstrong. Neutered males are much more friendly and lovey and chill. All pets should be spayed/neutered unless you mean to breed them.
Almost all of mine have been rescues
– a few have been something else-- we adopted a service dog at the end of her period of service, a Siamese from neighbors when a child proved allergic and the Pit/GSD I had was the offspring off a pedigreed GSD who took advantage of an 8 month old Pit whose owners didn’t realize a dog under 1 year could become pregnant
I don’t know what is worse-- that kind of ignorance, or people who let their expensive stud get out as often as this one apparently did.
Come to think of it, that might be why they were so anxious to get rid of the puppies-- anxious to get mom off to the vet for spaying.
Our most recent rescue was from a woman fostering a hissy cat from the local pound. His original owner was an older lady who went off to a hospice, her family said they’d take him, but then they claimed allergies and dumped him at the pound. No one wanted him as he was hissy. We took him and he bonded strongly with my wife, and kinda sorta tolerates me.
It’s been a while since I’ve looked for a dog that way. What I remember is that you could sell purebreds, but gave away mutts. Thus backyard breeders would go for purebreds, while mutts were usually accidents or foundlings.
Hence why it was much easier to convince people to neuter their mutts than their purebreds. Someone might come along and offer your pup mate with theirs–usually in the form of X% per puppy.
Well, considering that we have had a few shelter animals, and because we used to live on the edge of the woods, and more importantly, the edge of the city/county line, lot of strays. Every spring, lots of them showed up, because students had to get rid of the pets they’d thoughtlessly acquired, and figured they were being humane, since the only shelter in the county was a kill shelter. They came out just past the city line, because the fine for dumping an animal in the city was higher than for doing so in the county.
The kill shelter was particularly cruel, because animals timed out after something like a mere 2 weeks, and then got the needle, whether the shelter had extra space or not!
At one point we had 7 cats, because so many had wandered up to our door.
I didn’t know. I live in a part of the country that has been successful at spaying and neutering dogs to the extent that almost all the dogs in local shelters were imported from out of state. My brother and sister have rescue dogs, and every one of them was born out of state. And the shelters don’t let you take the animal until it’s been spayed or neutered. So basically, the local market consists of shelter dogs, purebred dogs, and intentional mutts bred from purebred dogs (like the various doodles. But I’ve seen other crossbreeds for sale.)
But you know, people pay a lot to “adopt a dog from a shelter”. And they certainly pay a pretty penny for a lot of the intentional mutts.
The Doodle-dogs are mixed breeds and it gets so convoluted as to be mutts.
Mini-Double Poodle-Sheepadoodle is no telling what in a kennel mixing every poodle with Aussies, Sheepdogs, Cavs, Yorkies, Labs, Goldens, Bernies and others.
Look on one of the Web sites. It’s ridiculous.
Exclusively six dogs? It wouldn’t be crazy if they can all trace their line to one of six dogs, but if all of their ancestors are those six dogs, that’s pretty amazing that they still function at all. That’s a hell of an evolutionary bottleneck.
What’s changed is that, around here at least, almost everyone now gets at least their female dogs neutered. Therefore, there are a lot fewer accidental puppies; not really even enough to go around (shelters here often bring dogs in from elsewhere, and they’re mostly of very limited breeds and size range.)
And people do often sell “mutts”, if they know the cross (or sometimes, I suspect, have a good guess at it).
There are still lots of excess kittens, though; because almost nobody neuters their barn cats, and there are a lot of barns.
The Version I Heard Was, WhateverDoodles are more of a solution than a problem - if they are limited to crossing purebred poodles with purebreds of the other breed (so-called F1s). Once you cross-breed them (which is a requirement if they ever want to be recognized as an AKC breed), you start reintroducing the things that creating the breed in the first place was intended to leave out.
Yeah, I remember from my childhood fifty years ago getting our family dogs from the “Free Puppies” column in the newspaper want ads. All of them were random mutts, long-lived with few or no health problems.
It’s a good thing that the world isn’t quite so full of accidental disposable puppies, but the (relatively minor) tradeoff is that it makes things more difficult for people wanting to get a dog.
