What is meant by the term “hybrid vigor?”
I’m geuinely asking here, not posing a rhetorical question. I have always understood that purebred dogs are subject to various maladies from potentially narrow breeding. I don’t understand that value of AKC registration and purebreeds. (Well, I understand the commercial value… I don’t understand it in the context of someone who speaks of ‘the overall good of the breed.’)
Having read the whole thread…
I like dogs, but dogs are animals. They are not people. I have nothing against rescuing a dog from a shelter, and have done it twice. Once with absolutely terrible results – the dog was a biter, took to attacking anyone’s feet (nothing else, just the feet) of anyone who stepped near the TV, and had to be euthanized; and once with superb results, a mixed collie/retriever that lived with us until she died fourteen years later, loved by all and mourned when she died.
So I get the value of rescue, but I also wouldn’t elevate it to a moral imperative. People want dogs for utilitarian reasons, and demanding that someone risk unknown health and behavior problems from a rescued dog is not justifiable. We don’t have a moral imperative to keep dogs alive. We have a moral imperative not to be cruel, but humanely ending a dog’s life is not cruelty.
Nothing’s really wrong with it, but it just kinda goes through the motions, you know? No energy. Backyard Breeders 3 is really the best in the franchise, the one with the creative edge. But go with BB2 if you want girl-girl action. Say, shouldn’t this thread be in CS?
A neighbor went to the cat show & fell in love with a particular breed. She purchased a kitty from a very small time breeder & liked him fine–a beautiful animal. So she went back to the breeder to get him a pal; that one died soon after. She got two more from the same lady; one was a “freebie” because of the early death & another was a female with behavioral issues–perhaps because she’d spent most of her short life cooped up producing kittens. Both of them died young. “Freebie” kitty’s death was especially heartbreaking because of his extra-loveable personality.
The neighbor thought the breeder suspected something was “wrong” with one of the bloodlines, but kept breeding. Her husband (& I) thought she should report her & see that she end her business. But she didn’t.
She got a Siamese from a reputable breeder & he’s doing fine.
Next time I’ve got room in my life for a cat, I’ll get a second-hand one. Or two. Too many fine animals are put down every day. If somebody really wants a specific breed, they need to find a breeder with serious credentials & be prepared to pay. (One writer suggested anyone wanting a pure-bred dog get him a pal from the pound, to even things out.)
:rolleyes: Background checks before being allowed to own a dog is ridiculous. An owner of a knocked up dog doesn’t have the right to investigate me.
Some animals are abused and neglected, and that is a tragedy, the answer is harsher punishment for bad owners, not interrogating good ones.
No. But you don’t have a right to one of his puppies, either. It’s entirely within the owner’s rights to insist on a background check before he releases one of his or her puppies to someone. No one is forced to have a background check.
I’m not exactly sure why you’re asking me. I was talking about “backyard” breeders of allegedly “purebred” dogs.
But it’s too late for the dog, or the person who was injured or killed by the dog, by then. If you do background checks on prospective dog owners, you can prevent at least some of the bad ones from getting a dog in the first place.
The puppies are property belonging to the owner of the mother dog. That owner has the right to refuse to sell their property to you for pretty much any reason, as long as it doesn’t have to do with your membership in a protected class. That’s basic property rights. You can’t demand that a property owner sell their property to you.
Quite, but INSISTING people selling puppies do background checks is as ridiculous as INSISTING they can’t.
Quoth griffin1977:
Most dogs are bred by dogs. They’ll keep on doing that on their own even without our help.
2 Possibly. It is also possible that their animals have exhibited no noticeable problems. There is no reason to assume the dogs are unhealthy without examining the parent stock. Let the buyer beware.
Agreed. This is perhaps the best definition of a backyard breeder. Litters should be planned for. However, it is NOT the responsibility of a breeder to care for a dog over the course of it’s entire life. Once it leaves the breeder it is the purchaser’s responsibility.
See point two.
The rest of your post about only breeding champion dogs is bollocks and not worth addressing seriously. Under your rules the only people who could afford a companion animal would be the extremely wealthy.
Actually one of the definitions of a domesticated animal is that we control their breeding.
Control is not the same as enable.
Had a neighbor whose bitch regularly produced puppies. The children played with them as long as the puppies were cute, then the pups disappeared (drowned?) and the bitch had more.Great example for the kids of treatment of pets.
This is a major problem in the horse world as well. So many people go “Wow! I have a mare and my neighbor down the holler has a stud! Who cares if the baby will come out with the conformation of a horse drawn by a three year old, I’ve got me a breeding program!”
I’ve seen some crosses that make me want to smack the shit out of whoever bred the horses. We had a Quarter Horse/TN Walker horse in our barn for awhile that I swear looked like an A-frame house in the front end and was cow-hocked in the back. There was no way in the world she could be used for anything, not even trail riding because her horrible conformation meant she’d had back and leg problems as she got older.
I’m not knocking people who responsibly breed their horses that aren’t part of some professional breeding farm, but damn…
I gotta disagree with this. Given there’s already a massive oversupply of dogs, I don’t see any reason to believe that increasing the general quality of dogs within a breed implies a price increase in that breed–after all, the puppies of champion dogs are not generally all going to be champions themselves. The goal of “breeding only champions” is so that your “bad” puppies still end up above average–if you breed two average dogs, the “bad” puppies are more likely to have problems.
There is indeed a massive oversupply of dogs, however there is a very small supply of champion line animals. Even the pet quality pups from such breeders command prices in the high hundreds to low thousands. Given the life span of the current population of dogs and assuming a strict control program we would have only a luxury supply level in roughly 20 years. Most likely less as the older animals are euthanized at an increasing rate. A champion population I might add that would be constantly inbreeding.
But there ISN’T a strict control program! There isn’t even one on the horizon! It simply isn’t going to happen at anytime in the near future. As I said, in a world that has so many awesome dogs and puppies being euthanized every day, there is no reason to purposely breed more mutts. People who want mutts have a glut to choose from. Mutt puppies are the problem; having more is NOT the solution. It adds to the problem! Which is why animal rescue people hate back yard breeders, and was the whole subject of this debate.
I already said (and I think most reasonable non PETA people would agree with me) that in a situation where there are NO adoptable dogs already out there, then yes! Breed your awesomely tempered healthy dog! But we don’t live in that world, do we? So, since we are living in this world, the world of thousands of awesome dogs dying every day from a lack of homes, what is the reasoning behind making more mutt puppies?
Isn’t this an argument against all dog breeding? Why the distinction between mutts and pures?
This is ridiculous thing to say. I understand (but disagree with) the argument that there are too many dogs therefore you shouldn’t breed period.
But saying you should ONLY have the right to breed your dog if you insist on sticking to some archaic and totally arbitrary pedigree standard (and have to deal with the genetic side affects of said standard) seems outrageous to me. If you WANT to stick with purebred dogs (and are prepared to fork out for the extreme medical care that is apparently required to ensure they are healthy), then that’s great. But the best dogs I’ve ever had have been mutts, and I see no problem with want to breed a dog (purebred or mutt) you think has excellent characteristics that you want to increase in the canine population.