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Breeders v Rescues
Who can solve the rescue numbers crisis?
A common theme on internet dog forums is the question of how to reduce the numbers of dogs in rescue. It usually ends with rescuers saying that breeders should stop breeding for, say 2 years or completely and all problems will be solved. Is this really the solution?
Firstly let’s define what is a breeder? I get calls from people who have bred one litter. They often say “I’m not a breeder”. But you are. You bred pups and charged money so you are a breeder. Your pups from your pet dog are usually not from health tested parents or Kennel Club registered. You have no facilities or experience so when a buyer needs to send a dog back you won’t help them. You have no sales contracts so your buyers can breed from and sell on your pups easily. You don’t microchip or tattoo your pups before sale so lots remain untraceable.
Then there is the other end of the scale. Breeders with pups from registered, health tested parents; puppies leaving microchipped or tattooed, often vaccinated; space and facilities to take back dogs if necessary and contracts to ask you to do exactly that; exemptions on the Kennel Club registrations to stop people registering puppies if they breed without doing relevant testing.
Whose dogs do you think end up in rescue more? Which breeders are prepared to turn people away or check them out first? Would it be fair to stop all breeders because some breeders are very bad? Could stopping breeding totally for any number of years really cut rescue numbers that drastically?
If you put this to breeders, the good ones are just as incensed by the “back yard breeders” as we all are. They often complain that some rescue is done just as badly as the way bad breeders sell dogs. Maybe they are right. They say that rescues often never give them the chance to reclaim their dogs and then complain that they haven’t.
I have had personal experience of this. Breeders who have driven miles to reclaim their dogs and some who have made excuse after excuse not to take the dogs back. I have also had some rescues do the same.
So what is the other side of the coin? Are rescues so beyond reproach that they can point the finger of blame at the breeders?
The term “rescue” covers many things. Stray pounds, one-man-bands, large well known kennels. The quality isn’t necessarily better in bigger rescues. There are some rehoming dogs which are not neutered and have no requirement to do so, sometimes those are the dedicated breed rescues. A lot more microchip now, but not all. Some are little more than shops, stroll around and choose a dog, pay your money, go home.
Isn’t the position really the same? Some breeders are bad, some rescues are bad.
A rescue argued with a breeder over returning a dog that the breeder agreed to come and collect. The rescue wanted assurances that the dog would be spayed when appropriate and never bred from. The breeder refused to give them this and said it was her dog and she was coming for it. Who was in the right? Do rescues have the right to dictate terms to a breeder whose dog should have been returned by the owner and never put through the rescue? Another rescue refused to contact a breeder over two dogs signed in to them. They said this was because they had heard “bad things” about the breeder from the owner. It didn’t seem to occur to them that maybe it was the owner telling a lie to avoid the breeder.
Several years ago I was asked to take dog from people who had adopted it from another rescue. My intention was to get it and send it back to them as they were personal friends of mine. The owner didn’t know this and when I asked him why he wasn’t taking it back there, which was a long distance, he said, they were a terrible rescue. He told me the kennels were filthy, they had no homecheck and that the dog had been castrated by them, not by the rescue. When he got to the bit about them “selling” dogs to the public I really had to interject. He was stunned. It had never occurred to him that rescuers might know each other and the truth was he was just too lazy to drive all the way back with the dog. He also didn’t know that this dog had been helped into the rescue by me and that it was castrated by the original owners.
There have been lots of high profile cases involving dogs being seized from breeders over-run with dogs in appalling conditions. The RSPCA have been behind prosecutions in these cases. Yet there are endless complaints from breed clubs about the RSPCA not handing dogs over to them and refusing to work with them. The RSPCA will have to account for themselves in these cases, but I can’t see the reasoning behind shutting out breed specialists.
Rescues cannot point the finger of blame at breeders and vice versa. There are good and bad practices in both. In an ideal world there would be enforceable standards for both camps and they would work together. Rescues that continually slate breeders and blame them for the dog ills of the world are just creating a battle. Breeders who won’t work with rescues are creating an elitist situation.
Both sides need to get their act together and stop fighting each other. The enemy is always the same. The people who breed or rehome with no thought of consequences. The people for whom money is the driving force and have no conscience.
There are rescues who work successfully with the breed clubs to find suitable homes. They contact clubs and try to trace breeders. Generally Breed Club members will have signed up to a code of ethics and therefore will have said they agree to take back their dogs.
Would the rescues be empty if there was no official breeding? I personally don’t think so. There would always be owners who allow their dog to stray, don’t neuter, don’t care. Accidental litters would still happen and the people breeding for money would still try and find a way to do it.
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