To think that the answer to getting rid of puppy farms and thus millions of unwanted dogs is to ban the buying and selling of dogs for money?

[wannaBe]

We see thread after thread on here about people who inadvertently, and sometimes not so inadvertently buy puppies from unscrupulous breeders who are only in it for the money. The trade in designer mongrels crossbreeds is big business, with people paying sometimes up to £1500 for a dog just because it looks cute, and the breeders raking in the cash from their several bitches which they breed to the point of exhaustion before getting rid of them.

And even the breeders who only breed a litter or two still make money from the exchanges. And let's not pretend that just because someone is KC registered they aren't in it for the money.

There have been all sorts of suggestions as to how this can be resolved, make breeders be registered/only allow them to breed certain numbers a year being just a couple. But in truth there is no way to police this and once a dog is pregnant there is no way of doing anything humane about it, after all, no-one would advocate destroying a fourth litter when the breeder had already bred three that year, for instance?

For me the answer is simple. If it was simply illegal to buy and sell puppies then the puppy farms would have no incentive to exist. If the law was very clear that by advertising dogs for sale you were breaking the law, no-one would actually pay money for puppies, and the sites like gumtree would not be allowed to advertise them.

The exception could be made for e.g. The cost of vaccinations/micro chippinG so that genuine breeders wouldn't be out of pocket, but actually, if you were breeding for the good of the breed the food etc would still be the breeder's responsibility.

Take the prophet out of puppies and the need to breed so many of them would no longer exist.

In countries were dogs (that have owners) usually run loose, bitches are generally confined during their seasons and a litter can still be a planned litter.

Dogs are not allowed to run loose in the UK and never will be.

I'm happy to rephrase what I said - without breeders dogs would die out in the UK. The nature of dog regulation in this country means that a dog must be under the control of its owner at all times. Dogs might be perfectly capable of having sex by themselves, but dog regulations in the UK mean that they require a human to be responsible for their puppies. Puppies require investment of time and money and need to be planned. The number of people prepared and able to look after and rehome puppies (or indeed any other animal) that appears at the whim of their pet is limited.

For clarification I was responding to Kakifruit's post which seemed to be saying that any kind of dog breeding is wrong.

on the other that we'd end up with lots of real dogs we'd just kill...

Which leads to local extinction. Plenty of animals are no longer wild in the UK.

And never mind looking after the puppies, how would you know the difference between a dog wanting to do the deed because he/she had been forced by the owner (breeding), and wanting to do the deed of his/her own accord? Dogs don't get a chance to go out on pull by themselves in the UK. (Well some do, but they're not supposed to)

Merry, I'm not a dog breeder, but my understanding that if a bitch doesn't like the stud she is introduced to, she won't let him mate with her (of course, with AI, the bitch gets no choice).

Seriously, when a bitch is on heat, it's not a case of forcing her.

There was a typo in my earlier post -I meant 'feral' not 'real'. Not that it matters.

"Forced" was perhaps a poor choice of words. But my point was that the nature of dog ownership in the UK means that in order for a pregnancy to occur the owner needs to be involved in some way in the breeding process, (generally deciding that they would like their bitch to have puppies and deliberately engineering some contact with a dog).

And yes, obviously dogs have accidental pregnancies that result in unwanted puppies, but that is not a good thing from an animal welfare point of view.

Slightly o/t but when I was a child one lot of people nearby bred Labradors and another woman bred chihuahuas and yes, you guessed it, somebody left the wrong gate open and the litter were simply amazing. How Charlie Chihuahua managed to dtd with Lucy Labrador must remain a matter of conjecture. The Lab-breeders were responsible enough to neuter such of the breed as survived before selling them - I would guess for a fancy price.