Dog breeders - why isn't health of dogs the first priority?

[LifeofBrienne]

I'm not a dog owner myself, but see a lot of pugs around here. It always makes me wonder why people would buy a dog that's well known to have breathing issues because it's been bred to be malformed. But maybe the main question is why breeders have created the extreme face shape of the breed in the first place. I just saw a thread on here from someone thinking of buying a German Shepherd puppy and almost the first reply was to watch out for back problems since they've been bred to have their front half much taller than the back.
Naively I would have thought that people who breed dogs carefully (not talking about puppy farms or anything) and those who set the standards go into it because they're dog lovers. So why do they take healthy dog breeds and make them less healthy?

💴

Some do. Some want to see their breed improve in health and will only breed the healthy animals.

Some don’t. They want to stick by kennel club regulations and unfortunately it usually means health problems.

Then you get the ones who breed knowing the animal isn’t well but doing it because they want the money.

Average pug lifespan is 12-15 years

seems pretty decent to me

It's not one stage of breeding, and therefore not a choice a breeder is making. It's happening over years and years of breeding..the short answer is money.

But then maybe I'm biased because I don't agree with dog breeding for a profit at all. I'm sure there'll be plenty of people along, as is usual on this type of thread, saying they couldn't possibly have rescued a dog because they needed exact requirements that only a 12 week old pedigree puppy would fulfill. Until that attitude goes away, breeders will always breed what's fashionable at the time and screw the consequences.

It’s not the priority of people buying.
People buy because it’s cute, because it’s a colour they want, because it doesn’t moult.
I don’t think people feeding the cocker poo trend are insisting the poodle has been tested for VWD. They just want a fluffy dog that is potentially less inclined to moult than a cocker…

Do you think length of life = healthy? They are well known to be prone to many health conditions and struggle to even breath. It’s disgusting. Bull dogs are the same, most can’t even breed or give birth naturally anymore.

Because people don't want a dog. They want a German shepard or a labradorite or cockerpoo or dashund or whatever.

Many people who get a puppy try a rescue first and are told no because they don’t meet the exact requirements because they’re out of the house for 30 minutes a month or don’t have fences of 12 feet tall or something else as ridiculous

There are breed standards which require specific features so breeders have to adhere to them in order to get their dogs registered (for those buyers who want to show). Health issues are the byproduct of the selection over many generations but so are the characteristics of the dog (colour, temperament etc.) so it can be difficult to strike the balance. We have an unregistered dog who has features of the breed that we like but has been mixed several generations back so hopefully won’t have all the issues. She is 7 now and is fit an healthy.
My family have pedigree Labrador retrievers. The breed is prone to joint issues but none of the dogs had any problems until the last years of their lives when I would expect most dogs to have some health problems anyway whether they are pedigree or not. So just because the breed is genetically at risk of a disease, doesn’t mean the individual dog’s risks are also high.
Breeding is a tricky issue but is not exclusive to dogs. Every piece of meat we consume comes from an animal bred to have certain characteristics. I am more concerned about chickens too heavy for their legs to hold them to be perfectly honest.
Yes, in the ideal world we would all have rescues dogs but actually getting one is nearly impossible. The requirements of a rescue staff are insane, impossible to meet and well beyond what a dog needs for a happy life.

If people don't reach the criteria to give a potentially very traumatised rescue dog a good quality of life, then yes, they will be turned down. I've had rescue dogs my whole life and have never been turned down, despite working full time and having a young and growing child.

It's also a really crappy excuse to then go and get a badly bred overpriced fashion dog. The amount of daschunds around now who can barely walk is appalling. And yet the unscrupulous keep breeding them because the fuckwits keep buying them.

I often wonder about the intelligence of people who loudly proclaim themselves to be animal lovers but choose to get dogs like pugs, cavalier spaniels or French bulldogs. If you really cared about animals you wouldn’t fund breeding of those dogs.

Obviously rescues are different.

Many people who get a puppy try a rescue first and are told no because they don’t meet the exact requirements because they’re out of the house for 30 minutes a month or don’t have fences of 12 feet tall or something else as ridiculous

Or so they claim. I'm sure some rescues are too strict but having worked with them and rescued from several most are perfectly right with the conditions they place on rehoming their animals. No it isn't fair to leave a dog let alone a puppy for 8 hours a day. And yes you might adore this particular dog but she was abused by the previous owner's children and therefore will be terrified of your three.

I don't understand this fixation on puppies either personally. In some circumstances yes but personally give me an adult dog any day. I'm a very experienced dog owner and puppies are adorable but they're such incredibly hard work and almost drove me bonkers.

There are breed standards which require specific features so breeders have to adhere to them in order to get their dogs registered (for those buyers who want to show)

Thats no excuse, breeders are meant to love the breed, be ambassadors for it almost. What they’re doing is putting profit before the health of the dog, if they really cared, they’d refuse and campaign for the breed standards to be changed.

Kennel Club is responsible for many or all deformities in these dogs, I personally would never buy from a KC breeder because I don’t believe they care about health just breed ‘standards’. So many show versions of breeds are now physically incapable of doing the jobs they’re bred to do originally because of the KC.

Dog breeding is in a terrible state. Responsible breeders are unlikely to make a profit due to the amount of care and attention a properly bred pup needs. The ones advertising on Facebook and gumtree are the issue. If anything in the dog world needs regulation it is this part.

@IHateWasps we tried for years to get a rescue from a home. Went to Battersea, Dogs Trust, RSPCA and Blue Cross. They all wanted to give us the dog they wanted shot of as opposed to listening to what we were looking for. This was pre covid, post covid, it appears everything has to be done online. Sorry, but a dog has to speak to you IMHO so I won't be choosing one without meeting it.

Fortunately, we found a couple who were moving abroad and ended up with a lovely Labrador but we had all but given up with rescue centres.

But then maybe I'm biased because I don't agree with dog breeding for a profit at al

I'm with you on that.

££££££ MIL is a highly recommended breeder. It's all about the money and don't be fooled thinking the lineage is as it seems. They swap dogs, use different dogs than what's on the papers, bloody awful!

Because their first priority is money? Every second house near us is breeding dogs.
Say you have 2 bitches, churning out a litter of 8 at £2k per puppy, that's an earner of £32k per year, probably tax free.
Of course there are vet bills and no doubt some costs involved in providing (that most depressing of terms) a "puppy pack" but it's still a hell of an earner for the unscrupulous.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Someone decided that a flat face, sloping back or lots of skin folds look cute, indearing, beautiful, .... and wrote a "breed standard" for the show ring.

So breeders selected these abnormalities to create the perfect specimen. Often, but not exclusively for the show ring.

The general public now recognise these visible traits as whatever dog breed.

... and drum roll: 🥁 a type of brand is created that brings in lots of prestige and cash.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Someone decided that a flat face, sloping back or lots of skin folds look cute, indearing, beautiful

I forgot what thread this was, came back to it and read this bit first and wondered who the hell would find any of that attractive in a partner! 😂

I completely agree with you, OP. I hate seeing flat nosed dogs like pugs and French bulldogs/bulldogs, and those slanted shepherds are really sad - so many back and hip issues, eye problems for some breeds too. And hairless dogs that end up having to wear coats. Hopefully things will change and traits which cause discomfort will be outlawed one day.

Then in my opinion you wait until you meet the criteria for a rescue, or travel further afield to find one who'll accept your current circumstances. I don't think this is an excuse to contribute to profit breeding. I don't think someone's desire for a dog trumps the fact breeding is causing generations of dogs with health problems.

With regards the rescues I do agree it is very difficult sometimes. When I was looking into a new dog to join our group I tried every spaniel rescue going (ours are working dogs, yes a spaniel was a requirement). I was open to something up to 5, didn't care if it needed support and work. We are an incredibly experienced home where no one was out longer than 3 hours at a time, we understand the breed and ours get GOOD exercise (a few miles a day, constant training and they are out working twice a week through the season). Well fenced garden etc.
But we have a cat (very used to dogs and the boss!) and a child (12, who is very used to dogs and works/trains them with us). Absolutely flat no from every rescue, plus one that wouldn't rehome a working breed to a working home... 🤔
So I got a puppy.

I read an article about ‘reengineering breeds’ a couple of years ago. I feel like there could be demand for a parallel system of registering dog breeders based on healthy standards, not on the breeds meeting extremes. Obviously I know pretty much nothing about how the existing system works!
https://propermanchester.com/trending/a-breeder-is-reengineering-french-bulldogs-to-make-them-healthier/amp/

Some breeders are absolutely in it for the money and the deformities are just horrific to see. Mine actually isn't KC registered- his parents were thoroughly health tested proven working dogs. I didn't bother with KC reg as I don't want to breed and we don't compete, I just wanted a good working dog.