so I went to see some pups today and it was awful :-(

[AllergicToNutters]

They were living in rank cages outside on concrete floors. The smell was horrid. There was Dad and a Portuguese pointer in a cage, Mum was sooo skinny and looked as if she had been bred and bred. The pups looked healthy enough but the one remaining pup ( so I had no choice in selecting one for us) was shaking and whimpering. He was absolutely beautiful but I didn't take him. I felt awful. The pups were kept in a shed away from the other dogs and Mum. They were clearly not 'indoor' dogs. Very sad and don;t know what I can do.....

Now I'm confused.

I seem to be very evil indeed on the evil scale and I don't actually think I am.

I can be a bit of a cow sometimes, but that's about it.

*What about accidentally acquiring a pure bred puppy and then accidentally keeping it instead of finding a rescue space?

Or going to breed rescue?*

Very responsible, bordering on dog champion

Otoh, I am very evil most of the time, but seem to be saintly on that scale, however that could change once I have confirmation of where on the scale accidental acquisitions of pedigree puppies would leave me

lets hope you don't decide to keep one of the female pups and not spay her either and let her get knocked up in the garden by potentially the same dog. where would that fit on the scale?

and where does accidentally breeding pups and thinking of giving them to a rescue so that people on the waiting list will get a puppy rather than take one of the poor dogs who they don't see as worth looking at because they're 9months old let alone a mature dog fit?

on a lighter note there are some beautiful doberman x pups up for rescue. please talk me out of it! and if i start a thread about what kind of dog to rescue and such will anyone talk to me or have their been a million such threads and people are bored sick of them?

just below puppy farm owner dooin - it's been clarified up there somewhere.

i think hitler comes somewhere between buying a pedigree pup and buying a mongrel from travellers.

Ah but I didn't buy her from a pedigree breeder. She landed in my inbox disguised as a kitten and ended up staying

I can't do any talking out of dobe puppies I'm afraid. Only encouragement. We had one growing up. She was ace. Do it. Get a cute dobe puppy and then send me lots of pics so I can own one variously through you

I clearly have a split personality - with one purebred dog from a pedigree breeder, and one crossbreed from the Dogs Trust.

Flatbread, the Mcgreevey study you linked to stated that most of the advantaged of F1 hybrids were lost after the first generation with further breeding discouraged. So how are you improving the genetic diversity with your unplanned litter.

Have a if you think you are more responsible than me. I neutered my boys.

they're cross dobermans dooin (think that would win me points on the list - cross breed AND rescue? would it wipe out the evil of my having bought a lab?) and beautiful. the rescue says that they can live in a house with children over ten though and ds is 5 - however the only reason they have is 'because these will be a medium to large dog' which is a weird reason in my mind. also from what i read dobes are best to go in a house with small children right from the start and then they never have problems with them but it's really important you socialise them to everythign young.

Thanks saggy for the link, it looks like a step at least in the right direction!!

Oh and I imagine previously in Iceland there were no strays/too many dogs, as unwanted litters would have been drowned ( like here ).

I seem to be a champion polishes award. Although the cat doesn't agree, he just bit me twice for no reason. Must be because the list only applies to dogs ...

Flatbread, this idyllic Iceland type of breeding you refer to takes place in the Middle East. Locals randomly mate their dogs together, either deliberately or accidentally, and the cute puppies are generously shared out to family members and friends and a very large percentage of them get dumped when they get past the cute puppy stage, and the kids get a brand new puppy to replace it, because puppies are always being born here and therefore dogs are disposable.

(If they are lucky, they stay with their family, but chained up outside even through 50 degree summers because Muslims supposedly aren't allowed to bring animals into a house, but anyway I digress).

Our dog was found in a park, which is a common dumping ground (because lots of white immigrants go there and the more caring dumpers know the pup may well get rescued) when she was 10-12 weeks old. Others get dumped at the beach, or tied up outside expats' houses. I have personally witnessed 2 persian cats thrown out of the boot of a car in the park.

As I have said before, she is a mutt, but I have no idea how strong her genes are - she could be the result of a father-daughter mating or brother-sister mating.

Many more dogs still are just 'released into the wild' (I know this for a fact after speaking to one Arab who had done exactly that because the dog got 'too noisy' and she would be better off 'with nature').

So we literally have strays on every single street, breeding willy nilly. It's the same with the cat population.

I am sure a bit of natural selection goes on - I work with a charity and it seems that the survivors are the feistiest, most aggressive dogs - they have to be to survive the heat, lack of water and food and kids throwing rocks at them (seems to be a national sport here). It's the same with cats - you wouldn't even want to take a kitten in for rehoming if it was born to a street cat. Natural selection in the wild produces aggressive, wary animals.

All of the street dogs are ugly, dog-shaped dogs which we know from experience people don't want to give homes to :(

I think that Flatbread has raised some genuinely interesting topics for debate in this thread, but she has totally de-valued her points by (a) trying to defend her own irresponsible breeding and (b) this stupid idea that natural selection is relevant to the UK dog population. Come to the Middle East and see how well dogs do when they're left to breed in a 'natural' way. When dogs are in such over-abundant supply, they become a disposable commodity and lose their value to people, and even become a pest.

By the way, sorry if my post seems racist in any way - it's how life is here, wry hierarchical according to race, white people being inferior to the locals and also seen as being a bit weird but soft when it comes to animals! You really have to live here to understand it properly!

used to live in same part of the world feesh and another sport i witnessed was children playing catch, or even football, with small animals

swallowed reading your post makes me want to cry even though I have first hand knowledge of a place where similar things happen

And feesh

Fresh, you have described pretty much word for word what I have seen happen on the streets in A Turkish town where my friend lives and I visit regularly.

Until 10 or 11 years ago, the dog population would reach a certain level and then as many as possible would be shot to keep numbers under control. Then, a charity came in, scooped up all the street dogs, neutered, vaccinated and tagged them and turned them loose again. That population is very small now and although they are still 'street' dogs, almost all have been adopted by business owners (interestingly, predominantly white ex-pats) and are given regular meals and a place to sleep so someone is looking out for them.

However, more and more dogs keep appearing on the streets, dumped by their owners when they become surplus to requirements. The charity set up a rescue shelter and does its best to neuter and rehome the dumped dogs but they can't keep up with the rate that new dogs appear. And as it is mostly only the white ex-pats that that take on the rescue dogs as the locals seem to prefer acquiring pups and them dumping them at a year old or so. They are mostly pedigrees (a lot are gundogs as hunting is popular in the area).

My friend has had 2 dogs from the rescue. The first was a little scrap of a thing that died 4 days after she got him from Parvo. Her current dog is from a mongrel litter that the rescue took off the streets not long after they began operating. That dog is now 9 and is very much the small, generic mongrel you get from allowing dogs to breed indiscriminately. Far from being the picture of health as a result of her genetic diversity, she has crippling joint problems that are considered unusual in a dog of her size.

Oh I'm evil.

I have in the past rehomed a dog due to my husbands declining health at the time (he was listed for transplant and spent 16months in hospital 30miles from home). I have also handed one of my designer cross breeds to breed rescue when it became apparent that he wasn't happy here and we couldn't cope.

And I still have a designer cross breed.

Ooo a scale of evil! How brilliant.

My DH is always telling me how evil I am, now I can tell him!

He will be pleased

Feesh, it is a complex issue on how people regard dogs in different cultures, and how to work for dog welfare within different cultural norms.

What worked in Iceland was required microchipping (or equivalent) and fines for abandoned dogs on the street. Also random checks on dogs with their owners and fines if they were not microchipped.

Can't decide where I fit on the scale of evil.

One responsibly bred pedigree probably cancels out and inherent goodness in owning a rescue backyard-bred crossbreed. However, condoning responsible selective breeding must put me at the right hand of Satan himself anyway so...

I'm still not sure how evil I am. I mean, I am a bit of a cow quite frequently, but I feed the birds and shit. If I am evil, Jasper can be my evil familiar. He'd like that.

I would think that the size of the population in Iceland means such compulsory schemes are easier to police and require less resources to do so.

Microchipping is compulsory in UK from this year (is it April?) but dog licensing has always been compulsory in N.Ireland and owners of dogs found straying are fined. Guess which territory within UK contributes most towards the overall UK stats for dogs PTS in shelters annually... It is impossible to police and enforce. Many dogs lifted as strays are never reclaimed as the owners won't pay the fine...cheaper to get a new pup from Joe Bloggs up the street whose dog has just had a litter. And thwre aren't enough rescue places or homes for the unclaimed dogs. The dog license is only £5 per year and yet owners who pay are massively in the minority.

If such schemes can't be made to work with a human population of 1.7million; there is no chance in the rest of the UK.