Animal Advocates Society of BC: Report on dog overbreeding — and a rational solution to puppymills and backyard breeders, which produce the excess and unsocialized dogs that pounds kill.
The major reason is easy, untraceable, untaxable money - Animal Advocates estimates, from scrutinizing some pet stock sections of the Sun and the Province newspapers, that there are dogs and puppies being offered for sale some weeks by private individuals to the value of $300,000. Further hundreds of thousands of dollars worth are being sold in pet stores. (In 1999, Animal Advocates Society submitted to many municipalities our report/proposal to improve the lives of puppies in pet stores, "Pups in Pet Stores - Legalized Cruelty".)
Because dog breeding and reselling is entirely unregulated, it became a "cottage industry", a source of undeclared income, and often a supplement to welfare. See our investigative report "Breeding and Puppymills in BC".
Because breeding is unregulated, abuse is endemic. To allow this is a betrayal of helpless dogs.
Throughout the province of BC there are thousands of backyard casual breeders, puppymills and puppy resellers. No municipality is exempt. Puppy reselling is an issue that can and should be dealt with through business licensing, but standards need to be written. Currently there are no regulations, and reselling puppies in quantity has become a big business.
Even in municipalities that have no actual puppymills (very few) there is casual backyard breeding where puppies are sold while too young, unhealthy, and unidentifiable. Puppy reselling — the importing and selling of puppymill pups — is also on the increase.
The answer to the result of uncontrolled breeding — thousands of abandoned and unwanted dogs — is not just kinder pounds and ever more people trying to rehabilitate, retrain, and rehome all the abandoned, surrendered, and desocialized dogs that we show in our Investigative Report "No More Yard Dogs". Rescue and rehoming and kind pounds are the "feel good" solutions, but all these have the effect of "enabling" the breeders to escape their moral responsibility to the pups they breed and sell. Breeders could not escape their responsibility without all the kind "rehomers and rescuers" who take that responsibility for them. The breeders of unclaimed dogs in pounds could be fined, making the breeder responsible, if all pups had to be micochipped.
The responsibility must be placed where it belongs for the problem to ever change. Breeding licenses that demand standards of care and identification, and are not cheap, will discourage many backyard and puppy mill breeders.
Licensing breeders will also discourage backyard and puppy mill breeders because of the possibility that the income from the pups will be traceable.
See why mandatory cat spay/neuter laws did not work in the BC municipalities that adopted them.
Unsterilized dogs that do not produce litters of pups are not the problem.
Only the actual production of pups is the problem. To insist that all dog owners must sterilize their dog is draconian, unpopular, and unnecessary. And differentials in licensing only work with those owners who buy licenses, and these are not generally the people who are backyard and puppy mill breeders. Even if every intact dog's owner had to pay a huge license fee, that would not stop backyard breeders. Nor do fee regulations allow for inspection of the premises and the health of the pups, or for microchipping of pups for future identification. AAS believes that sterilized dogs are healthier and happier, but those who do not agree should not be forced to sterilize their dog - as long as it is not producing more dogs.. People who sterilize their dogs do not do so to save a few dollars on an annual license fee; they do it because they are responsible people. People who breed their dog do not care about a few dollars more to do so as the cost is covered by the sale of the pups. License fee differentials have failed to control backyard breeding and it is easy to see why.
It is not possible to tell easily if a female dog is spayed. This is one reason that mandatory spay/neuter laws are so ineffective. Municipalities that adopted mandatory spay/neuter of cats laws have confirmed that the laws are impossible to enforce and have not been effective. They have done absolutely no good, as Animal Advocates explained to the municipalities that adopted them at the time, while submitting our own Investigative Report and Control Of Cat Breeding Proposal, "Too Many Cats". Enforcement officers of a mandatory spay/neuter law for dogs would have to have a dog examined by a vet to prove it is unspayed, and even then it is sometimes not possible to be sure without surgery. Why do this if the dog is not giving birth?
Control of breeding is the solution:
Only actual litters of pups are the problem, and they are easily identified. In order for pups to be sold (and no one gives them away anymore), the pups must be advertised in some way (all newspapers are full of these ads), even if it is only a sign on a telephone pole. Concerned animal lovers can report ads to the authorities. AAS would create a database. Litters of pups can then be identified and inspected and the bylaw enforced. The bylaw would include provisions for the health of the mother and pups, veterinary requirements, the obligation to spay the mother (according to the type of license, whether "Casual" or "Commercial" (see below), and identification requirements of the pups. It would also permit the seizure of unlicensed dogs and the pups if necessary.
Only females give birth - unneutered male dogs cannot give birth to pups. The dogs that are being abused by breeders, kept in cages in back yards and in puppymills are almost entirely females. Although AAS believes that sterilized dogs are happier and healthier, we can see by the huge proliferation of backyard breeding that licensing fee differentials have done nothing to discourage backyard breeders, just responsible dog owners.
Like most bylaws, our proposed "control of breeding" bylaws would be complaint-driven only. This is a much more community-friendly, less invasive approach than mandatory spay/neuter laws. Animal welfare groups and concerned individuals would do the monitoring and reporting.
If a person or household wishes to casually breed their family dog they must buy a "Casual Breeding License" which would allow a dog to be bred once only. (Suggested fee: $300.00; more than the average cost to spay a dog.)
Failure to comply with the above would result in a fine (of three times the license fee?).
If a person, or household, wishes to breed a dog more than once, or ever breed more than one dog, a commercial breeding license that requires that all breeding dogs kept or owned by the breeder must have a readable ear tattoo or a microchip. (Suggested fee: $500 as each pup typically is worth from $200 to $2,500.)
Failure to comply with the above would result in a fine (of three times the license fee?).
SPCA spokesperson Lorie Chorytk said that people want the SPCA to press for laws that would forbid anyone except licensed breeders of pedigree animals from allowing their pets to reproduce. (Chortyk did not say licensed by whom.)
That is the knee-jerk solution. Too many licensed (and sometimes CKC registered) breeders of purebred dogs run despicable puppymills. Too many purebred dogs suffer from deliberate painful deformities and early deaths.
The thinking solution is two-tier license regulations for all dogs, cross breeds and purebreds: a one-time inexpensive casual breeding license (dog must then be spayed), and an expensive commercial breeding license (anyone who breeds a female dog more than once or breeds more than one dog). The license would include the provision for inspections of the dog and pups' health, the facility, and the condition that all pups receive certain veterinary care and microchipping before sale, and the condition that any pup that ends up in the pound/SPCA system, be the financial responsibility of the breeder who can be traced through the microchip.
This is a fair and enforceable system. Mandatory spay/neuter is overkill and unenforceable. Not all unsterilized dogs are producing more dogs. License only those that are. Litters of pups have to be advertised; it is easy to find and control unlicensed breeders.
Read the touching story of Beegee, the blind, worn out breeder left in the woods to die when she was no longer profitable, as told by Diane Nicholson, the woman who found her and saved her.