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Breed-specific legislation

Are you up for a debate about discrimination and breed specific legislation? This would exercise the listsminds and help us form arguments against breed specific legislation? This would also be offering a service to many dog owners around the globe?

I am completely against breed-specific legislation. While effort to convince legislators and fight pending breed-specific laws are commendable, I believe the best way to fight this battle is through educating the public and by encouraging all dog owners to become responsible trainers. We need to show by example that, to pick one breed at random, a Rottweiler (I have two) can be one of the most loving and loyal dogs on earth.

Unfortunately, other irresponsible individuals have worked hard to show the opposite--such as ruthless breeders and trainers and owners who take Rotties, pit bulls, Dobermans and other breeds and intentionally make them into monsters. Then there are the puppy mills that make dogs into whatever they happen to turn out to be, with no regard for their health or temperaments.

Therefore, another important step is to create new laws and enforce existing laws more stringently so that idiots who breed killer dogs to impress their friends, protect their illicit drug trade, or just to feel macho go to jail.

If you have read Ray & Lorna Coppinger's "Dogs," which is probably one of the most important dog books to be published in many years, you might want to review Part III and IV, where they come to some controversial conclusions about the way that breeders, showers, owners, and even those who are aided by service dogs unwittingly create hardship for dogs! Although this is not directly related to breed-specific legislation, it is an example of how danger and unfair treatement of breeds can come, often unknowingly, from the dog establishment itself in perhaps more incidious and far-reaching ways than any discrimitive legislation is responsible for.

I am in strong agreement with their comments and criticism of breeders and conformation events, and the lunatic emphasis many put on pure-bred dogs. To encapsulate a few of their points briefly, they point out that the insistence on maintaining breed standards (encouraged and made difficult to reform by the major organizations, from breed-specific organizations to the AKC) and the pressures that this places on breeders has resulted in the following:

1) The narrowing of breed bloodlines rather than the natural expansion of available bloodlines which would be much to the benefit of the breed,

2) Which leads to the fostering and retention of breed-specific genetic diseases due to inbreeding and the greater emphasis placed on phenotype (appearance) over genotype (genetic predisposition to health). In some circumstances, poor breeding practices also serve to intensify unwanted traits--making more aggressive Dobermans, for example, with unstable temperaments. This leads us back to the topic of BSL since these dogs create more bad press for the breed.

3) A dog-culture which sees pedigreed dogs as somehow superior to mixed breeds, and therefore unfairly extends greater advantages and opportunities to pedigreed dogs (participation in sanctioned events, the right to hold titles, etc.)

4) And perhaps the most repugnant to me, personally, the creation and continuance of breeds with appearences that please our whimsical fancies while intentionally creating anatomical features that are a clear detriment and danger to the dog's well-being.

An example of this would be any of the several brachycephalic (short faced) breeds such as Shih Tsus and Bulldogs, whose foreshortened faces and lack of a projecting muzzle create breathing problems, an increased danger of overheating, and teeth, jaw, and eye problems for many of these breeds. Another example is the breeding of larger and larger dogs which of course puts these dogs at increased risk of hip dysplasia, spinal problems, bloat, and arthritis.

I think BSL should be opposed by any thinking and feeling dog owner. However, along with that, and perhaps more important in the long run, I am in favor of BREEDER-specific legislation which needs to be applied equally to the drug pushers on the seamier side of town as well as the folk across the tracks at the ritzy Crufts Dog Show who in their own way are, perhaps unwittingly, doing their best to degrade the genetic vitality of pedigreed breeds while also supporting the breeding of "mutant" breeds that are often doomed to a life of misery.

(Of course, if the breeding/show establishment cannot mutilate the dog genetically by artificial selection, they will mutilate it physically by docking its tail, or slicing its ears, or ripping off its dew claws in the name of aesthetics!)

So fight BSL, by all means, but how about some housecleaning and changes in century-old rules and traditions within the pedigreed dog industry so that we can be assured of receiving healthy dogs with good temperaments, which may eventually make BSL a moot point! Endangering a breed's well-being is not worth a stupid medal!