An endemic problem with dog culture is that we are lazily imprecise with our language and willing to throw around very damaging labels where they are not really deserved when commenting on our peers. This not only elevates the culture of character assassination, it also devalues the words and concepts themselves. Even worse, it offers ammunition to the enemies of dog breeding.
One all-too-common manifestation of this problem is blaming “breeders” for the horrors that result from hoarding animals that are intact.
Take the recent story of Rosie the Chihuahua, whose debut article was titled “Liberating Rosie, a Sad Testament to the Horrors of Bad Dog Breeding.” Now this blog is no stranger to the horrors of bad dog breeding, but I make an effort to correctly assign blame to the causal factors which lead to animals crippled by malgenics.
But if you read the above article, notice that the word “hoard” appears only once on the entire page, yet the word “breed” is mentioned 8 times in the short article and another 20 times in the comments. The website which now exists to raise money for Rosie and spread “awareness” repeatedly slanders and blames breeders for her condition:
This poor little angel dog needs to be the poster child for all those vermin that call themselves animal breeders. Disgusting. I do hope Rosie survives and lives a wonderful life filled with love, care protection and safety forever and I do hope these breeders get a hefty fine that they will never be able to crawl out of and big time jail time. – KP
These kinds of things need to be put out there for all to see, not just those of us who work so hard to save these babies. I bet 75% of the population of the USA have no clue as to what really happens with breeders, puppy mills, or even some pet stores. That doesn’t even include the slaughter houses. Like I do, I’m sure you all feel helpless and up against a wall. – BB
The author of the Rosie site repeatedly characterizes this hoarding gone awry situation as first and foremost a “breeder” doing this for profit.
Back yard breeding and animal hoarding has always been around but with the internet making it so easy to sell animals quickly and anonymously, this unethical practice is booming. In the city, where one can only have three or four dogs, this type of operation requires keeping the dogs hidden from neighbors. The breeder doesn’t want to risk detection by taking the dogs to the vet so the animals continue breeding – brother to sister, father to daughter and so on – until there are dozens of sick dogs living in filth.
If you bought a puppy off Craigslist or from someone selling dogs in a grocery store parking lot, chances are your puppy came from a backyard breeder/hoarder.
In 2012, a backyard breeder/hoarder in a quiet Los Angeles suburb lost her house, and she had to find someone to take over 40 dogs that no one – not even her next-door neighbors – knew she had. These dogs had never been outside, never seen the sunshine, never had medical care and were terrified of the outside world. There were puppies, pregnant mothers, dogs so matted it was impossible to tell what breed they were. As with any situation where dogs are inbred, there were several with congenital defects – in this case several were born without front legs.
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The purpose of this page is to shine a light on backyard breeding/animal hoarding. If what happened to Rosie bothers you – good! Call your local animal control agency and ask if there is a law to prevent backyard breeding and if they are enforcing them. If there isn’t a law, then gather some like-minded neighbors and get your city council to write and pass one!
A followup article that was published to both Vetstreet and Yahoo continues the anti-breeder tirade but fails to connect the obvious incongruity between someone who is giving away puppies for FREE and being labeled a greedy back yard breeder.
Imagine spending the first two years of your life in a house with 40 other dogs, hiding under a piece of furniture to avoid being trampled and never going outside to play in the sun. These horrible conditions are how Rosie, a 2-year-old Chihuahua, lived until being rescued from a backyard breeder in June 2012.
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The breeder and animal hoarder Rosie lived with was brought to Muhlbauer’s attention by a friend who noticed a sign in her neighbor’s front yard advertising free puppies. When the friend went into the neighbor’s house, she discovered Chihuahuas who had been inbreeding for years, resulting in a number of puppies with deformities like Rosie’s.
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Backyard Breeding in the U.S.
Rosie’s story is also drawing attention to the problem of backyard breeding, which is “similar to puppy mills, just on a smaller scale,” according to the ASPCA.
“They are breeders who keep more dogs than they can responsibly and humanely care for, in order to breed them and sell the puppies for a profit,” says Cori Menkin, Esq., senior director of the ASPCA’s Puppy Mills Campaign.
Menkin says many breeders sell online or directly to the public to avoid regulations, and since they are not required to be licensed, it’s impossible to track how widespread the problem is.
“State regulation is spotty, and enforcement is not always the best,” says Menkin.
If people want to help combat backyard breeding, Menkin recommends adopting from a shelter and avoiding buying puppies in pet stores. Muhlbauer also suggests people look into the dog breeding rules in their community and alert animal control if they find a backyard breeder.
“Rosie is an example of when greed takes over everything in your life, and you don’t think of a dog as a living being,” Muhlbauer says.
I’m not surprised with a preachy and ill conceived article appearing on Examiner.com, but VetStreet should seriously reconsider the quality of analysis coming from Lisa Granshaw.
Breeding is an active pursuit, it is not passive nor unguided. It is the considered and directed production of animals by selective mating, requiring both organization and control. This is no small distinction, it is akin to the difference between accidental manslaughter and premeditated serial murder. Applied to animal mating, the later is qualzucht, the former is an unfortunate side-effect of mental illness.
As horrifying as the neglect and abuse is in this case, this isn’t an issue of breeding ethics and animal husbandry, this is clearly an issue of hoarding and mental illness that includes animals. No police powers or governing body of animal sport or show could have changed this, and no law meant to curtail animal breeders in good faith would change the situation either.
This is a hoarder situation and thus Rosie and the numerous other malformed and congenitally diseased animals are most certainly the result of generations of random incestuous inbreeding from the stock this person had before they really went off the deep end. Can anyone tell me what the benefit would be of a rational mind directing breeding to create a dog with no front arms? One with no lower jaw and a double set of teeth on the top? Fragile, paper thin skin that doesn’t heal, joints that ossify and freeze in place, eyelids insufficient to cover the globe of the eye and immune systems unable to stave off mange?
The overwhelming issue here is not breeding, it’s hoarding and total loss of control. If you want to talk about engineered and abusive inbreeding of Chihuahuas, I’d start with the NYT article about what they are doing, very intentionally, in Japan with them. If you want to talk about the guided malformation of the face and mouth, stubby legs, eyelids that don’t cover the cornea, crippled movement, spinal deformities, and the intentional inflection of harm upon an animal by people apparently in their right mind, yes, let’s have that discussion.
Trying to use this fiasco as evidence against “breeders” is base sensationalism and horribly misguided. We don’t condemn the institution of parenting when drug addled junkies neglect their toddlers and they suffer harm, we point to the direct cause: drugs. Would we condemn the art of Gardening and professional Gardeners because this hoarder’s yard is overgrown and some rose bushes are a mess? Would we lambaste Interior Decorators because her house is filthy and overflowing with detritus? Would we pillory Librarians because she has stacks of newspapers 5 feet deep? And is it the fault of Chefs that her refrigerator is overgrown with bacteria and mold? No.
So why blame Rosie on breeders? That position is irresponsible. To conflate de facto breeding with de jure breeding will only punish upright Breeders who are under the jurisdiction of the law. Under a wide definition, you are a de facto breeder of mice if one had a litter in your garage. Should you need a license? When your cat brings a dead one back to you as a gift, you should be prosecuted for animal abuse? Do you owe a standard of care to the wasps in the nest under your deck? Are you a commercial concern if the squirrels nest in your trees and have X litters per year?
A de facto breeder would not be touched by any de jure breeder laws and licensing would not have prevented this. Clearly pet limit laws and pet licensing laws failed to prevent this situation, and adding additional measures against professional breeders would have been equally as impotent. Rosie was not created under any circumstance that would have bent to the law before this happened.
Rosie has nothing to do with profit motive, as if you have any evidence to show that she was a brood bitch for a profitable business or even an attempt at one. That poor dog is the product of the exact opposite. It was not guided intentionally by the hand of a breeder, it and its parents were neglected and not guided, specifically by the chaos of hoarding. It is a product of entropy, not design.
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I once saw one of these people attacking “puppy millers who bread dogs in the backyard.”
Yes. Let’s conflate them all.
But I wonder what it’s the dog breaders, and not the dog breeders…
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In relation to the reference to what they are doing in Japan with dog breeding. In addition to the common problem of dig fads, etc – Japanese fanciers face the additional problem of a rabies quarantine blocking easy importation of dogs from anyplace that is not rabies free. So they can easily source new breeding stock from England, Hawaii and Australia. All of those sources have some problems with inbreed lineages. Otherwise there is an elaborate system in which imported dogs can go through, microchipping, vaccination and dual rabies titer testing along with an examination y a USDA veterinarian and a 6 month waiting period in the country of origin and then be shipped to Japan and not have to spend 6 months in a quarantine kennel. I have done this twice to send Borzoi to Japan. The new owners were very dedicated indeed! Even though I did the 6 months maintainance at my cost (dog food, heartworm meds, flea control and vaccinations only plus the cost of the rabies titers [done at only one official lab in the US] and the USDA vet. I think frozen semen can be imported free of this rabies quarantine.
A similar problem exists in the US for some livestock of the breeds that can catch hoof and mouth disease. You can only breed new breeding stock in to a USDA facility and keep them there for life, you can remove the offspring to your farm. This is why llamas in the US are so inbred.
sorry about the numerous typos. I tend to think faster than I type. Hope that does not cause Chris to deprecate the logic and factual contact of my writings. Too bad this blog software has neither a “review prior to posting” function nor a spell check function.
You can submit the comment again and I’ll delete the old version. And I did have a very nice spell check feature for a while until it broke the whole blog so it had to go. It even had an upload attachment feature so you could include photos and such with comments. Made me sad when it didn’t work when WordPress had an update.
Hoarding is a sensitive issue which must be handled carefully, or it will back-fire. The topic of hoarding is not really something the public should be self-deemed experts about.
See: http://vet.tufts.edu/hoarding/
You don’t have to be an expert to tell the difference between a hoarder and a Breeder, though.
And it’s not just the AR wackjobs, breeders slander each other with “hoarder” and “mill” all the time.
Trying to legislate hoarding is counter-productive. The ones with symptoms of the mental illness will actively try to avoid talking with the neighbours, the authorities or society in general because they are afraid of being prosecuted or misunderstood. Because of the paranoia, they have poor access to mental healthcare.
So, trying to classify breeders with hoarders and building case laws based on those encounters will only force the ones who need help further into solitude and isolation. In their world, they are not affected by the laws outside their own living space.
This is one of those examples where no amount of laws passed will alleviate the situation. Logically, these scenarios speak more for social safety nets more than it does for prosecutions. Instead of going on about why people are allowed to breed animals, the idiots should be asking themselves why those individuals don’t have access to healthcare or to social networks.
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It also means those people would not even be using Craigslist, Kijiji or any other online classifieds.
Hoarders don’t sell.
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Excellent article, Chris.
In general one does not have to pass any additional legislation to give the city/county/state the legal status to step in and take actions in relation to hoarding.
With multiple animals the hoarders are almost always going to be in violation of the codes related to licensing of kennels/catteries. Even if they have legit licenses once one gets too many animals for the facility inspection will force a clean up and correction of the problem. If the owner does not have a license for the number of animals, once the hoard is discovered existing laws on animal care and welfare can be utilized.
I personally have helped with a number of “too many animals”. Situations in which the ability of the owner to care for the number of accumulated animals was the problem. In no case that I have helped with was the accumulation of animals actually created by a profit motive. People trying to make money from the animals will dispose of unsalable ones and non-productive ones as maintaining excess animals is costly.
In most of the cases where I personally knew the people what had happened was that the person had developed the belief that only they could care for the animals and they were resistant to rehoming the animals.
I have been called both a mill and a hoarder. Nowadays, anyone with more than four dogs is a hoarder, by default. Any who breeds and isn’t well entrenched within the butt licking system of Cool People Lickspittles in a given breed is a mill.
Useless terms, both of them.
I would like to see introspection, self-examination, be taught at the grade school level. There is no introspection going on with these people, no reflection on their beliefs, no examination of why they would think what they do and whether there is any truth to it or justification for it.
Just go with your feeeeeelings, little rescuers.
Brett is sitting here watching the current incarnation of the Transformers cartoon; there was more introspection from a couple of robots in the opening scene before the song starts than I have ever seen from one of these hardcore rescuers.
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Hi Chris : I think this article written a year ago addressed an important issue that should have generated more suggestions of pro active methods by ethical Breeders.
One all-too-common manifestation of this problem is blaming “breeders” for the horrors that result from hoarding animals that are intact.——breeders slander each other with “hoarder” and “mill” all the time. These huge seizures of neglected canines with scores of volunteers taking responsibility and donations to care for the expense doing the clean up.
A breeder is not a breeder when they are a hoarder, and neglected animals of Backyard breeding for Profit. Animal hoarding occurs when a person houses, and often breeds, more pets, and animals that by sensible standards of judgment justifiably humanely they can care for. Breeding in my opinion is not casual or passive endeavor or irresponsible to the care and conditions the dogs must live. It is the production of dogs by selective mating that is organized managed and controlled. This is quite distinctive and different from the conditions by which an ethical humane breeder reproduces to improve the breed taking full responsibility for the animal’s welfare. This means placing puppies in responsible homes. The difference between Hoarders and Puppy Mills who bred for money or kept as pets should have a distinctive terminology difference. This total disregard in my opinion for living animals is passive aggressive covert angry anti-social human behavior. I agree it is not correct or fair that Breeders are categorized with Hoarders and Puppy Mills for profit. Maybe we need to change the terminology, or title so the public knows the difference?
I likewise see no means to create police powers or governing bodies to prevent or avoid by any law to change the narcissist personality disorder. The change must come from self-governing ethical breeders to better recognize and screen those puppy buyers would be a good beginning. I have yet seen or researched a Puppy Mill for example that could not be traced to a registered pure breed.
There should be a way to solve the issues that in my opinion could begin.
If the Rescue/ Adoption protocol by the Vast Organizations were to cooperate with new regulations for pets surrendered by ethical breeders. Likewise, the AKC should be offering us ideas and solutions to begin to curtail the raids and seizures.
Address the consequences now a scientific fact of over vaccinating destroying the immune system and spaying and neutering before bone development and organ development is complete would be a positive step in the right direction. Development of a Questionnaire that would reveal the Narcissist and the Passive Aggressive personalities might be a great start in my opinion because these individuals are said to have a lack of empathy for other people, so isn’t it safe to say lack of empathy for our canines? Realize in these few links this is part of complex of human behavior in our society.
https://www.facebook.com/BanHoarderrescuesSuchAsCompassionForCanines
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/23-shetland-sheepdogs-saved-brooklyn-hoarders-freed-article-1.1134176
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/88-Dogs-Recued-from-Hoarders-NJ-Farm-87017937.html
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rescued-dogs-makeovers-adoption-20140710-story.html
http://www.oprah.com/relationships/4-Dogs-Who-Were-Saved-from-an-Animal-Hoarder
http://dogtime.com/dogs-rescued-from-hoarder-need-more-rescuing.html
Read more: http://www.border-wars.com/2013/03/confusing-hoarders-with-breeders.html#ixzz3CbQUArJI
I bought my first Chihuahua from a breeder who became a hoarder.She had a website where she sold teacups for $2k each. But, she had to breed a lot of dogs to get a few teacups. She had a lot of trouble selling the bigger pups because the newspaper doesn’t allow people to sell dogs more than twice a year from a phone number and she had hundreds to sell.
By the time my doggie was 6-8, she had quit trying to sell anything but teacups and the dogs piled up in her house and barn. When she was finally busted, they took out 880 dogs from a triple wide and a barn. This is the truth. Her name, Wanda Jones. Her rescued pups filled pounds all over the country. I wrote about her in my first blog @ hairlesschiwawa.com under the title of “Breeding for Teacups is Breeding for Greed”, but if you google her name you can find the articles about her bust. The first reports said 300 dogs, but that was just in the house. By the time she went to trial it was 880. They took her dogs except 4-5 and pretty much let her go, because she was really pathetic. I ran into her in a thrift store a couple of years ago and we talked about it. Whew!
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See, this situation has more meat and would actually allow me to criticize this person’s actions *as a breeder.*
The decision to produce many excess dogs that they were unable to sell just to produce teacups is no different in my mind than the wasteful breeding done by color breeding like Harlequin and Merle where normal merle Great Danes are considered junk or they create double merle monsters to further their goals of producing saleable or showable dogs.
Now, of course, that this person eventually crashed and burned due to hoarding too many animals does speak against their abilities as a Breeder, and of course this is the sort of situation that show elitists love to use simply because these teacup dogs are not being shown (and of course they apply the same slander to mixed bred and designer dogs too), and yes there are scammers who get into popular and expensive dogs just for the money aspects. But we need to treat those cases for what they are.
So had this article been written about your experience, I’d be more sympathetic.
I see no need for sympathy here. By the time she was busted, she was a full-fledged hoarder. She thought no one else could take care of her dogs as well as she could. And they were breeding uncontrollably.
The excess breeding to get teacups is exactly why I titled my article as breeding for greed. But of course she was pretty disturbed to be able to do that and not be able to sell the big pups. My Chip cost $100 and weighed 10 pounds as an adult. He was the one that got me started on deer chis as opposed to AKC chi types. He was a wonderful dog except he chased cars if he could sneak out.
I didn’t know she was selling teacups until she was busted. I was one of the last buyers through her newspaper ads, and I bought a normal dog.
“Trying to use this fiasco as evidence against “breeders” is base sensationalism and horribly misguided. We don’t condemn the institution of parenting when drug addled junkies neglect their toddlers and they suffer harm, we point to the direct cause: drugs.”
Exactly. And no law is going to stop drug-addled junkies from neglecting their children. The system has failed these people. We need a new system.
And Rosie should be humanely euthanized. Good god, what kind of life can that poor little thing have???
You can see a video of her on her dedicated webpage. She’s clearly having fun and being a normal, but frail, little dog. One can only hope, though, that if her health deteriorates, her owner decides to euthanize her rather than round up money to put her through any painful procedures and using the dog for gaining even more attention…
Why do they let this poor creature live (and continue to suffer)? (a) their Saviour Complex. (b). So they can use the dog as a tool with which to beat up on dog people
There you go again Chris, cluttering the issue with facts.
I so detest vagueness, wide strokes of communication based on emotional venues.
Smarter reporting, while somewhat less sensational, will allow for more smarter sheep..or at least better aware.
Good dissection as always..
Indeed. It’s a radical notion I guess, but I think people should be prosecuted (or persecuted) for crimes they actually commit versus the luke warm outrage of unthinking dogooders. There are serious and fundamental problems in dog breeding that get overlooked by conflating tangential issues like hoarding with true dog breeding.
In fact, it’s not simply a matter of feeling persecuted for crimes dog breeders didn’t commit, the focus on hoarding allows dog breeders themselves to downplay their own abuses with “well look over there, I’m nothing like THAT mess!” logic. It’s like befriending a troll so you can look more handsome and refined when you stand next to them.
I find Rosie to be fascinating in a freak-show sort of way, in that she looks more like a giant mutant shrew than anything canine, and yet is still alive. She has some severe birth defects that you’d think would be fatal (and probably not just the visible ones).
It is common to see AR extremists indiscriminately link poor conditions and overcrowding with terms like “hoarding”, “puppy mill” and “breeder” (which is now apparently a pejorative slur also), but why use an offensive term like “hoarder” at all? Animal abuse is animal abuse. The number of animals under one’s care doesn’t matter one whit. Once we start to toss about the AR terms like “hoarder” and “puppy mill” we are falling into the animal wrongists’ trap. They love it when we popularize such terms; it makes their mission of denirating animal owners so much the easier. After all “hoarder” neatly compartmentalizes not just breeders but those who keep a large number of dogs for any purpose….hunting packs, those training for work, farm dogs etc etc…
As of 2012, the American Psychiatric Association classifies “hoarding” as a mental disorder and it is described in their DMS manual. It is considered a variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, that term generally refers to one who hoards inanimate possessions. Naturally, the AR nuts seized upon the opportunity to associate the term “hoarder” with those who own animals…and more than a couple of animal will qualify you as a “hoarder” now in public perception.
However, the general public and the press are not qualified to pass judgement on who qualifies as a “hoarder”. Such a diagnosis can only be made after adequate assessment and diagnosis by a mental health professional. And even many of them are prejudiced by AR propaganda. Here’s a frightening website by Tufts University, an entire program dedicated to denigrating animal owners as mentally ill “hoarders”.
http://vet.tufts.edu/hoarding/
As to the assumption that missing and deformed limbs are a result of genetic defect, let’s interject a little bit of science into the subject. Such conditions are invariably developmental defects resulting from nutritional deficiencies or exposure to toxins during gestation. You can inbreed till the cows come home and not get missing limbs as a result. While such problems MAY be an indicator of poor care during gestation, even conscientious, ethical breeders may see the occasional developmental defect occur.
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How is Tufts University denigrating animal-owners as hoarders?
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I’m assuming that you viewed the web page? It’s entire content has to do with animal owners as hoarders. Not hoarding of objects, but animals. This promotes the AR objective of classifying “hoarding” as an animal offense, which helps them in their propaganda campaign demonizing animal owners. Who, of course, are “hoarders” if they happen to own more than a few animals.
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I have read the website years ago, and I have re-read it again. And talked with the researchers. There is nowhere that classify animal owners with animal hoarders. They have a very strict criteria of what constitutes a hoarder or not. You can have unlimited animals and not be considered as a hoarder as long the living conditions are reasonable. So, commercial breeders and animal-lovers are not affected.
Basically, if someone lives in a shithole, then they are a hoarder. Being slightly dirty or unclean is not considered as hoarding. It would require living in absolute squalor with the neighbours complaining about the smell and sewage quality before actions are taken. If you really think it is a website dedicated to the animal rights movement, then it makes people wonder what the living conditions of your house actually is…
The type of talk you are spouting out is quite similar to hoarders who are afraid of social services taking their children away.
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In other words, the animals need to be physically malnourished or suffering from untreated illnesses before anyone can take actions.
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I’m not sure if you’re in support of what I’ve written or against it. I use the term hoarder because I find it convenient and accurate. My point is to distinguish hoarding behavior from breeding behavior.
I think that’s removing the hoarding label, not adding it and participating in the AR game.
I don’t think it’s enough to just not use the term. I think the AR linking of breeding and hoarding needs to be actively combated and that means accurately talking about underlying action, cause, and effect.
In my view, the animal abuse side of hoarding is an unintentional byproduct of the behavior, I don’t think these people actively mean harm, and in fact watching them portrayed on the several TV shows which document them, most of them are in fact overly compassionate and blinded by the actual squalor. They do love the animals, or at least they are attempting a positive relationship. Sadly the animals often suffer.
But unintentional suffering is so very different than the active and aggressive forms of animal abuse.
If you feel I’m throwing hoarders under the bus, so be it, this is an animal breeding and ethics blog, not a mental health blog, so if they need to be voted off my island, someone else can take up their cause.
Hi Chris, I think you totally missed my point. I understand that your objective is to differentiate between “breeder” and “hoarder”….but unfortunately they are now one and the same to most people who merely give the subject perfunctory attention. This is intentional on the part of the AR groups. First the term was used to define one with a mental disorder, then it’s use morphed into “one who owns many animals” and even became featured on TV shows where breeders/owners are busted with dogs in poor conditions, so naturally JQP doesn’t have much of a leap to make from “hoarder” to “breeder”.
Even animal owners who should know better toss around the term “hoarder” without much thought to what it really means….which should be one who collects objects as an excessive compulsion. Extrapolating that term “hoarder” to animal owners was NOT a good thing but very intentional on the part of the AR groups. Using popularized terms for convenience’s sake like “hoarder” “puppy mill” and “backyard breeder” and so on really does play into the AR game plan, whether we choose to believe that it does or not.
Pejorative labels WILL be generalized and applied to us all, there is no way to get around it. That’s the sole gentle reminder I was attempting to interject.
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That’s the point of this article (and others in the future where I will attempt to put space between breeders and those other terms–puppy mill and backyard breeders–too). I think the difference in our positions is that I’m willing to call someone who hoards with animals a hoarder and I do not know what you would call them, if anything.
My goal is not to remove those terms from the lexicon, but to fight against their clearly inappropriate application to Breeders who do not deserve to be slandered with them.
Hi Christopher: There was a huge seizure of Dogs in Texas recently that a Federal Bankruptcy Judge issued Search and Seizure to a Rescue Organization. It is unfortunate that this article got so off track in my opinion because your goal and point should in my opinion “Breeders do not deserve to be standardized by what reflects in this case a narcissistic personality disorder. How does one have nearly 100 dogs of any breed on a small piece of property? How can a anyone care for that many dogs without a staff of kennel help? How can you feed that many if your are not selling? Sooner or later like this individual….she is bankrupted.
e of breeding ethics and animal husbandry, clearly an issue of hoarding … that includes animal at least reflects a narcissistic personality disorder. No breeding laws were meant to curtail animal breeders in good faith would change the situation. Again timeless your statements here apply …
”
No police power governing body of animal sport or show could have changed this, and no law meant to curtail animal breeders in good faith would change the situation either.” Why? You wrote it:
Breeding is an active pursuit, it is not passive nor unguided. It is the considered and directed production of animals by selective mating, requiring both organization and control. This is no small distinction, it is akin to the difference between accidental manslaughter and premeditated serial murder. Applied to animal mating, the later is qualzucht, the former is an unfortunate side-effect of mental illness.
Read more: http://www.border-wars.com/2013/03/confusing-hoarders-with-breeders.html#ixzz3CaM6SwF3
“As horrifying as the neglect and abuse is in this case, this isn’t an issue of breeding ethics and animal husbandry, this is clearly an issue of hoarding ….
now in this Texas case as well. ….
A breeder is not a breeder when they are a hoarder, and neglected animals of Backyard breeding for Profit. Animal hoarding occurs when a person houses, and often breeds, more pets, and animals that by sensible standards of judgment justifiably humanely they can care for. Breeding in my opinion is not passive endeavor or irresponsible to the care and conditions the dogs must live. It is the production of dogs by selective mating that is organized managed and controlled. This is quite distinctive and different from the conditions by which an ethical humane breeder reproduces taking full responsibility for the animal’s welfare. The difference between Hoarders and Puppy Mills who bred for money or kept as pets should have a distinctive terminology difference. This total disregard in my opinion for living animals is passive aggressive covert angry behavior. We need to be aware in these individuals it is a defense mechanism that is a disguise of people who aren’t comfortable being openly aggressive. They use the disguise to please and conform temporarily as a control mechanism to get what they want. They want their way, but they also want everyone to still like them.
I likewise see no means to create police powers or governing bodies to prevent or avoid by any law to change the narcissist personality disorder. The change must by the ethical breeders to better recognize and screen those puppy buyers would be a good beginning. I have yet seen or researched a Puppy Mill for example that could not be traced to a registered pure breed.
If the Rescue/ Adoption protocol by the Vast Organizations were to cooperate with new regulations for pets surrendered by ethical breeders. Address the consequences now a scientific fact of over vaccinating destroying the immune system and spaying and neutering before bone development is complete would be a positive step in the right direction. Development of a Questionnaire that would reveal the Narcissist and the Passive Aggressive personalities might be a great start in my opinion because these individuals are said to have a lack of empathy for other people, so isn’t it safe to say lack of empathy for our canines?
https://www.facebook.com/BanHoarderrescuesSuchAsCompassionForCanines
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/23-shetland-sheepdogs-saved-brooklyn-hoarders-freed-article-1.1134176
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/88-Dogs-Recued-from-Hoarders-NJ-Farm-87017937.html
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rescued-dogs-makeovers-adoption-20140710-story.html
http://www.oprah.com/relationships/4-Dogs-Who-Were-Saved-from-an-Animal-Hoarder
http://dogtime.com/dogs-rescued-from-hoarder-need-more-rescuing.html
, actually there are inherited conditions in which limbs are deformed or missing. Often as the result of some major disruption of more basic developmental processes that are under genetic control.
Here is a partial quote from a healthline.com description of the general conditions Amelia (a birth defect marked bu absence of one or more limbs):
http://www.healthline.com/galecontent/amelia-1
In extreme cases one of Chris’s least favorite inherited conditions, natural bob tail (heterozygous), in the homozygous condition can result in major deformities of the hind limbs and pelvis. Of course those pups would probably have spina bifida and not survive long after birth so you would not see them in a rescue situation.
While we are most aware of the thalidomide triggered phocomelia due to prescription of thalidomide to pregnant human mothers (it does not produce the condition in pregnant rats and mice) there are inherited limb deformities also. The more closely inbred a lineage of animals is, the greater is the chance of the often multiple recessive genes that can produce these deformities coming together to give you an unpleasant surprise in the pups.
The brachygnathomy seen in Rosie is inherited since length of upper and lower jaws are inherited separately in mammals.
People enormously underestimate what can happen with highly inbred lineages of vertebrates. It is educational to see the deformities present in a collection of very young larval “fancy” goldfish. The sort of goldfish where the prized adults have double tails and twisted humped distorted bodies and eyes that pop out of the head at strange angles. Most of the hatch will not survive the larval stage because they are even more distorted.
Proper embryonic development is dependent on a series of genetic switches which trigger and inhibit development of the parts of the body. Those switches are just as prone to mutation as any other genes. However most of the time the consequences are lethal to the developing embryo so we do not see the result.
The environmentally triggered deformities occur because foreign chemicals can also mess with these developmental triggers.
Hi Bonnie,
Thanks for the info….Yes, I am familiar with the nature of recessive genetic disease. While there are of course some congenital defects that are genetic in nature a genetic basis would be uncommon. Cleft palate is one example…..it can be genetic when observed to occur in a familial pattern, but often it is due to an environmental trigger, and one that is not necessarily any sort of “foreign chemical” like Vitamin A.
Do you feel that inbreeding itself predisposes to mutation? I wouldn’t think so, and for some odd reason the goldfish breeders seem to breed FOR the defects so of course they will get them.
Geneva Coats recently posted..Swap Meet Sales Targeted by Animal Rights Fanatics
It is not that inbreeding causes mutations, it is that inbreeding enormously increases the probability that mutations can become apparent when they are recessive or when a condition is based on a combination of genes on independent genetic loci.
Mutations (novel permanent changes in genes) can be caused by exposure to certain chemicals and other agents in the environment as well as by accidents that occur during the division of a cell into daughter cells during both growth and development (mitosis)and during production of the reproductive cells (mieosis).
I am well aware of the environmental component of many human developmental anomalies – I used to teach the embryology and developement of the face when I was teaching medical anatomy at Howard University School of Medicine.
However the general population of humans is much more outcrossed than most pure bred dog breeds so the chances of finding defects that have a genetic origin are much greater in pure bred dogs, especially when people start having closed gene pools in a specialty breeding program.
When I am advising dog breeders as to whether they are looking at a genetic or environmentally triggered defect here is the scheme I use:
If the pups are relatively outcrossed and the parents and near relatives are free of the defect and a lot of pups in the litter are effected, then suspect an environmental trigger. For example 1/2 a litter of Borzoi pups are born with their brains outside of their skulls due to inproper closing of the neural tube. Parents have no common ancestors in 4 generations. Never seen this in any first or second degree relatives.
This turns out to be classic heavy metal poisoning. The mother was living ih a very old house with lead paint on the window sills and had been chewing on the window sills which because lead paint satisifies the calcium drive” seen in pregnant mammals. We got a consult with a developmental pathologist on this one.
On the otherhand brachygnathia (extremely short underjaw) pops up usually in one pup in a litter at most but is seen scattered among 2nd degree relatives in many sighthound breeds. Probably due to two independent recessive genes, one for the sort of short lower jaw needed by something like a Peke and one for a long upper jaw needed by a greyhound.
I am going to ask you once to remove these images off your site. You do not have permission to use them in your rant. If there not taken down in 24 hrs as well as the content your copying onto this site…I will be filling a DMCA report to your hosting company.
HAHAHAHA! This should be fun to watch. Look, Chris, another one! She can’t argue with the truth, so she is going to try the “legal defense”.
I didn’t come here to argue Anna and don’t really care what the purpose of this site is, but what I do know is that for someone who is trying to sell their beautiful Collie puppies…and by the looks of the way Chris cares for his pets, it would be a shame for him to loose his presence out there and have to start over. And Chris, I wouldn’t be too sure about your 17 U.S.C. § 107 copy…I’ve had two others taken down (not for Rosie) for doing the same thing. I’m not going to play your little game here, so lets just see what happens 😉 Strike three against you as well, is that you are also promoting your donations on each of your rants. Which also means your using others stories, images, content, etc. to get donations from. And don’t worry about taking things down…I’ve already got copies of all the stuff I need 😉 Peace out guys and have fun with your rants…and Chris, do try and take in consideration that your trying to sell your dogs online. I’m totally serious that they are beautiful and I repeat, it looks like your a great breeder for those collies and it is sad to me that if you are “one of those excellent breeders” that you would trash your site with rants 🙁
Are you still keeping that poor deformed agonized creature alive?
Where did he advertise his litters on the blog? His kennel website and his blog are two separate platforms. The only similarity they have is that they share the same domain extension.
Even if you try to argue the point the blog is an extension of his kennel website: newspapers constantly invoke 17 U.S.C. § 107 and ask for subscription, sell ad space and cater to classifieds. What about platforms like Scientific American or Free Thoughts? They constantly using photos from other sources under “fair use” law and providing ad spaces and asking for donations as well.
Dave recently posted..The Sheep and the Wolverine
Dave, I’m a web designer, I’m not a breeder, a activist, etc. I know web, hosting, do’s and don’ts on the web with many connections. I don’t need to waste my time explaining what Chris should know better. The reason this has never gone down is because the folk that tried probably didn’t know how. There’s a lot more too it than what the newspapers can do…and the “fair use” stuff. The article that has been going around in papers, yahoo, etc. have permission 😉
And they have full permission to republish an article and the images in it. There is a difference between places like Yahoo, papers, etc. who actually republish an existing article compared to what Chris has done here. He did not just share an existing article, he went to Rosie’s site and copied text and images from the site and uploaded the images on his own, just to create a storm for you guys. To share an article…you share the whole article, then make your own rant below/above. His post is miscellaneous pieces taken from this site that was written about. Big difference.
You’re doing it wrong. LOL. It’s actually much more consistent with Fair Use to only republish limited amounts of the material that is being commented on. Republishing the entire article is rarely ever considered Fair Use. So you’re not only wrong about my Fair Use, you’re wholly wrong about Fair Use in general and actually giving out horrible advice.
Re-posting the whole article would be a copyright violation in virtually every western country.
Only small pieces are allowed to be quoted.
Dave recently posted..The Sheep and the Wolverine
Wrong.
Newspapers and blogging companies get away with “free use” all the time. Might want to try again. 🙂 Used to work in the newspapers industry.
Dave recently posted..The Sheep and the Wolverine
You want to know what’s really funny? Lisa Murphy’s “Web Design” consists of taking someone else’s website templates and stripping their copyright notice off the bottom an replacing it with her name. Even if you pay to license a template, the fact that she removes the credit from the ACTUAL web designers is hilarious. She’s no designer, she’s merely a website installer.
LOL, you have no idea what web designers do…Oh wait, Chris does everything!!! My gracious, I need you on my payroll!!!! Anything else you know Chris, besides being an ass? I bet he knows php, java, html the whole bit. Oh wait a minute…all wordpress sites are created with templates…hmmm, maybe he doesn’t know much after all. Get a life. A thief and breeder…might make for a good read someday of places to avoid as well as the other trolls on your forum.
Looking over your portfolio, and I think it’s safe to say that I’ve done more web design work than you have. I’ve been putting up websites for over 15 years. And when I’ve used templates, I don’t strip off the attribution and pretend it was original coding. That’s pretty bad form right there. And you don’t seem like the sort of person who actually abides by the licensing requirements of the templates and plugins you use.
Why are you sitting here gabbing instead of filing your DCMA takedown, complaining to Christophers web host and ISP, or having a lawyer draft a cease and desist?
I have had to contact many, many people over the years about violations of my and my husbands copyright on art, real violations that consisted of people making money by illegally selling prints of our work, or people trying to pass off our work as their own. This is not the way I went about it.
Jess recently posted..Monkeys? I Don’t Think So
Im dying here with all these replies. You guys have some more studying to do 😉
Of course.
We haven’t read those high-school pamphlets they gave you on copyright laws or those sheets they gave out about plagiarism in college.
Oh, poor us. We are in the dark because some adult didn’t hold our hands when we were young and stupid.
Dave recently posted..The Sheep and the Wolverine
That’s why I called your bluff. I went through every article published on this blog. Nowhere I see would imply Christopher is advertising his litters or future litters.
Sorry, but using wielding the “web-designer” card is piss-poor defense.
Especially since my trade is web-design, computer-programming and media-consultant.
Dave recently posted..The Sheep and the Wolverine
It wouldn’t matter, Dave, if Christopher DID have pups for sale listed, as he is not using his blog to sell them, just as an advertising platform. IOW, he does not write his articles in order to sell puppies. He continues to write even when he does not have a litter on the ground, and he doesn’t write articles about his puppies.
It also doesn’t matter that he has a donation request. That is a donation, it is entirely voluntary, and he does not charge to read the articles or comment on them, thus the primary purpose of the article is not to make a profit. His use of the text and images does not prevent, in any way, their copyright holders from profiting from them.
I have worked in the publishing industry for twenty years, my degree is in illustration. Laura is full of shit just like the rest of them.
Jess recently posted..Monkeys? I Don’t Think So
Lisa –
Don’t bother to delay. I won’t be removing the photos as I have used them under the Fair Use doctrine of the US Code. I don’t need anyone’s permission.
You can read about the last few people who tried to silence my “rants” with similar tactics here:
http://www.border-wars.com/2011/08/10000-pounds-sterling.html
The price of your free speech is my free speech. Yay 1st Amendment and Fair Use.
Sounds great Chris, I won’t delay and will keep this as a note that I gave you 24hrs. and you denied it.
And just for your information, I am not a breeder, not an activist, have no ties with spreading crap about breeders, I am simply a web designer who protects clients web content as well as doing there marketing (Rosie’s mom doesn’t even know I’ve found your site). Like I said on your forum, it is too bad that you and a few of your followers aren’t helping the community in good breeding practices and instead are taking things sooo personally. If you’re an excellent breeder for your collies, then you should have no problems. But as an outsider looking in, your portraying yourself as someone who is just trying sell puppies and using rants to get hits to your site. As a person who helps people sell services, products and much more, you’re doing this ass backwards. You could become one of those “trusting breeders” and using your time teaching people right and wrong ways to breed and not only would that help you sell excellent bred collies, your helping support all those good breeders. The only reason all the activists are so outrageous is because there’s not enough people out there that help…and you could be one of them, which is very sad. But instead, again as an outsider reading a few of these rants and only stumbled on your site because I found your site using Rosie’s images…I look at this nice clean site, a breeder with nice photos of mom and pop collies and there beautiful pups and all your text about them, then look at this rant blog you made and all I can say or think now is that your just another bad breeder with pretty photos of dogs that you probably bought online, pumped up with your smart words and just someone trying to make a buck. That is very sad Chris. Your young and if those are actually your collies and you do breed them as well as you portrait, you could be helping the collie lovers with some great pets.
Sounds like you don’t even own the copyright for the images, so you have no standing for a claim.
Oh, don’t worry about that, the owner and all the owners on your entire blog are going to be informed and trust me, web designers aren’t stupid, they are a clients best friend in backing them. I can collect all the info they need to file a claim, which those others who tried probably didn’t. Unfortunately because your acting like a young punk, it’s going to get much deeper than you expect. You see…I am much like a lawyer for a client, but more of a collector for a lawyer to build up a claim for a client or just for the client. Trust me, just because you’ve added some text to your blog that this is a “free speech” blog, doesn’t cover your ass. I work with tons of photographers and trust me…I think they make more money from lawsuits than selling images. All someone needs is the knowledge to collect the data to file a claim, know some good eggs who know what there doing and your history and may even be up for a nice lawsuit. Keep posting, it just gives me more ammo to work with 🙂
Ah, so you admit that you’re just here to harass me and you have no claim. So we’ve established that you have no standing and also that you’re a liar. You can’t file a valid claim nor issue any ultimatums. You are not a copyright holder, nor are you a power of attorney for a copyright holder, so in fact your actions here constitute fraud and an attempt to practice law without a license.
I also doubt how smart and lawyerly you think you are since you can’t even use the English language with the proficiency expected of a 4th grader. In a quick reading of your comments I’ve noticed numerous basic errors of spelling and grammar: they’re vs. their; you’re vs. your; with vs. to; lose vs. loose; let’s vs. lets; other’s vs. others; have vs. got; etc.
Even your attempt to invoke “tons of photographers” isn’t relevant here. Neither of these images were taken by a professional photographer and offered for sale via a photography business or stock photography outlet. They fail to meet any of the standards that would work against Fair Use. They are not themselves a commodity for sale, my Fair Use of them in no way diminishes their value or conflicts with their sale, etc.
So you’re just a cyber bully without a solid understanding of copyright law and Fair Use who doesn’t like what I wrote and who has no standing to even make a claim. So have fun with your little attack project but I have no fear that I am going to “loose” my website.
I am sorry, but if even angry fundamentalist Christians are unable to push a DMCA notice to Free Thoughts blogs, I doubt this one would be taken down successfully.
Dave recently posted..The Sheep and the Wolverine
I have no more comments for you Chris. Anyone can tell I was trying to be fair in asking you take down before proceeding with actions. I’m no cyber bully and you know that, I’ve just gotten under your skin now, so now your spewing English grammar and other non relevant crap. Your obviously not taking in anything said here to heart nor even making sense now, so I’m wasting my time. Good luck with sells 😉
Who elected you the cyber police, Lisa? If you are not the copyright holder, you have no say at all in this. So you’re just a cyber bully inserting yourself into the middle of a non-issue and pretending that you have some power here. You don’t. And it’s hilarious to me that you’d even try with such a transparent motive and lack of standing.
Are you really this heartless? I can honestly say I have never in my life read so much bull from one individual. I have a right to say whatever I want…remember “FREE SPEECH”, your own words. And you actually made a mistake Chris (god forbid), I never said I was lawyer, nor whatever else your adding to my replies and whatever you rambled on about your photographer speech didn’t even make sense to what I even wrote above. So, you may be awesome as a writer, your a horrible listener, reader. Doesn’t matter what anyone says on here…this whole blog and contents is “Bow down to Chris…he excels at grammar and copying and pasting things”. But in truth he has nothing else to do with his life but spew crap on the internet to get reactions so he can blog and boast about how he in invincible on the web and too see how far he can go.
You claimed that YOU were going to file a take down notice. YOU have no right to do so as nothing on this site is or was ever your copyright. You’re just a poser who pretends you know what you’re talking about. It’s clear you don’t. You don’t have standing, you don’t own copyright, and you are in no way an informed expert who can offer your opinion of what I have or have not done. So you’re just a troll.
YES! THIS! A million times THIS!
Sorry to inform you all but I can and representing my client on their behalf and have written permission to do so. Obviously know one on this forum knows much about that.
My concern has everything to do with the fact that your criminal and a thief. You’re stealing intelligent property for your own purposes.
And as far as your fair use argument goes, bottom line in the US, only a judge can assign fair use status. Until it goes through a court of law and is classified as fair use. It’s a copyright infringement and you’ve stolen two images and content and your using it without the owner’s permission, which is a copyright violation.
Yes fair usage is available for a very limited criteria set forth by statute. Your opinion doesn’t qualify for news, nor are you a library or a college of higher education and I doubt seriously if you are classified by the US IRS tax service as a nonprofit educational institution. So, regardless of what you think along with your opinion. You’re not a fair use. You’re just a thief hiding behind fair use.
I have work to do now and a life, so this can be the end of our dialog, it has been quite an eye opener seeing different sides of the animal world and it seems to me that while you jump on animal activist being so forceful out there, my gracious, you guys need a chill pill. Hate doesn’t make good breeders. Cheers!
Is English not your native language?
It seems like what we have here is a small-time employer or employee who just read the laws and claim to be a legal expert.
Of course Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down notices were effective: the hosting companies and ISP don’t even want to go through their legal departments to see if their clients are in the wrong. Companies don’t have the time to investigate, so it is easier to comply with the request.
What is the problem with this tactic? Not every Internet provider will respond to the DMCA. In fact, some gets laughed at or ignored until someone actually file a lawsuit. Even if a lawsuit is filed, it is a criminal offense to file false lawsuits.
So, please, tell us, how are you any different from corporations who file false or fake lawsuits against the little-men who don’t have the money or time to fight back. In that effect, this whole threat about submitting a DMCA is nothing more than a bullying tactic.
If you really are a web-designer who has her client’s interest at heart, or pockets, maybe you should head over to QuestionCopyright website to brush up on what is legal and what is not legal. You owe yourself at least that much.
Dave recently posted..The Sheep and the Wolverine
If you’re gonna sue over copyright, Google the Streisand Effect, and just keep this in mind.
retrieverman recently posted..A Saufinder
Just FYI, I saw on Facebook today that “Rosie” has died of pneumonia.