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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m a PP who criticized dog rescues. I’m sure there are some “rescues” out there that are just fronts for profit making, but that’s not most of them I don’t think.

But on the whole, the dog rescue sector has done a ton to stigmatize buying puppies from breeders without articulating a vision for what they’re trying to achieve. How do they want family pets to be responsibly bred and acquired in the US?

In the meantime, they seem to be dedicated to propping up a pipeline of backyard bred pit and hound mixes from the south into family homes in the northeast. I’m not opposed to placing those puppies on an emergency basis (although I’m also not opposed to euthanizing them). But if you’re building infrastructure to keep doing that indefinitely, and at the same time you’re shaming people who try to buy dogs bred purposefully to be family pets, I don’t support that.

At the same time I’m also angry at the fancy breeders for not doing anything to help people find responsibly bred puppies for their families. It’s as if they see making it difficult as a point of pride.

So how can I be mad at the Amish breeders, who are meeting the market where it is? If puppies raised under certain conditions won’t sell, they’ll change the conditions. The rescue people, if they really disapprove of the way those breeders conduct business, could really help those puppies if they established some sort of standards based rating system. Instead they keep trucking up puppies who are bred with absolutely no oversight and promoting them as the most compassionate choice. That makes no sense to me. [/quote]
I agree with some of this, but disagree with other parts. I do think rescues up north are perpetuating the pipeline of excess dogs from the south that result from lower spaying and neutering rates in the south. We really shouldn’t be filling our shelters with their pit bulls.

However, I think the “adopt, don’t shop” pressure is very effective at getting exactly the kind of people who would buy from Amish breeders to stop and think about puppy mills and consider a rescue dog. People who are willing to wait a year and half and spend $3k on an ethical breeder who makes them jump through hoops aren’t the problem. It’s the people who want a dog now and want to feel like they got a bargain who should be looking at rescues, because the only other alternatives are a puppy mill or one-time backyard breeder.[/quote]

Dp. What’s wrong with a back yard breeder? Not sure what I know what exactly that means but isn’t that like a regular person who has a dog that gets pregnant?

I agree with the earlier poster who commented that rescues have not been great about advocating for reasonable sourcing of family pets. And stop saying people want a ‘bargain’. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to not to want to wait a year and spend 5k for a family pet- who may or may not have health problems (I know so many stories of people who paid top dollar for ethical breeders and they still ended up with a dog with health issues- in breeding does that and pure breeds are inherently the result of indirect inbreeding). And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to not want to adopt a dog from a rescue with an unknown history who may/is likely to have a tendency to aggressiveness and is a potential safety issue. The fact is that people should come first, period. Some people on this thread seem to forget that.

So what’s the answer? And if it’s to say ‘well then don’t have a dog at all’ that’s sort of silly too. There are lots of reasons it is important and healthy for people to have pets- the elderly for comfort, children to learn how to care for pets, etc. I don’t think that should be denied just because some rescue thinks all  dogs from X Y Z are inherently bad, while adopting their dogs is inherently good. That’s silly. [/quote]
You’ve just made the argument for using puppy mills. Inexpensive, readily available puppies for the public’s convenience.[/quote]

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