| The Future of Dogs | |
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The Importance of Home Breeding |
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Grooming Aprons and Towels embroidered with 'Fight Anti-Pet Legislation. It Affects Us All" |
Dogs
In the Year 2026 Since its financial failure in 2012, the AKC has been effectively owned by HSUS. It is less than half the size of 2006, even though litter registrations now cost $950 (up from $25+$2/puppy in 2006) and individual registrations, $195 (up from $15/puppy) and the major focus is on activities for (legal) mixed breed and commercially bred dogs. The number of purebred dog shows per year is a small fraction of the number in 2006, and entries are still declining as the cost of purebred dogs continues to rise.
HSUS is a business built on quicksand and it is starting to sink. Annual revenues are down by half from the peak year of 2015. However, continuing lies and a devoted base of hard core AR supporters (there are as many wealthy Hollywood fruitcakes and fanatics as ever) allow them to keep them spewing their garbage and buying up lawmakers year by year.
It does appear that things are starting to turn around. The gradual weakening of HSUS, public attention coming from the violence, the dawning recognition that it isn't just that you can't buy the purebred dog you remember from when you were a child but that there are almost no good purebreds or home-bred dogs at all, the views of a growing number of experts that, far from protecting animals, the tangle of laws has reduced their numbers and made them (and humans) less happy and less healthy – all this has begun to bend the road back in favor of animals and animal owners. However, the turning is very slow. Many anti-animal laws were passed not just for animal rights reasons but also because they made things easier for animal control organizations. A pet limit law, for example, can be used as a one-size-fits-all answer to nearly any animal complaint, either by telling the individual whose dogs are a noise nuisance "You are over the limit – reduce your numbers" or by telling the complainant "Sorry – he's within the limit so there's nothing we can do" instead of enforcing the noise ordinance. Bad laws give animal control more power. No enforcement agency willingly gives that up. If
breeding laws were liberalized, animal shelters would have competition
for their own import and breeding programs. Seizures might nearly
disappear. With so few good quality stray dogs there'd be no income
from adoptions. Where would the money come from? For financial reasons
too, shelters are against easing the laws. It might be possible to repeal the laws mandating care but the immediate result would be less care. Discussions of low cost alternatives – for example, publicly funded clinics and the veterinary equivalent of nurse-practitioner status – meet strong opposition from veterinarians. In-the-open home breeding has become so unfamiliar that it has the 'not in my backyard' problem. When liberalization is discussed the responses are usually "We don't allow any kind of farming here – someone who wants to breed dogs should buy a farm in the country." and "If we made breeding legal here, our town would be full of breeders: we don't want all that noise and smell." Pet owners still have no effective national voice and that makes it much harder to pass our own laws. Mandatory microchipping of all pets has made billions of dollars for makers of chips, vet clinics, and chip registries and it continues to be a fountain of gold for them. Because it facilitates enforcement of all the other pet laws, the AR movement is determined to keep it. However, making government control that easy guarantees that there will be government control. The battle to undo the mandatory microchipping laws may seesaw for a decade or more but until they are undone, ownership and breeding of dogs cannot start to return to being a hobby.
The animal rights movement imagined that we could have a large force of animal police supervising every detail of breeding and ownership, gradually squeezing pets down and out of our lives. Wrapped in AR glittery paper, the laws sounded good and they were passed. Americans, however, are only willing to pay for a few dog catchers and we want pets in our lives. The result has been a nasty sort of legal gridlock for dogs. In 2026 the situation of pet dogs in the U.S. has hit bottom and will gradually begin to improve. However undoing the damage of the last 25 years – untangling the maze of laws, each with its own strong supporters; restarting the practice of in-home breeding; rebuilding the breeds, breeding knowledge and skills; re-establishing the kennel and breed clubs; beginning over again to spread the basics of good dog ownership to the average family – may take a century.
Next: How Animal Rights Laws Work
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