Fatal(?) Attraction

When you decide that it's time to add a dog to your household, how do you go about deciding what you want and where you'll look?
There are three basic ways to proceed
1. decide on a breed, do your research, and contact breeders or rescue groups
2. decide on a breed, go to a pet shop or look in the local classifieds
3. don't make any decision about what sort of dog, and go to the local shelter or rescue group.
Most of the time, I fall into the third group. I did buy my Keeshond after becoming utterly besotted with the breed, and I may have one again sometime. . . or perhaps a Portuguese Water Dog or Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. But most often, when I need a dog, I simply start making the rounds of the shelters, starting with the local and moving out from there. I do have some things in mind. Last time, it was "no black dogs," as I had just lost the second of two large black dogs and wanted a change. Now I seem to have developed a preference for male dogs, though that may not hold up if the right female were to come along. There is also more of a size requirement than there used to be, as I am getting older and having some effects from my battle with cancer, and can't really handle the big guys any more. Activity level also figures in, though I have plenty of ways to give a dog lots of exercise without having to totally exhaust myself. Intelligence is important to me -- I like a dog who thinks for him or herself, even has a bit of a naughty side or a wicked sense of humor.
My last search went through three shelters and even then, I didn't think I'd found my match. My friend had to point out the little inanimate brown dog to me. He hadn't moved the whole time we were in the puppy room. He obviously hadn't had much good happen in his life, but there was still something in his eyes that said there was a good dog in there, if only someone would give him a chance. So I said yes, and then cried buckets when they said he couldn't be released until they neutered him the next morning. But he survived the night, and though it took some months for him to develop trust and a good secure bond, after that he blossomed. He is perhaps at least as smart as my Keeshond was, maybe more. I was new to dogs when I had her, didn't know about clicker training, and didn't really do much training at all. So I don't know how she would have coped with learning the concepts of "bigger/smaller," "higher/lower," though she did know "left/right."
I have contacted purebred rescue groups from time to time, with the idea of having them keep an eye out for a Keeshond mix or a Collie mix for me, but we never followed through with it. Still, I think it's a good way to go if you have a particular breed in mind. The dogs in rescue are nearly always fostered in people's homes, so they're getting regular training and socialization from dog people who care. They're rarely puppies, but a slightly older dog who's already had the kinks worked out can fit really smoothly into a household.
Of course reponsible breeders are the real watchdogs of their respective breeds. The best among them are dedicating themselves to identifying and eradicating genetic diseases, breeding for good temperament, and socializing their puppies fully. I have my problems with some things in the purebred world -- I don't like cropping ears, and I don't like some of the extremes to which various breeds have been pushed -- but I have total respect for reponsible breeders.
The same doesn't hold for backyard breeders and pet shops that sell dogs. Most of the ads for puppies in my local paper can't even manage to spell the breed correctly, so what does that say for their level of knowledge? Pug/peke crosses are advertised as "papered," 8-week-old puppies "have had all their shots," and on and on. And all this goes on while we have a serious overload in our local shelter.
The local pet shop selling puppies claims that they don't do business with puppy mills, yet a suspicious number of their puppies originate in Pennsylvania and Missouri and Arkansas, the hot beds of puppy millers. The only dog I ever acquired from a pet shop was misidentified as to breeds, too young to be there (6 weeks), dying of every parasite known to dogdom (despite a health guarantee), and turned out to be psychotic. I made the pet shop pay for her veterinary treatments to pull her through, then helped the police shut the place down.
I called this blog Fatal Attraction because too often people fall in love with the look of a dog and have no idea what the dog is like to live with. People think they want a Border Collie because they're smart - you don't, not unless you plan to invest many hours in training and entertaining that dog. Or they love the look of a Siberian Husky, but insist they will not fence or leash their dog. Bye bye, Husky. It goes on and on.
Whether you decide on a purebred or a shelter mix, please give some thought to what it's going to be like to live with that dog for the next 10 or 15 years. You'll both be better off.

Oprah's Show on Puppy Mills

It's been an interesting week in the media, dogwise. Word started flying around late last week that Oprah was going to do a show on puppy mills. Some of the dog writers were merely interested, some were trepidatious. Most of us probably watched.
But before the show aired, almost as soon as word got out, in fact, several of us received a long email from a man who appeared to be speaking for the American Sporting Dogs Alliance. I have not confirmed that with the organization, but he included their name prominently in his email. He was livid over this show (which had not yet aired), and demanding that everyone boycott Oprah's sponsors, because she was certainly going to get it wrong!
Well, after I wrote my last blog about freedom of speech and freedom of the press, you can imagine how well this went over with me. I put the show on my calendar so I wouldn't forget to watch, and reserved judgment.
I have just finished watching the show, and I have to say kudos, Oprah. I thought it was a very fair-minded and, for a lot of people, probably eye-opening account.
First a man involved in rescue and Oprah's reporter Lisa Ling went to several puppy mills. That was combined with some footage from the HSUS. It showed dogs crammed in little wire cages, or larger dogs in small fenced areas in the mud. The rescuer was taking dogs the puppy millers no longer wanted. He often had to carry the dogs to his car because they had never walked on ground before.
They talked about pet shops getting most of their dogs from puppy mills, and the rescuer noted that no responsible breeder would sell their pups to a pet shop.
The show followed some of the dogs that had been rescued, showing them cutting off the chain collars, shaving them down because they were so matted.
Then the focus switched to animal shelters, the municipal kind, and how many dogs are euthanized. They showed a shelter manager going through and choosing which dogs would die that day.
Then they talked about spay and neuter. Oprah's vet was there, and gave some of the benefits of spaying and neutering. The show did NOT encourage, or even mention, legislation regarding spay/neuter, they simply encouraged owners to have their pets spayed and neutered. They talked about free or low-cost clinics, and said that money was not an excuse.
Other that what was probably an inflated percentage of how many dogs in shelter are purebreds, I found nothing in the program to quibble about.
What would be absolutely fantastic would be a follow-up show. On the off-chance that someone from Oprah's staff stumbles over this blog, a look at how successfull education combined with low-cost clinics has been at reducing the number of dogs in shelters would be a great next step. We don't need legislation. The legislation won't have any effect on most of the guilty parties, makes hard feelings with the responsible breeds, and accomplishes little.
Good job, Oprah. And Mr. nobody from American Sporting Dogs Alliance, I hope you might open your eyes and realize that you were WAY out of line.