CHRISTMAS RETURNS

Santa comes quietly long before dawn
While shops are still busy and lights are still on
While dinners are cooking and kitchens are warm
And children count presents they'll open by morn.

He slips past the trees in windows aglow
Through the gate to the backyard, as icy winds blow
To find the pup he brought last year chained up in the snow
And, kneeling, he whispers "Are you ready to go?"

There are too many stops like this one tonight
Before the beginning of his regular flight
He leaves not a note or footprint in sight
Just an unbuckled collar on a cold Christmas night.....

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Is the above poem corny? Sure, but we wish there really were some supernatural force to rescue the puppies and kittens that were thoughtlessly purchased as Christmas gifts for people who didn’t really understand or want the responsibility of a pet. And most often, those puppies come from "back yard breeders," or worse, pet shops. Breeders who are definitely not breeding "to better the breed" (see Judy Voran’s article in this issue of BU). The following article will make a great handout to give to any unknowledgeable friend or acquaintance who is even thinking about buying a live Christmas gift from one of those sources. It was written in response to a Boxer Mailing List post that asked in a very worried tone, "But what happens to these boxer pups [from BYBs and pet shops] when no one buys them? Where do they end up?" Here’s a very good answer.

Where do they end up? Usually at the pound, or with an owner who will eventually turn them over to the pound, at which time boxer rescue can step in and find them the good home they should have had in the first place.

Take the pet store model. You see a sad looking boxer puppy in the cage, and you want to "rescue" it. You go in, pay twice what you would pay for a well bred dog. Your new pup has a great home, and maybe you're a little poorer, but all in all it's a good bargain, right? Wrong. Because while you are congratulating yourself for "saving" this one pup, the pet store owner has gone to the phone, called the service that provides him with dogs, and said "get me another boxer -- that one sold really quick! Heck, send me two!"

Multiply this by several hundred pet shops, all over the country, as boxers are becoming more and more popular. Back at the puppy mill, the mother of the pup you rescued is being bred on her next heat. Chances are she lives in a pen not really much larger than the crates you have at home, or else she shares a larger pen with several females and one male. Fights are common in such a situation, and it's super stressful when she has newborn pups to protect and nurse. Lots of them die, but the "breeders" only need a steady supply, and after all, another bitch is due to give birth next week anyway. She will live in that situation (as will the stud dog) until she no longer produces. Then she'll be shot, or simply allowed to starve if she's too weak to fight the other dogs for the food that gets tossed in to them. You need to love not only the dog that's before your eyes, but the dogs that suffered to bring that puppy into the world, and harden your heart against the people that make it so hard for them.

Then there’s the transportation issue. In order to be at the pet store at 8 weeks (or younger, in states where it's allowed) they're taken away from their litters at 5 and 6 weeks and transported in trucks across country (if they're going from, say, Missouri to Maine or California). Many people don't recognize the problem with removing pups from the dam before they've been dog socialized --- a lot of the neuroses that "pet shop" dogs suffer from come from never having learned to back off when Mom ordered it, and never having learned to concede defeat gracefully. They don't understand dog body language and might interpret any interest from another dog as hostile, develop fear biting habits, etc. They have no frame of reference to place the behavior of other dogs -- or of caring people, for that matter. They haven't learned bite inhibition which can make keeping a home difficult, especially when there are children involved.

There have been several recent fiascoes involving these trucks -- one in CT last year, I believe, that resulted in legislation being proposed to ban retail sale of dogs (or at least dogs shipped in from out of state). In one case the truck turned over and people were horrified at the conditions inside the truck, in another, I believe there was a heater that exploded and killed the dogs.

At any rate, the conditions in these trucks are basically cages upon cages, with mesh floors so that the feces and urine from the dogs in the top cages fall onto the dogs below. I can only imagine how many dogs are in each cage, but I think it's safe to assume that boxers, as heavier dogs than many others, tend to be closer to the floor. I'm sure the attitude is that as long as they get a bath before the customers see them, it doesn't matter. Of course one sick dog in those conditions will infect all the others, and since they come from all different kinds of places, they probably cross-infect each other with different viruses (and let's not forget their immunization status).

The "weather" restrictions that airlines place on the transport of dogs don't apply, and I doubt that these trucks are adequately heated, air conditioned, or ventilated during their long journeys. Again, considering the fact that these pups were bought for under $50 apiece, getting the shipment to the marketplace fast is worth any you lose along the way. The fact that the dealers get them from the mills for chump change and sell them to the shops for a hundred or two, where they are marked up to close to a thousand dollars in many cases should drive home to people the fact that they are NOT valuable sources of income to the mills or the dealers in anything but bulk, and therefore the individual wellbeing of the pups or producing dogs don't matter when it comes to the bottom line. (The following links to the USDA dealer lists have come in very handy when people ask if their pet store pup really came from a "caring breeder" -- you can look it up state by state: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ac/dealerlist.pdf ).

And while the pet shops declare that the pups have been "vet checked," the opinion of any vet who would condone such inhumane activity means about as much to me as...well, I can't think of anything that means less.

The puppies get out. The puppies may end up with great owners (or not). But any money that goes to purchase them ends up enriching the people who are treating the parent dogs so abominably, and encourages them to breed MORE dogs, and more of OUR breed. On the other hand, if the puppy doesn't sell, it eventually becomes more of a burden than a profit maker, and the store manager makes a mental note -- "Boxers don't sell. Don't order any more of them." The dealers aren't getting many orders for boxers any more, and the puppy mills think twice about breeding more of them than they can sell.

Now maybe the backyard breeder's not such a bad sort. The dogs are family pets, live inside the house, and seem good tempered. But there has been no health testing, the owners have probably bought one or more of them from a pet store or other BYB, and for all they know, both dogs carry lots of genes for cancer and heart disease and heaven knows what else. In fact, they're ticking time bombs. The parent dogs are only 1 and 2 years old, so nobody knows yet that they won't live to see 4 years old (or that their parents didn't live to see 4, or *their* parents either.) Nobody thought to ask. Nor did they realize that the shy sire and the aggressive (but not *too* aggressive, they insist) dam could produce seriously disturbed puppies who will go from home to home because no one can control them. They didn't know that that might be a problem.

So now they've had the first litter. If these puppies sell quickly (and make the owners a tidy profit, since they've spent virtually no money on them) -- they'll go right out and do it again. Why not? Maybe the second time the litter will be 11 puppies, and the bitch will die, and the surviving puppies will be dumped at the shelter where strangers will have to hand raise them, or maybe it will be another small litter, only they won't sell quite so quickly this time and by the time they're 3 months old they've ceased to be so darling and now are a major hassle, and THEN they get dumped. Or they find homes, but now there are 10-12 families in the world with puppies who may cost them thousands in vet bills and even more in heartache. And some of THEM will go ahead and breed, adding to the problem.

If it's hard to sell a first litter, there might never be a second litter. If the "product" in a store (and that's what they're considered) doesn't sell, the store stops selling it.

When I lived in Spain, there was a period where there suddenly were a lot of children begging in the streets (I had grown up in suburbia and to that point had never seen a homeless person, let alone someone begging for money). The government pleaded with people NOT to give these kids money. Why? Because they were being used by their parents or guardians as a really easy way to make money. Many were drugged, most were skinny and sickly looking, and every humanitarian instinct would tell you to give them money. But giving them money enriched the parents, and sentenced the kids to years of this, as well as sentencing their younger siblings to the same. I would give them candy bars, and offer to buy them a sandwich, but I couldn't put money in the hands of parents who would do this. Eventually enough people got the message that it just wasn't working as a gimmick anymore and it tapered off. No amount of government crackdown or intervention was as effective as people simply refusing to financially reward that kind of degradation. The same goes for rewarding "breeders" who are producing boxers for any reason other than to better the breed!