By Gretchen Bernardi Parents are particularly guilty of making exaggerated claims
aimed at discouraging their children from engaging in dangerous
activities or those they just don’t like. It doesn’t take young
boys very long to figure out that they actually do not go blind
after indulging in certain nighttime activities. Upon discovering
that their parents had lied, what is the result? They don’t trust
them and they don’t believe them when they give them sane and
honest advice: buckle up because it helps in the event of an
accident; study hard or you’ll end up flipping burgers; safe
sex makes sense even if you think you’re in love. The same applies to all debate, including the debates currently
under way about the ownership and care of dogs. Just because
we want to desperately prove a point, we lose ground in the long
run if we exaggerate claims, if we use questionable facts and
figures to convince others to embrace our point of view. Most
often, the truth or some version of the truth comes out and then
we look stupid, and worse, no one believes us again in this version
of the crying wolf syndrome. We lose hard-earned credibility
and our opinions become less valuable. Just because people with cropped and docked breeds oppose legislation
and social pressure aimed at prohibiting these practices, we
don’t need to exaggerate the benefits of these practices for
all dogs. Those who maintain that erect ears prevent ear infections
and so they must, for the animal’s sake, crop their breed’s ears
would never, under different circumstances, try to dictate to
owners of drop-eared breeds to crop ears for health reasons.
While it is surely true that natural tails with coat will pick
up burrs and twigs in the field, not all sporting breeds mandate
a docked tail. If arguments are necessary to defend the practice,
let them be sound and reasonable and truthful. And if all other
arguments fail, could we just say we often simply like the looks
of these breeds with cropped ears, with docked tails, much as
we like the shape of the eye or the color of the coat, or we
hold dear the history and heritage that goes with these breeds?
If this sounds like too weak an argument, it does have the advantage
of being honest and surely there is something to be said about
that. Just because some want commercial breeders to come back into
the AKC fold, is it necessary to denigrate the standards of care
and practices of the hobby breeder? “There are plenty hobby breeders
that keep dogs in unacceptable conditions,” is heard and read
repeatedly and I am sure it is true. But it just doesn’t make
sense to drag every breeder down to a lower level when we should
be helping all breeders rise to a high standard. And on the same
subject, could we please avoid preaching that we need these breeders
in order to help fight unacceptable legislation, when many believe
the worst of the commercial breeders are what got us into this
predicament? If we are looking for allies in the legislative
battles, we need only to look to the thousands and thousands
of volunteers in our clubs, members and breeders and their families,
that represent the very best in breeding and in performance activities
involving dogs. It is a dangerous maneuver to accept husbandry practices which
should shame us, all in the name of defending the right for all
to breed dogs. The general public, and especially our enemies,
are not stupid. They understand that we cannot be called the
dogs’ champion when we defend bad behavior and, soon, we will
no longer have a position of honor from which to negotiate. Just because we oppose breed specific legislation, we should
avoid espousing the tabula rasa theory of canine behavior, the
idea that behavior is constructed by the dogs’ upbringing alone
rather than rooted in genetics. While there is always room for
discussion on the weight of the two—genetics vs. environment—in
a specific dog or dogs in general, to deny breed-specific predispositions
and behavioral tendencies is to ignore the hundreds of years
of breeding that was necessary to bring certain behavioral traits
to perfection. Does it make any sense at all to have competitions
for and to reward very specific behavior in a single breed or
group of breeds if they did not lend themselves naturally to
that behavior? Is the Beagle that is “the hound that can last in the chase
and follow his quarry to the death” trained to that role? Is
the Black and Tan Coonhound molded by his owner to “be able to
work in close contact with other hounds”? Is much work required
to develop a Borzoi “with a keen, natural hunting instinct with
much determination and stamina” or to fashion an Australian Cattle
Dog into “a self-appointed guardian to the stockman, his herd,
his property”? And just how long would be required to train just
any dog into one like this: “There is a heedless, reckless pluck
about the Irish Terrier which is characteristic, and which, coupled
with the headlong dash, blind to all consequences, with which
he rushes at his adversary….” Are Pointers, Setters and Retrievers
trained to behavior for which they are named? If there were any basis for the assertion that our breeds only
become what we train then into becoming, why would we need so
many? We could just have three: small, medium and large. Then
we could make of them whatever we wanted: soft, cuddly lap dogs,
feisty Terriers, sighthound hunters, retrievers, pointers, flushers.
Of course there are variations on the basic theme in all of our
breeds, but most have very specific types of temperament and
that is what, in many cases, draws us to them in the first place.
In fact, and this is very important, how can we possibly say
that purebred dogs are the best because they are predictable
if we deny a great part of that predictability. Breed specific legislation is a very bad idea for a lot of
very good reasons. But we cast our arguments under a shadow of
doubt when we deny the basic truth that anyone can readily see.
“It must be able to do the job it was bred to do” is the mantra
of most judges. That includes temperaments established by clever
breeders as well as the construction to best serve those inbred
instincts. Just because we oppose mandatory spay and neuter laws, especially
those that come with exorbitant fees to qualify for breeders’
exemptions, does not mean that we should accept questionable
science to support a case against all spaying and neutering.
Most people who have cared for dogs over the years realize that
there are many good reasons for these procedures, including health,
kennel management, training ease, etc. This is not to say that
breeders should be forced to do so, but do we now need to put
forward dubious arguments about the harmful side effects and
long-term dangers? There are dangerous side effects to most medical
and surgical procedures in non-breeding animals, but the benefits
are usually worth the small risk. Some have now resorted to using the term “castration,” thinking
it has a more pejorative, harsher connotation, but hundreds of
thousands are performed every year in shelters across the country,
with few harmful side effects. And would anyone deny the benefits
of this procedure prior to adoption from shelters and that the
small incidence of serious side effects is miniscule compared
to the problems it solves for animal control, especially since
those problems will ultimately come to rest on our shoulders? There have been some very strange invocations to bolster these
extreme positions. Arguments involve property rights, civil liberties,
even religion. Now the Torah is being used to suggest that “castrating
a male of any species” is contrary to Jewish law (Lev. 22:24). I am not suggesting that we stop defending ourselves, but I
am suggesting that when we are not honest with ourselves and
with others, we hurt our cause and we often look like fools,
and close-minded ones at that. In this freest of all possible
countries, it should still be acceptable to go to a shelter and
adopt a dog without recrimination or accusations. Considering
the climate and the mood, especially on some of the more radical
chat lists, it is more socially acceptable to be a mass murderer
than to be a vegetarian. When we defend our rights to keep and breed our dogs, would
we not be more respected if we stopped personally denigrating
all of those who have different points of view? Much of the current
hysterical rhetoric on all sides has polarized the dog-loving
community, including breeders, shelter workers, humane activists,
all of those who spend a part of their lives in the presence
of dogs. Instead of reasoned debate, we have declared war, a
war that can only be won by a rational presentation of our position
supported by reason and integrity. Gretchen Bernardi • berwyck@ezl.com
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