Tag Archives: dogs

02/1/15

Breeder Registration is Bollocks

It doesn’t take long for those involved in animal welfare circles to hear arguments for the implementation of breeder registration. Many advocates of breeder registration argue that such a scheme would cause some breeders to ‘reconsider’ breeding, and one less breeder is seemingly desirable to these animal advocates.

There seems to be a lot of faith and enthusiasm for such a scheme, despite breeder legislation never having been shown to achieve anything, that if affects ‘good’ and ‘bad’ breeders equally, impacts on rescues, and is difficult to police. Further, it seems to be targetting the mythical ‘overpopulation problem’, and not the actual issue of pound poor-performance.

So let’s address all the reasons why breeder registration is not the holy grail of animal welfare legislation.

 

No Evidence

There is no research that indicates that breeder registration reduces impounds/euthanasia, or improves the welfare of dogs in breeding establishments. For example, the Gold Coast Breeder Scheme is widely considered to be a flop, and has been discontinued. If there is no evidence that breeder legislation works, why would we be invest funds in establishing a scheme? Breeder legislation is a poorly qualified solution to animal impoundment, as much as BSL is a poor solution to dog bites.

It’s been tried before, and failed before, so why repeat the same mistakes?

 

Australian Shepherd puppies playing in a ball pit.

Decline in Ethical Breeders

The hallmark of most breeder registration schemes is a breeder having to pay in order to be ‘registered’.

The problem is that ethical breeders are (largely) not making money from their breeding, and therefore may not be in a financial position to pay for registration. Ethical breeders may choose to cease breeding due to expense. How do we ensure that responsible, ethical breeders are not discouraged from producing wonderful pets?

As most of these schemes require breeders to pay in order to be registered, what breeder registration effectively does is limit (legal) breeding to those who are making money from the practice. What I mean is: breeders who don’t make money are are probably the ‘ethical ones’, and are probably less likely to be able to afford registration. Are these the individuals we want to perturb from breeding?

Furthermore, there is those that breed dogs in working fields, like guide dogs, customs, and so forth. Any restriction on breeders would also cause more expense and process for those producing animals for these roles.

 

Unethical Breeders Unaffected

On the flip side of this, those who are most likely to be able to afford registration is puppy farmers themselves. Those running a business, profiting from the sale of puppies, are going to be able to afford registration, and continue breeding puppies.

If a breeder is raising puppies in conditions that are undesirable and outside of welfare codes, they are going to avoid registration, and simply remain unnoticed and unpoliced.

Or, alternatively, a breeder may pass all the codes as they meet physical levels of care, but they neglect the psychological well being of their dogs and puppies.

Basically: Unethical breeders are not going to be deterred by a breeder registration scheme.

 

Association with Code of Practice

Whenever breeder legislation is suggested, it tends to appear alongside a Code of Practice. A Code of Practice attempts to specify the way animals should be maintained. The biggest problem is that it effectively obligates breeders to keep their dogs in a kennel situation, which many would argue is in contradiction to the best interest of dogs. I discussed these problems in my article called Clean and Kennelled.

Basically, if you have a breeder registration scheme, it goes hand-in-hand with a prescribed approach to animal management and handling, which is counter intuitive to animal welfare goals.

 

Mandatory Desexing Overtones

Any breeder registration scheme has overtones of compulsory desexing for dogs. Not only are there legitimate reasons to keep dogs entire, mandatory desexing also has negative social factors. For example, mandatory desexing is often associated with increased surrenders (e.g. “I can’t afford to desex my dog, so I need to surrender it instead so I don’t become a law breaker”).

The Saving Pets blog does a good job of describing how mandatory desexing has never worked. Furthermore, I’ve blogged before about how mandatory desexing is hard to define (unless we desex everything and eradicate the species). Mandatory desexing is also often associated with early age desexing, which has its own welfare implications. And there’s evidence that making desexing mandatory increases surrenders, as people aren’t able to pay for the surgery and so are left with no other choice. And, on top of that, desexing is a medical procedure, which should be implemented by medical professionals based on the individual animal at hand – not policy makers.

Further, mandatory desexing seeks to categorise people who have an entire dog as ‘breeders’, when this may not be the case. That is, non-breeders may be forced to become breeders according to legislation in order to comply with the law.

 

Exclusions

Mandatory breeder registration often excludes key groups: ‘backyard breeders’, ‘working dog breeders’, and greyhound breeders. These breeders produce a lot of dogs and dogs that are, seemingly, more likely to end up in the pound system.

A dog is a dog. We can’t argue that breeder registration is for the welfare of dogs owned by a particular group of people. Legislation needs to apply to all dogs, or none at all.

And, when you make this breeder registration compulsory, you need to consider the impact on rescues.  As rescues occasionally take in pregnant dogs, they may be deemed as breeders, and may have to pay breeder registration too. The last thing we need is for rescues to be further out of pocket due to the introduction of unfounded legislation. I could list twenty things that rescue could be better suited to spend their funds on.

 

No Policing

I’ve blogged before about how many dog-related policies are not policed.  In South Australia, we have the Animal Welfare Act and the Dog and Cat Management Act. I see constant violations of both these acts as it currently stands. So what are we doing bringing in new legislation, when our existing legislation is under enforced?

Without enforcement, legislation is just tokensitic. Arguably, if our existing legislation was enforced, we wouldn’t need further legislation. Our existing legislation is pretty good legislation. If it’s not enforced, then puppy farms can flourish.

 

Poor Focus

My biggest rejection of this is that there isn’t a population problem. We don’t need to reduce the number of dogs in the world. Shelters need to market and promote animals in their care better. Breeder registration doesn’t have anything to do with shelter euthanasia rates.

While we’re busy spending all our time going after breeders, we will still be watching shelters killing a great number of dogs. While you might take issue with people breeding their dogs, I take bigger issue with shelters killing dogs in their community. What’s the greater problem here?

 

Further reading:

Just Stop Breeding Until the Pounds are Empty

Why I Don’t Want Oscar’s Law

The Fallacy of Mandatory Desexing

What is the answer? (To puppy farms)

Rescue Vs Breeders

10/7/14

Novelty (or Practical Habituation)

I have been thinking a lot of late about novelty in dog training. More technically, I’ve been thinking about habituation (i.e. a type of non-associative learning) and how it works in the ‘real world’ for changing dog behaviour in simple ways.

 

Dogs can habituate to water.

Dogs can habituate to water.

When I was a kid, I grew up with a chow chow called Ted. Ted mostly lived in the backyard, but as a child, I one day decided that Ted was going to get a walk every day. And so I walked him every day for about a month (before moving onto the next project, as kids do). Ted started the month with enthusiastic jumping regarding the prospect of a walk. He also vocalised a little bit. By the end of the month, Ted had the lead put on with no fuss, no jumping, no noise, and soldiered on for the walk.

Sure, I could’ve implemented some kind of training regime. But, in reality, I didn’t. Ted started the month thinking walks were novel, and his behaviour stemmed from this novelty. At the end of the month, he was habituated to the walk. Previously, the outside world meant a lot to him and resulted in him getting aroused. By the end of the month, it meant close to nothing, and his arousal levels were far less.

 

Then there’s our foster dog Bandit. I picked him up from his surrendering family, one hour from my house, and drove him home. He drooled, paced, and stressed the whole way home. On ever subsequent car trip, Bandit’s behaviour got more mild. Recently, I drove him to a boarding facility about 20 minutes away, and he was laying, asleep, by the time we got there. No training went into this. Bandit just ‘got over it’ because he habituated to the car – it became less novel.

 

I find many outside dogs are often ‘over the top’ when they meet people, and I think this is a novelty thing, too. If dogs only see people on an occasional basis (i.e. when you go outside), of course they’re going to be excited to see you! If they were inside and saw you constantly, their responses are going to be more mild. Indeed, with most attention seeking behaviours (e.g. jumping up, head nuzzling, vocalising), these behaviours will decrease if the dog has sufficient attention to start with. If attention is given liberally, the resource becomes less important, and the dog’s behaviour changes.

 

I think the concept of novelty is often overlooked in dog training. Sometimes, dog behaviour will ‘get better’ simply because the novelty of something wears off.

Doing many varied things often can do more than maintaining socialisation – it can reduce novelty and so also decrease undesirable behaviour associated with that novelty.

09/6/14

The SA Story (Again)

selectcommitteesa

After hearing the ‘results’ of the Select Committee on Companion Animal Welfare in SA, I was hugely disappointed in the process and the recommendations. However, I was pleased to hear nothing further about it (it came out July last year!).

Until now.

A few articles (one | two | three) have come out quoting Ian Hunter (politician), Tammy Franks (politician), Tim Vasuedeva (RSPCA CEO), Steven Marshall (politician), and Jay Weatherill (politician).

The hot ideas are compulsory desexing (or just desexing puppies in pet shops), a code of practice, and a breeder licensing scheme, with some extra legislation thrown in for good measure. It’s not a surprise that this is mostly bad news, considering the spurious nature of the original Select Committee report.

 

Compulsory Desexing

The articles seem to be looking at both compulsory desexing, and compulsory desexing of all dogs sold in pet shops. The narrator in the first article describes the community as ‘divided’.

 

Compulsory Desexing of Petshop Puppies

Tammy Franks, in particular, supports the suggestion that all puppies from pet shops should be desexed.

Tim Vasudeva, from the RSPCA, says, “We’ve been desexing puppies between 3-4 months for years and years and we haven’t had any problems.”

The first article claims that the government will look at compulsory desexing of dogs sold in pet shop in light of a Select Committee’s report. While the report made many poor recommendations, desexing of dogs in pet shops before sale was not one of them! False reporting!

The problem with this is: We are desexing very young puppies and there is evidence that there are harms associated with desexing when it is done at a young age. These harms go beyond anaesthetic risks and immediate recovery (which is what Tim is referring to) and is more about long term acquisition of health problems including cancer. (You can read a recent study on golden retrievers, or a recent study on vizslas to learn more about this.)

Further, what is the point of this suggested legislation? Why should all puppies be desexed before sale? Especially because of the long term health risks?

If you wanted to get me on side with this suggestion, I would be more inclined to support the sterilisation of puppies before sale (including tubal ligation and vasectomies, that aren’t known to have these long-term health outcomes). However, I’d still be asking what the point of this was – surely there’s bigger issues for us to be dealing with.

 

Compulsory Desexing of Everything

Tim Vasudeva, from the RSPCA, says that the AVA’s research shows that desexed dogs are 2.6 times less likely to bite. This is not true: the AVA refers to others’ research, using 23 year old data, which suggests desexed dogs are 2.6 times less likely to bite.

Tim Vasudeva spoke about how desexing could be beneficial – in reducing wandering and hormone-driven behaviours and said “At the very least I don’t think can hurt”. While there is actually a study that indicates that this is the case, it is one old study. Anecdotally, I know of plenty of people who have non-humpy non-pissing non-wandering dogs that are entire.

Ian Hunter says that “In the ACT, desexing is compulsory and has led to a 47% decrease in dog attacks. It’s also reduced the number of unwanted dogs being euthanised.” Despite a lot of research on my part, I couldn’t find any evidence that this is the case. Any clues on this appreciated! While there might be a correlation (I stress might), this doesn’t indicate a causation.

 

Code of Practice

All three articles talk about the government introducing a Code of Practice to target puppy farms and makes sure dogs are kept and born into healthy and humane conditions.

But a Code of Practice will affect everyone, not just puppy farms! Such codes produced around Australia have pretty much banned dogs from being kept inside or on grass. Are puppy farms defined as those with lots of dogs? Those breeding many litters? Those producing many puppies? Anyone that breeds full stop? A ‘puppy farm’ is hard to define, and so Codes of Practice affect everyone instead.

Further, dogs already have to be kept in a humane way! The Animal Welfare Acts and similar legislation across Australia requires it. Anyone who is allowing their dogs to get matted, or not have water, or have medical treatments denied, is guilty of an offence. We can get puppy farmers for that! Code of Practice not required!

 

Licensing Scheme

I was excited in article two where there was the suggestion that there would be no licensing scheme… Then article three suggested there would be. I’ve repeatedly made arguments against breeder licensing (the most elaborate being here), but basically:

1) Breeder licensing hasn’t been shown to do much (like the Gold Coast scheme) – it doesn’t reduce pound intakes for sure. And puppy farmers don’t make a habit of signing up.

2) Why would we introduce a new license scheme, when the Animal Welfare Acts are not currently enforced?

3) How do we ensure that responsible and ethical home ‘hobby breeders’ are not discouraged from breeding wonderful pets?

4) Often, breeder licensing excludes ‘backyard breeders’, ‘working dog breeders’, and greyhound breeders. These breeders produce a lot of dogs and dogs that are, seemingly, more likely to end up in the pound system.

 

Other Matters

Tammy Franks wants shelters to reveal euthanasia rates publicly. I think this is great if shelters were to have such transparency.

Article two and three suggest that mandatory microchipping will come in, and be compulsory (presumably, hopefully, compulsory before sale). While I have no qualms with microchipping being mandatory, I look forward to the phone line that allows me to report in those selling animals without microchips illegally. I don’t look forward to my expensive phone bills from making such reports. What I’m saying is: I have no confidence that this legislation will be adequately enforced.

Interestingly, one article says that there will be a “requirement for pets to only be bought from registered breeders”. That would be interesting! No more RSPCA, AWL, rescue group sales. No more guide dog and assistant dog groups selling unsuitable animals. Does that mean private rehomings are no longer legal? Surely this must be some kind of error in reporting.

And still there’s continued bleating about a cooling off period, under the guise that it would “reduce impulse buying and cut the number of pets being abandoned or surrendered”. There is no evidence that this is the case! Firstly, it does not seem that pets acquired impulsively are at any greater risk of being surrendered than pets acquired with a lot of thought. Secondly, there is no evidence that a cooling off period would reduce abandonment of pets. I don’t know how this even gets attention!

 

How unfortunate that the Select Committee’s recommendations are now gaining media attention and potentially some momentum in SA.

I spent a great many hours researching and writing my 20 page submission to the Committee. When the Committee published its findings and suggestions, I was so angry that the recommendations made were based on an emotive community rather than evidence and science.

I had been peacefully thinking that the Select Committee was just a little media stunt, and that it was going to disappear. These recent media reports and troubling and upsetting.

It’s concerning that the Government is prepared to invest resources into plans with no evidence that they will have any impact on animal welfare.

It is just as concerning that the community is lapping it up.

 

Further reading:

Public Misconceptions

Is desexing a cult?

Companion Animal Taskforce in NSW – Feedback

07/1/14

Desexed dogs – 2.6 times less likely to bite!

Australian Veterinary Association makes this claim, in its PDF “Dangerous Dogs – a sensible solution“:

Entire (undesexed) dogs are 2.6 times more likely to bite than those that are spayed or neutered (desexed)

Are undesexed dogs really that risky?

I decided to read the three studies referenced individually.

 

avadesexing

 

 

Messam, LL, Kass, PH, Chomel, BB, Hart, LA 2008, ‘The human-canine environment: a risk factor for non-play bites?’, Veterinary Journal, 177(2); 205-15.

This study used data from 2003 (11 years ago) collected in Kingston, Jamaica and San Fransico, USA. Participants were recruited from vet clinic waiting rooms where they were presented with a questionnaire, set to determine the nature of their dog’s biting behaviour (and differentiating it from play biting).

When it came to comparing entire and gonadectomised dogs, this research suggests:

  • Intact dogs are more likely to bite than desexed dogs
  • Intact males are 1.68 times more likely to bite than desexed males
  • Intact males were 0.8 times more likely to bite than intact females
  • Spayed females were the ‘least bitey’

 

Guy, NC, Luescher, UA, Dohoo, Se, Spangler, E, Miller, JB, Dohoo, IR and Bate, LA 2001, ‘Demographic and aggressive characteristics of dogs in general veterinary caseload’, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, vol 74, iss 1. 

This research is based on data collected in Cannada in 1996 (18 years ago), targeting owners with a questionnaire waiting for vet appointments in three Canadian provinces. Their results indicate:

  • The lowest level of aggression (biting and growling) was reported in intact female dogs
  • Intact male dogs were twice as likely to have bitten as intact female dogs
  • Intact male dogs and neutered females incidents of biting was reported at a similar level

And to quote:

“Relative to intact female dogs, neutered male dogs of at least 1 year of age were at the highest risk for having previously shown biting behaviour, followed by neutered female dogs, and intact males… [O]ur results indicate that the behavioural outcomes of [neutering] are worthy of further investigation.”

 

Gershman, KA, Sacks, JJ & Wright, JC 1994, ‘Which dogs bite? A case-control study of risk factors’, Pediatrics, 93 (6 pt 1), 913-7. 

This study used data from 1991 (23 years ago) using 178 dog bites requiring medical treatment of a non-household-member in Denver, USA. Data was only used for dogs that had not bitten before. The study itself recognises this is a small sample size.

Their data concludes:

  • not-neutered dogs were 2.6 times more likely to bite
  • chained dogs were 2.8 times more likely to bite
  • dogs living with a baby were 3.5 times more likely to bite
  • male dogs were 6.2 times more likely to bite

 

So, are entire dogs 2.6 times more likely to bite?

If you are looking at the study in Denver, USA, in 1991 (23 years ago!) then, yes, their conclusions indicate that intact dogs are 2.6 times more likely to bite than desexed dogs.

But the other evidence referenced by the AVA does not make the exact same conclusions. The study conducted in 2003, using data from Jamaica and the USA, found that intact males were 1.68 times more likely to bite than castrated males, and 0.8 times as likely to bite as intact females. (This study is also old, with the data being collected 11 years ago.)

And that other article, with data from Canada in 1996 (18 years ago) makes pretty much the opposite conclusion. They found that neutered male dogs were the riskiest in terms of bites.

 

Questions to ask…

Why are we relying on data over a decade (or two decades) old? If aggression in entire dogs was a common phenomenon, surely we would have countless studies showing this problem.

Where is the Australian data-set?

Where is the study that controls for factors such as selection, socialisation, and socio-economic factors?

 

What the AVA should really be saying is:

According to one study conducted in Denver, USA, 23 years ago, entire dogs were found to be 2.6 times more likely to deliver a bite (that required medical treatment) to a stranger than desexed dogs.