Is the AKC Just a Registry?

The start of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show is five days away.  

This is the premier showcase for the AKC, an organization whose apologists routinely claim it is "just a registry."

Of course, that is a total lie. 

It is the AKC that mandates that dogs be bred in a closed registry system in which increasing levels of inbreeding are the inevitable byproduct. 

It is the AKC that green lights the standards which select for defect and which mean that most members of some breeds suffer their whole lives.

It is the AKC that credentials judges who have no idea of what they are doing because they know nothing about working dogs or even the basics of anatomy.

It is the AKC that gives show dogs zero points for health, zero points for work, and zero points for temperament.

It is the AKC that not only allows puppy mill dogs to be registered -- it goes out of its way to solicit their business, giving them cheaper registration deals, creating special computerized registration programs for them, and even inviting them into their guest suites at Westminster.

It is the AKC that refuses to allow any breed club to mandate health tests as a requirement for registration.

It is the AKC that refuses to allow any breed club to mandate working tests as a requirement for registration.

It is the AKC that refuses to allow any breed club to delay registration until a dog is an adult and is actually proven to look like the breed it is supposed to be.

Writing in The New York Times, veterinarian James Serpell writes about AKC breed standards and the slippery and sad ethics of raising purebred dogs:

There are two main problems with these breed standards. First, in order to produce dogs that met the standard, breeders employed breeding practices that inevitably resulted in inbreeding. Not only were the original gene pools of many breeds very small to begin with, but breeders have also accentuated the problem by selectively breeding from relatively small numbers of "champion sires" and/or by mating together closely related individuals.

Nowadays, many breeds are highly inbred and express an extraordinary variety of genetic defects as a consequence: defects ranging from anatomical problems, like hip dysplasia, that cause chronic suffering, to impaired immune function and loss of resistance to fatal diseases like cancer. The only sensible way out of this genetic dead-end is through selective out-crossing with dogs from other breeds, but this is considered anathema by most breeders since it would inevitably affect the genetic "purity" of their breeds.

The second problem is more subtle but equally harmful. Although the breed standards are carefully worded, they tend to be imprecise, and this allows a degree of ambiguity when it comes to interpretation.

Consider, for example, the written standard for the English bulldog’s face and muzzle: “the face, measured from the front of the cheekbone to the tip of the nose, should be extremely short, the muzzle being very short, broad, turned upward and very deep from the corner of the eye to the corner of the mouth.” As written, this description seems to require breeders to select for the shortest and most deformed face and muzzle possible, and for show judges to award their highest accolades to the dogs that best exemplify this trend. Is it any wonder then that bulldogs can no longer breathe properly?

This tendency for the primary distinguishing features of dog breeds to become more and more accentuated over time is extremely widespread, and in almost every case it has been detrimental to the health and welfare of the dogs.

When standards do more harm than good, they should either be revised or abandoned altogether. We owe it to the dogs.

The AKC is not going to allow routine cross breeding, nor is it going to substantially revise its standards.

What that means is that there is no place for a thinking person who cares about dogs at the AKC. 

By buying an AKC-registered dog, you become part of the problem that the AKC has fostered, which is widespread, endemic, systematic, and institutionalized canine abuse.  That becomes even more true if you register a litter of puppies with the AKC, or attend or participate in an AKC show or event of any kind.

You are the person who decides. 

You are the person who votes with his or her feet or wallet. 

Is chasing a ribbon this weekend more important to you than changing the world of dogs for the better for generations to come?

Are you really that shallow?


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