The AKC is Front and Center at the Dog Auctions

The Dog Dealer by Richard-Ansdell, 1860, aka "Buy A Dog Mame?"

Whenever the American Kennel Club is cornered about the damage done to dogs by contrived standards that celebrate deformed and defective dogs, or the rampant inbreeding that goes on in their closed registry system, they trot out the "fact" that they have given over $20 million to fund research over the course of the last 15 years.

Not said is what this research has led to, or how that money has been raised.

Here's the story.

1. AKC money that is used to fund "research" comes from puppy mill sales. AKC Chairman Ron Menaker acknowledges that the AKC pockets many millions of dollars a year from registration of puppy mill dogs and that this money is used to defray the cost of dog shows. Well guess what? A portion of this money is also used to buy AKC "redemption through research." But can you redeem yourself through research if you are paying for that research by giving the "big wink" to puppy mill sales?
   
   
2. Research is just public relations and in this case public relations is simply gauzy window dressing designed to prevent you from noticing the butchery going on at the back of the store. This is no different from an oil company suggesting that their underwriting of a Jacques Cousteau special offsets the lead they put in gasoline, the smog they put in the air, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill. At least the oil companies are sorry for their sins; the Chairman of the AKC thinks the AKC needs to be registering more puppy mill dogs right now and has put in a new computer program to speed pet store registration of puppy mill dogs.
   
   
3. AKC research funding is "analysis to justify paralysis." Let's face it: there is no mystery as to why so many AKC breeds are deformed, defective and diseased. The AKC does not need "research" to know why brachycephalic dogs cannot breathe, or why bulldogs require rape racks. They do not need "research" to know incest is not best, or to know why show line German Shepherds can barely walk. The AKC does not need "research" to mandate health tests or lower coefficients of inbreeding. The problem is not a shortage of research; it's a shortage of courage and ethics on the part of the leadership of the American Kennel Club.
   
   
4. The AKC does nothing with the research. There are now more than a dozen health screening tests for dogs but the AKC does not require a health test of any kind to either register or show a dog in the AKC. In fact, the AKC will refuse admission to any breed club that mandates health tests be associated with registration of their breed.

I have written in the past about how bizzarre conformation standards and a closed registry system have lead to so many deformed, diseased and defective dogs in the AKC.

I have also written about how the AKC loves puppy mills and naive puppy buyer owners who start their search for "the perefect dog" by flipping through an AKC all-breed book.

What I have not written about are the "dog auctions" where puppy mills sell off dogs to pet store bundlers and other puppy mill producers looking for more cheap breeding stock.

The good news is that I do not have to write a word. All you have to do is read a few choice paragraphs from Best Friends Animal Society:

In 2006, the AKC registered 870,000 individual dogs and 416,000 litters, and brought in $72 million dollars in total revenues. Well over $30 million in revenues were from dog registrations alone. Sadly, it is believed that 80% of this profit comes from puppy mills. . . .

. . . . One of main players at the [dog] auction was the AKC Representative, whom the auctioneers introduced at the start of the auction the first day, urging folks to see her and “she’d set ya’ll up”, proclaiming that “AKC-registered pups means money in the bank!"

The AKC rep was a woman in her late 60’s who floated around the warehouse with a clipboard, toting a heavy stack of forms and certificates, while grasping a microchip scanner. She always stood near the auction block or the front of the room in plain view. She was one person I never lost site of throughout the event. She would watch for cues from the breeders who would signal her to come “certify” their litters. She would scan dogs for registry numbers, so that puppies could be served papers, AKC papers, that is. People paid her a fee to “legitimatize” dogs to the outside world.

It was amazing how quick the “certification” process was, and another testament to how little energy goes into the AKC brand. It’s essentially a marketing scam that people buy into without thinking twice. Money is the name of the game, and if you have a $20 bill and a purebred dog, your dog basically has his diploma.

After all "Puppies with AKC papers fetch more owners", since "Nine out of ten consumers prefer AKC-registered puppies.” I learned this from an AKC print ad that came out in the August 2007 issue of “The Kennel Spotlight”, a highly popular magazine distributed at dog auctions across the Midwest.

Read the whole thing right here.

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