A case in point is the fact that the photo, above, is the Facebook avatar of Susan Sprung, the wife of former AKC President Dennis Sprung.
It seems Dennis and Susan Sprung are very upset about the HBO special decrying the wrecked dogs of the American Kennel Club.
Right. I can understand that. I myself think the HBO special missed the forest for the trees when it comes to dogs in America.
But look at this dog that Susan Sprung has put up as her Facebook avatar. It has no nose!
How did we turn a wolf into a snub-nosed monkey?
Dennis Sprung, of course, is the person who saluted the idea of having the AKC give special discount deals to puppy mill dogs sold through pet stores.
Sprung is also the fellow who, even with AKC registrations crashing 70 percent, announced that the AKC would never follow the path of the British Kennel Club and impose health checks on bulldogs, the very dog highlighted in the HBO segment you can see below.
Talk about breed blind!
To be clear, the folks at the AKC are not bad people who set out to harm dogs any more than the folks in the Catholic Church set out to shelter pedophiles.
What happens is little compromises are made, values are shaped, stretched, and then distorted. Ego and money get involved. Odd behaviors get normalized. Even when evil things are known to be going on, they are only whispered about. No one wants to lose status, power, position, or money. No one wants to buck the system. And, of course, the system makes it clear that anyone who does try to buck the system will be dealt with harshly. Whisper campaigns will be started. Ribbons will not be won. Breeding stock will be devalued.
And so Pekingese dogs without noses get the Big Wink and even get used as Facebook avatars by those claiming it is so unfair for HBO to have talked about the deformed, diseased, and dysfunctional dogs of the American Kennel Club.
No, no irony there!
No comments:
Post a Comment