We human beings are a strange lot.  We try to save endangered species by protecting their habitats, and doing all we can to encourage their propagation.  Yet at the same time, to help save dogs, we do all we can to restrict their habitats, and prevent them from propagating. 

Anyone who spends even a bit of time online, checking out local or national pet rescue shelters, knows how many desperate dogs are looking for homes.  Not so much puppies, who usually find homes quickly, but older dogs whose owners have given them up for misbehavior or relocation, or because they can no longer care for the dog due to health or financial reasons. 

But what of these shelter puppies?  Where do they come from?  Short answer: they’re produced by unneutered pets who, for some reason, were allowed to breed, either accidentally, or for profit.  Most of these are not purebred dogs, but instead mongrels.  And today, a large percentage of them are pit or pit mixes.  Why?  Because, unfortunately, some pit owners fight their dogs for profit, or else have a warped sense of machismo that needs to be assuaged. 

Unneutered pits are everywhere today.  Driven by an altruistic desire to help these poor shelter soldiers, many (me included) have adopted one.  The honest truth is: they are poorly bred, and often problematic.

Other shelter puppies are simply the progeny of dogs left to randomly wander and breed.  In either case, this unsupervised, amateurish, and often cruel practice inevitably produces unwanted dogs of questionable breeding, who get adopted by well-meaning people who don’t know what they’re in for.

Discouraging the breeding of inferior dogs by inexperienced, and often scurrilous individuals is a good thing, as is the adoption of needy pets on doggy death row.  But what of the breeding of purebred dogs, by experienced, caring breeders?  Or, what of the breeding of mixed breed dogs who show great intelligence, superior physiology, and desirable temperament?  Should they be given the green light to breed, or should all voluntary breeding be halted, so that all those the accidental puppies can be adopted and saved?

As a veteran dog behaviorist/trainer, I can tell you that the overall quality of adoptable dogs has plummeted in the last ten years.  In the tank, really.  I cannot tell you how many pit/lab/shepherd/Rottie/Chihuahua (you get the idea) mixes have been humanely adopted by people who mean well, but quickly find themselves stuck with an inferior dog, with all manner of behavioral or physiological problems.  The mongrel’s advantage of “hybrid vigor” is dwarfed by inferior genetics, and horrible histories.  Compounding this issue is the confounding issue of a sea change in training techniques that, frankly, stink- at least when applied to troubled dogs, or those poorly bred.  It’s a perfect storm that unfortunately keeps me busy.

If left to certain animals activists, all breeding of dogs would stop.  I’m not kidding; I have debates all the time about this.  They steadfastly believe that, to help dogs, across-the-board neutering, and the adoption of only rescued animals will do the trick.  But, if you stop for a moment and just think, how could this possibly help to improve the lot of dogs?  How could sterilizing every dog, and then parsing out those poorly bred ones wallowing in shelters, help? If taken to its ultimate end, wouldn’t this strategy  result in the eventual extinction of canis familiaris as we know it?

This is, of course, hyperbole- no one would be able to extinguish one of the world’s most successful species, no matter how ideological we became.  But what is happening is that, more and more people are turning away from purebred dogs, and ending up with post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-ish, skittish, fear-aggressive, hyper-vigilant rescue handfuls, whose poor breeding and atrocious pasts make owning a dog a labor, not a love.

Here’s where I stand.  I think that decent, sweet, healthy dogs should be bred, to produce more decent, sweet, healthy dogs.  And I think this job should be left to professionals, and not backyard breeders, gangstas, hoarders, Deliverance extras, or the insane.  I think that most hard case mixed rescues should be sterilized, but if one is an exceptional dog (as was my famed, genius Rottie/GSD, Lou, star of Last Dog On The Hill, who should have been bred), the specter of sterilization should not be an automatic.  Good dogs should pass on their genes, no matter if they are mixed, or pure.  That’s nature, baby.

Those who suggest that buying a pup from a good breeder instead of adopting is an immoral decision need to think more closely about the fate of dogs in our society.  For, without those well-bred Collies, GSDs, Golden Retrievers, and yes- even those expertly-bred pit bulls, what hope does that lonely mixed-breed inmate at a shelter have?