Greytmate

My point is that if these breeders are giving their dogs at least a minimum standard of care, it will not be any harder for them should those minimum standards become law. Some breeders will have to make small improvements, some may have to make big improvements, and some will decide to stop breeding. Which is fine if they are unwilling to provide minimum care. There are differences for different dogs, but I would still argue that all dogs should have a right to a sleeping environment that can be cleaned, for all properties where breeding takes place. All dogs should also have the ability to retreat out of eyesight of other dogs at times, which is another reason for proper kennelling to be provided if the dogs will not all fit in the house. Yes. The idea of a Code is that it is just expected that it will be adhered to. Only if a problem or complaint comes up will it be investigated. We have all sorts of laws covering so many things, most are not enforced unless a problem occurs. It isn't always necessary or appropriate for inspections to be done on people to ensure they are following laws. I am well aware of what sort of things can be enforced in a code and what cannot. I have been involved in writing them. Dog welfare is important to me. I believe in the need to show sound practical argument for why things should be included in the code. People who know lots of stuff about dogs should be speaking out about minimum care levels for dogs and encouraging legislative improvement. Regardless of any political obstacles. I don't expect people to give up right to privacy, and have explained a model that protects that. You don't have to explain people's right to privacy to me. The ANKC and other registries could play a crucial role in this service to their members. It has happened in some countries. Restriction on Point of Sale display has happened in our own country. The redneck comment is puzzling, as the redneck approach is to call for less restriction of the industry and of individual rights to breed. To be honest I do not believe we have the data yet to insist on restrictions to pet shops. But with a scheme where all breeders are registered in some way, statistics are collected, and all dogs properly identifiable, we can collect the data. The proof that the dogs coming from certain breeders with certain practices are not being dumped or surrendered, and the proof that the dogs ending up with problems are tending to come from other breeders with different practices. By wanting small ethical breeders to be exempt from this, would make it harder to collect information that proves they are using best practice. Steve, I thought this discussion was about puppy farmers and although you are right, there are smaller scale breeders considered to be "farmers" who do have other regular 9-5 jobs, I thought what we were trying to target here is indeed the large-scale commercial breeders = FARMERS! Therefore it *IS* their business, regardless if the "farm" is family-run or not and regardless if they have a outside 9-5 job. In short, they don't need the same as human children but lets decide at bare minimum, what those needs are... The discussion was about the definition of a puppy farmer and whether or not its possible to legislate against puppy farmers without that affecting smaller breeders.If you are going to introduce laws to dictate staff to numbers ratio at what point would that cut in and how does an ordinary hobby breeder or even a bigger breeder with no paid staff but rather family labour go? How would it be possible to enforce this? I never meant to imply that looking after dogs is like looking after children, but that ratios are something that can be used in a code. What the ratios are deserves examination in a separate topic, in the breeder's forum. But it is clear to me that there is a limit to how many adult dogs and litters that one person can raise in a way that ensures adequate socialisation and enrichment. The ratio is probably going to be higher than what the majority of ethical breeders use, but lower than that commonly used in intensive farming. Let's set the bar, so that good breeders go under it and it stops the worst type of factory breeding. When talking about ratios we can be talking about adults residing at the property, children over 14 residing there, other adults living permanently in residence. We can also talk about hours logged as worked by paid employees, same as any other type of employment. I don't think laws should cut in or out depending on type of breeder or size of breeder. Certainly there would be large puppy farms producing better dogs in better conditions than some small backyard breeders producing dogs of poor type in atrocious conditions including some ANKC 'hobby' breeders unfortunately. It seems fairly simple. If a breeder has space in the house for a litter, a quiet room that isn't used as a food preparation area or thoroughfare, with a washable floor surface, the code should be able to cover them without them really changing what they do now. Large homes might accommodate more than one litter and easily accomodate more than a couple of other dogs all living inside. But if you want to breed dogs, and they do not all fit in you house without creating unhygienic living conditions, then there should be a code that covers how you accommodate all those dogs. It isn't good enough that the dogs live in paddocks in rusting old cars, no matter what sort of breeder you are or how many dog you have. Enforcement of the Code need only happen if problems come up or complaints are made. If you are a very private breeder producing good dogs from your family home, and placing them properly, you will be left alone. If you or your dogs start creating problems for others, it does need to be looked into.

Fights may not start until the youngest bitch is fully grown physically. Sometimes you won't get a fight until the younger bitch reaches emotional maturity at around 3 and a half year of age, and then it will be a serious one. Even one serious fight may be one too many.

No. Not only do they fold up really small, but they will stay in that position for hours. Sometimes we have to go looking around the house for our greyhounds, because they are so unobtrusive, we don't even know where they are.

Agree with this advice 100%. I am so sorry you lost your baby pup, that is so terrible.

No, it isn't about what is easiest to clean. It is about requiring breeders to have accommodation that can be sanitised as opposed to the alternative, which is having dogs on surfaces that cannot be sanitised. I do not accept that because a dog is owned by a breeder that its basic needs are any different to that of any other dog, and you haven't put forward any argument to show how it might be different. Your 'survival of the fittest' type breeders are ones that do need to lift their game. Puppies dying slowly over a few days without vet care or euthanasia isn't acceptable to me. It is cruel. If you dismiss my ideas on the basis of "The very people who you are trying to stop are known to do what ever they can to avoid complying with laws as well. " you are probably not going to get very far with whoever you do need to convince to get your reform through.

A formula could be worked out to cover the number of adults residing at a breeder property per dog. Or a formula of x paid employee hours per day per dog. Many puppy farms would be run by family and some live-in casual help, and I believe that ethical breeders do it on a smaller scale purely because there is a limit to what family and live-in help can do properly. What is that limit exactly? A dozen dogs? You are in a better position to determine that than me for most breeds. Ethical breeders keep numbers to under what they have time to exercise and socialise adequately. They supervise children around the dogs. I disagree. Whole litters don't always just live or die. Instead a percentage of pups will be lost, and at the moment it may be more commercially viable to lose a few pups every now and then (cold snaps or heat waves) than control the temperature of their environment in the way that an ethical breeder would. So the answer may be to increase the minimum standard to include large areas of soft ground accessible to the breeder, I wouldn't want to remove the requirement for hygienic sleeping and whelping areas. I don't know much about that law. It sounds like it is not being enforced. Steve is there anything you would want to add to a code to lift the standard that all breeders have to adhere to? Or are you just against this new code applying to smaller breeders at all?

I would agree with all but the bolded part. I think that t-time had a good point with child-care centres. The ratios could be enforced on animal welfare and human OHS grounds. This is something I would think worth working towards. In my opinion, a code needs to be developed to cover all breeders. Only on DOL is "breeder" such a loaded term. In real life a breeder is the owner, or lessee of a bitch that whelps a litter. That is what a breeder is regardless of our feelings on the matter. You cannot legislate on motivations. Only on practices. The challenge for you Steve (and I want to help) is to come up with the bare minimum standard of practices that you think is necessary to breed good, happy dogs. We (ethical breeding advocates) need to come to a consensus of what that is. An unfortunate consequence is that some breeders who are doing a great job may have to do things differently and maybe spend more money on facilities. But that is a small price to pay for 'puppy farmers' to be put under the same code. I don't feel that this thread has been as useful as it could have been. To ask the question "What is a Puppy Farmer?" here is to get a regurgitated digest of everything people have been told about what puppy farming is on these forums. How many people here have ever seen one, let alone worked at one or owned one? I do like the threads you have asked in the Breeder's forum, the info is so useful. Clearly, one of the practices that good ethical breeders do is to keep the litter at optimum temperature. That is a fantastic example of a concrete thing that can be included in the code that would cause huge costs for intensive farmers. A maximum and minimum allowable temperature for each breed of dog. While this may knock out a handful of hobby breeders, others would comply, and intensive farmers would have a huge costs that may put some out of business. And best of all, the puppies would benefit. Ok, I will apologise now for my tone in previous posts. I do not want to score points. I want to work with you. Having said that I believe I have provided an example of a model where by breeders privacy is totally protected. Also where breeders cannot hide the identity of the dogs they produce and statistics can be collected that would prove beyond doubt who was producing and selling the problem dogs. A system where if an ANKC breeder is not producing problems, bodies like the RSPCA will not be able to collect information on them or monitor them. I think your concerns are all addressed in the solution I spoke about a few pages earlier. I also want to speak about the supply/demand problem. This could be addressed by legislating the ban of displays of pups at point of sale. Banning pet shops. We have legislated in this way for the tobacco industry, and now it needs to be done in the dog industry. Another thing we can do is encourage better education of buyers. The reason we have an oversupply of discarded adult dogs is because those dogs failed to meet the owner expectations. Expectations can be altered through education on so many different levels. By legislating against impulse buying we are giving a chance for education to work better than it otherwise would. Steve have another look at the code. If the wording of the code makes it impossible for a breeder to breed a litter in the house, then that needs to be changed. It is possible to have a good code that allows the breeding of pups in a normal family home. Covering just about all of the breeders that responded to your thread about where they whelp their litters. Having a hygienic washable surface seems to be the norm for the breeders there, nobody had baby puppies on dirt at all.

No, an average size female greyhound could easily be called medium sized dog. They will fit in a handbag.

I travel from Ipswich to see her.

Where in the code does it say that the dogs are only allowed out for twenty minutes? Appropriate enrichment means that some dogs will need a lot more than twenty minutes outside, and I can't see how a Code of Practice would prevent breeders from doing a lot more with the dogs if they wanted to. Are we discussing enrichment as a proposed reform to the code of practice or not? There are some dogs that wouldn't need to spend a lot of time out of the enclosure (if we are writing a fair code that covers very old dogs as well as the rest). I would disagree with a code that forces any dogs out of their enclosures for an inappropriately long length of time. Is there anything in the code that would stop a breeder using their own house to raise dogs in? Steve please post the Code if you think there are so many problems with it. How can we discuss it with you, consider questions like the one you have posted above, if we don't actually know what is in the proposed code?

I used to work for Nature's Gift. There is no offal in the canned food. But I can understand finding a claw in the food. It probably would have arrived stuck to a piece of chicken, some chicken ends up at a dog food factory instead of on the shelf at Coles for a good reason. I never came across anything nasty being found in any of the cans while I was there. It is a good food that I would give my dogs.

The over supply is mostly with dogs rather than puppies. There is a big demand for puppies.

Retired greyhound would tick all your boxes. The females are not that big.

White Rose Boarding Kennel at Walloon is excellent.

The first and second times of what? Mild grumbles? Squabbles over a biscuit? Brawls? What about Dianed, to give a very specific example. Is she irresponsible too? What happens when the pushy little bitch is fully mature and starts to sense that the older girl has weakened a little? Also, How should tidierikx separate her bitches now? Rehome one? Put one down? Keep them in separate yards forever and hope like mad that one of the kids will never, ever leave a gate or door between them open? Is supervision the key? Or are some people such good owners that their dogs would never dare to fight? Not meaning to have a go, but it was a pretty big call to call somebody irresponsible, without explaining exactly what the responsible thing to do would have been. I do not envy the choices in front of tidierikx right now. My advice to the OP. Just get a male this time.

I just wanted to expand on the accountability and privacy. Buying a dog should be like buying any other manufactured good as in you have a right to know the origin of your dog. As I said before the breeder should be linked to the pups identity. In the same way that you buy a Ford and it will have a Ford badge on it. The dog itself is does not have any 'right to privacy.' If a dog comes from XY kennels that information should not be withheld from anyone buying the dog, accepting it as a surrender, or taking ownership in any other proper way. Vets and other professionals dealing with the dog should also have access to that information. Just the name of the kennels, which essentially is the 'manufacturer' of that dog. However the registry should not be allowed to reveal the names, addresses or any other identifying information bout who XY kennels is, without the court order. And I would only want to see any of this put in place if all breeders were required to be on an officially recognised registry. I see nothing wrong with the RSPCA starting its own registry just to cater to breeders that are not part of any existing recognised registry like the ANKC. But the RSPCA should leave ANKC breeders alone.

'Excitability' is a temperament trait that is mostly determined by genetics. Training won't make a dog less excitable, it will just appropriately channel the excitement. If chocs are produced by a breeders that don't bred purely to produce dogs of that colour, there should be no difference in temperament from the rest of the breed. Breeders that do breed for colour limit themselves to a much smaller gene pool, and are not putting temperament as their first priority, so it is more likely the dogs will not have as good temperaments as pups that are bred with temperament as a higher priority than colour. If enough breeders start breeding only the one colour, and do not ever introduce dogs of other colours back into their lines, their lines can be considered an offshoot of the genepool, and differences may start to emerge. You can even end up with a different breed.

It was a mistake. It isn't irresponsibility when you consider the large number of people here that do exactly the same thing, every day, and claim that all is fine and ok because they "supervise". Why don't you have a go at those people when they post, instead of having a go at somebody that has learnt their lesson the hard way.

I agree - problem is my idea of sub standard conditions doesn't equal yours. A Code of Practice has to contain practices. Things that breeders actually have to do, not dreams, wishes and daisies. Can you post here the section of the proposed code that talks about the minimum standard of accommodation that needs to be provided by dog breeders? If you disagree with my insistence that all dogs to be provided with sleeping areas/enclosures that have hard washable surfaces, what practice would you put into the code? I am not insisting that the dog is kept in the enclosure permanently, as that would prevent enrichment, I just think that appropriate, safe and hygienic accommodation should be provided for every dog living on a breeder's property. A few years back I was on a committee that reviewed a Code of Practice that covered the minimum standards for kennelling. We were able to put together a Code of Practice that covered all breeders. From the breeder that only breeds the one litter from a house dog, to the biggest puppy farmers imaginable. One code. One minimum standard for all dogs. I wouldn't like to see a situation where any breeder can legally have dogs living in paddocks with old trailers, wrecked cars or 44 gallon drums for kennels. What would you like to see in the Code?

Unless they have a court order. Yes. Breeders' privacy needs to be protected. There just has to be a mechanism for people to hold those breeders to account if problems come up later. Non-identifying information, such as statistics, could be sought from registries under FOI laws.

Registries hold info. There should be no compulsion to release identifying information unless there is a serious reason.

Well I don't agree with registries releasing info about breeders. Not even to the police? What have you got to hide?

Another way of ensuring accountability for breeders is to have all pups microchipped with the breeders registration number linked to the dog's identity, and all breeding animals having a DNA identification and certification. That way, if there are problem dogs coming to the attention of the RSPCA or others, the breeder can be tracked down and forced to take some responsibility. Only people that neglect dog's welfare need to be brought to the attention of the RSPCA. They should not have an automatic right to look into the business of the good breeders who breed dogs that never cause problems for anyone.

I don't agree with a necessity for breeders to have their addresses publicly listed anywhere. As long as they are part of a recognised registry. If there is a problem, the registry will have contact details that can be provided to other parties if there is a valid reason.

Asymmetrical gait is a sign of problems.