Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
Originally posted by: DrPizza
Originally posted by: Leros
Terrible logic, although I agree that backyard breeders aren't the best thing.
I highly doubt it stopped backyard breeders one bit though. And, it made it more difficult for people to find homes for their dogs that they could no longer keep.
Rehoming for a small adoption fee is ok but the selling of pets is not allowed. As the article states, Craigslist creates an easy medium for backyard breeders, resellers(folks get pets for free then turn around to sell them for a profit) to sell pets. Thankfully with Craiglist flag system, many of these ads are flagged off quickly.
That's more or less one of the reasons I had about it being difficult to find a home for a pet that you had to give up. I don't trust people. But, I have a bit more faith if someone were to pay $100 for a golden retriever that I couldn't keep. I find a price like that would help weed out the people who just wanted a dog, but weren't ready for the financial commitment.
Furthermore, it seems that more than enough people aren't thinking this through very well. The BEST breeders of dogs are generally smaller breeders with only 3 or 4 animals on the property that live in the house and are members of the family. NOT breeders who have 100 dogs crammed into small cages & who ultimately sell those animals through pet stores, etc. It's a lot easier to figure out who these latter people are - they would be the ones with frequent ads on Craigslist.
The last dog we purchased was a Great Pyranees. I'd have to be a freakin retard to think that there was any better place to purchase such a dog other than from someone who only had a couple of dogs, and where I could go and see the dogs in person, how they interacted with the kids on the farm, and how they interacted with the other animals. This is a "backyard breeder" who only lets her dog have 1 litter of puppies per year - she doesn't force the dog to have as many litters as possible, stressing the health of the dam, and resulting in inferior puppies. Yet someone thinks that kind of breeder should be professionally licensed with fees to prevent exactly this situation: responsible breeding? I needed a dog that was going to protect my goats, get along well with my other dogs and cats, and defend its territory from other dogs & the very good possibility of coyotes one of these days. The Great Pyranees was one of the most ideal dogs for this role. I'd be a fool to want a dog that came from parents who hadn't proven not only their physical conformation to the breed, but also their ability to work well with other animals on the farm.
Of course, if you think about it, I may have indirectly pointed out the biggest problem - it's not the breeders, it's the buyers. There are too many people who just have to keep up with the Joneses and get their yorkie-poo or cockapoodle-do, or whatever the hell designer dog is fashionable this week. (No offense meant to owners of such dogs - as long as they were very selective as to who the parents were, how the parents were kept, and how the puppy seemed to be progressing healthwise & conformation-wise.) Too many of them don't give a shit about the parents - they just want to know that one parent was one breed, and the other parent was another breed, and after that... just hope that the best possible combination of genetics occurred. (side note: and 25 years ago, when one neighbor's purebred dog got over the fence and mated with the neighbor's purebred dog, they called it a mutt and gave it away to a good home. But today, give it a fancy designer name, and you can call it $500.) But, of course, that doesn't matter... it's the name of the breed that matters. And, if the dog doesn't work out, or isn't what they expected...
As Alkemyst pointed out - but I don't think he was specific enough - the people who just run to the shelter & get a poodle cheap & run to another shelter and get a (whatever you want to cross with a poodle this week) cheap, and cross them to make a quick buck - those are the breeders who are causing most of the problem. But, there's a market for those puppies because too many buyers are uneducated about what to look for, what kind of paperwork to check for, etc.