What eBay can teach you about buying a dog

Snap of Elizabeth Baker's Rye at Zamora. I'd love a pup of his someday.

"Don't buy the item. Buy the seller."

Since I'm devoting space this week to thoughts on dog breeders, here's a quick rundown of my own most recent puppy-buying experience. First, my personal rules & regs for puppy buying:

1. Know the breeder
2. Know the breeder
3. Know the breeder

I bought my last border collie pups sight unseen, but I wasn't flying blind. They had an older sibling I loved, other relatives I'd watched and admired and a breeder I trusted. His dogs, the pups' parents, met all my criteria:

Sire and dam were both working ranch dogs, able and willing to work all day.
Both parents trialled successfully in USBCHA Open.
Both were able to work cattle.
Both were able to work out of sight of the handler.
Both had lots of natural balance.
Both had a grip and the brains/presence/guts to move stubborn stock.
Both were so keen you'd need a crowbar to get them off stock, if not for their natural biddability. [No electric collars, please. Scroll down in this link for Alasdair's remarks on "the collar."]

If you want a good border collie, look for an experienced border collie handler and stock owner with a reputation for honesty, fair dealing and good, sound, working dogs. Look for someone you'd value as a mentor. You'll have far better luck than if you buy from someone who can offer a sheet of blood-test results but no proof the dogs can actually do anything. [Good stockdog breeders generally do have hip and CEA information on their dogs.]

When you go to sheepdog trials, don't ask, "Does anyone here have puppies for sale?" Ask something more along the lines of, "Do you give lessons? And are you planning any litters? [Because I've seen your dogs run at three different trials now, and they always do well and seem very nice to be around, and you handle them so kindly and quietly.]"

As on eBay, so with puppies: Buy the seller.

Introduction: What they looked for in a breeder

I'd like to write a couple posts on what I look for in a dog breeder, and what I think other people ought to look for in a breeder, and to get things rolling, I'm going to delegate. Here are two links to posts written by Smart People with Really Nice Dogs.

Henry Chappell is a writer and outdoorsman who wanted a good "meat, hide, and stock dog," and found what he was looking for in a pup named Cate, a Mountain Cur. Read the first post about Cate here.

Julie Zickefoose has been in my sidebar since this blog was born. She's an artist and writer and NPR commentator, and I'm in love with her Boston Terrier. His name is Chet Baker, and he is too cool for school. [It doesn't hurt that Julie is a fine photographer and Chet, of course, is a great subject.] Here is A Brief History of Chet: Part 1, and here is Part 2, with possibly the cutest puppy photo in the history of the universe.

Finally, to add to the mix, here is the oft-quoted/oft-linked Reputable Breeder vs. the Backyard Breeder.

All food for thought. I'll write more tomorrow.

Why blogging matters: Free Fouad

We live in interesting times. I can listen to music, enjoy my favorite tea and blog about the animals I love, while children die of starvation and wars rage and brave people are jailed for speaking, and writing, about things that are true and important. So no apologies for this post, which concerns a political prisoner. Writing about him is the least I can do.

His name is Fouad Ahmed al-Farhan, and he is a blogger in Saudi Arabia.

Saudis Confirm Detention of Blogger
By KATHERINE ZOEPF

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — An outspoken Saudi blogger is being held for “purposes of interrogation,” the Saudi Interior Ministry confirmed Tuesday.

Gen. Mansour al-Turki, an Interior Ministry spokesman reached by telephone, said the blogger, Fouad al-Farhan, was “being questioned about specific violations of nonsecurity laws.” Mr. Farhan’s blog, which discusses social issues, had become one of the most widely read in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Farhan, 32, of Jidda, was arrested Dec. 10 at his office, local news sources reported. Two weeks before his arrest, he wrote a letter to friends warning them that it was imminent.

“I was told that there is an official order from a high-ranking official in the Ministry of the Interior to investigate me,” read the letter, which is now posted in English and Arabic on Mr. Farhan’s blog.

Since his arrest, friends have continued to post entries on his Web log (www.alfarhan.org) on his behalf under a banner that reads “Free Fouad” and features his picture.

“The issue that caused all of this is because I wrote about the political prisoners here in Saudi Arabia, and they think I’m running an online campaign promoting their issue,” the letter continued, saying that Mr. Farhan had been asked to sign a statement of apology.

“I’m not sure if I’m ready to do that,” he wrote. “An apology for what? Apologizing because I said the government is a liar when they accused those guys to be supporting terrorism?”

Ahmad al-Omran, a blogger and a friend of Mr. Farhan, said that Mr. Farhan had been the first Saudi blogger to be detained by state security. The arrest created widespread anxiety among other Saudi bloggers and advocates, he said.

“An incident like this has its effect,” Mr. Omran said by telephone. “It’s intimidating to think you might be arrested for something on your blog. On the other hand, this means that these voices on the blogosphere are being heard. But it’s really sad that a blogger who is writing about important issues out in the open would get arrested, while there are extremists who call for violence and hate, and the government is not doing much.”

Mr. Omran said Mr. Farhan was one of the first Saudi bloggers to post items in Arabic and to use his real name. At the top of Mr. Farhan’s blog is a call in Arabic for “freedom, dignity, justice, equality, public participation and the other lost Islamic values.”

The Interior Ministry would not say specifically why Mr. Farhan had been arrested.

“The violation is not a security matter,” General Turki said. “He is not being jailed. He is being questioned, and I don’t believe he will remain in detention long. They will get the information that they need from him and then they will let him go.” [source]

Visit his blog and scroll down to read a letter to the Saudi king from the Committee to Protect Journalists, and for RSS feeds like this. More news here.

And for a great, heartbreaking essay on the courage to speak out, read this. Fouad al-Farhan has been in detention for almost a month. Set him free.

Hacky

Site updates: yes, I have a favorite lizard. When Western Skinks are youngsters and just two-three inches long, that blue is so blue it can make you stupid with delight. These lizards live in California's mountains and foothills. They're deep in hibernation now -- nestled between the bark and the wood of fallen trees and buried in leaf litter beneath slabs of granite, dreaming their lizard dreams under the falling snow.

California is mostly storms at the moment. My sister was reading by candlelight in San Jose this afternoon -- no electricity.

Meanwhile, I'm hacking, and posting, and if the winds here knock out power I will spit ink.

Christmas decorations and subsequent hacks slowed down my blog's loading time, and I've been trying to clean [virtual] house. Images have for the most part been optimized. Most widgets and gadgets have been tossed.

Sidebar links [the ones in the link lists] now open in a new window. I adapted the link-arrow gif from a template design I like very much, created by César.

The menu bar below the header is just a link list: a good horizontal menu idea from Hans at Beautiful Beta.

The hack for an Open/Close feature on longer posts can be found on a number of sites: I followed César's instructions.

The navigation icons for Older Posts/Newer Posts [that's the neon Indian chief from the old Arrow Motel in Las Vegas] were added according to directions at La Bloguería.

Code doesn't need to be translated, how cool is that. For everything else, Google will be happy to translate. You can provide the site's URL or a section of text.

[Edited to add: yay rain!! It's pouring.]

Happy Birthday, Molly

Bill Fosher on the dog that changed his life:

Old Molly just keeps on keeping on. She turns 105 today, if you buy the notion that one calendar year is seven dog years.

Just a few weeks ago, I thought she might not make it to this milestone. She suffered a major seizure, and had a hard time coming out of it. But come out of it she did, and bless her heart, she paces up and down "harr-ing" for her dinner every night starting about two hours before feeding time.

Bill is the owner/moderator of the invaluable Sheep Production Forums. He doesn't write much, but when he does, it's good: for my money, he's one of the best writers on dogs, and ought to write a book about shepherding. You can read On the occasion of Molly's 15th birthday at Bill's Edgefield Sheep blog.


Companion dogs are wonderful. My pit bulls are fantastic dogs, and I've loved all of them at least as much as I love my collies. But the bond with a working stock dog is different, and very special. Stock work is like a crucible. Treats, praise, comfort and predictable conditions are burned away, and what's left is the essence of a centuries-old working partnership: instinct, resolve, communion. I'm not saying you have to have been out there counting on your dog in the middle of the night with fences down and the rain blowing sideways to understand what I'm talking about --- but you have to have tended stock with a good dog to know.

Happy Birthday, Molly!

On titles and codes of ethics [or, "How can you tell if a dog is worth breeding if he doesn't have a title?" Answer: Watch him work.]

Or "Watch her work," as the case may be.

So I asked, "What's the 'HIC' after his name stand for?"

The nice lady at ringside with the rough collie had just shown me her dog's name in the program. She was delighted to explain what all the letters meant.

"That stands for 'Herding Instinct Certificate.' He's a Champion -- and he can herd, too!"

Oyyyy. I'm all for people enjoying activities with their dogs -- agility, obedience, SAR, and yes, "herding," provided the instructor is a good one and the sheep are comfortable with the routine and treated with consideration. But the truth is that any dog with a pulse can "earn" an HIC. It doesn't have anything to do with "herding," and it doesn't mean your dog has the potential to be "trained to herd." The test involves showing interest in sheep in a tiny pen. That's it. And I apologize for all the ironic air quotes. [Please give them special emphasis in the next paragraph.]

Why is the bar set so low? Because the AKC "Herding Group" consists chiefly of dogs whose last real working ancestors, if indeed they had any, "worked stock" over a century ago. They've been bred for everything but work since, and no, the "instinct" hasn't been "sleeping" -- it's gone. Nevertheless, in the interest of "fairness" -- and entry fees -- the AKC wants to give every "herding dog" a shot at winning a "Herding Championship." In order to facilitate this, the bar isn't just set low, it's set lower than low. Mariana Trench low.

AKC titles in general say far more about owner effort and/or bank account than they do about a dog's merits. Odds are that an obedience title reflects your training skills more than your dog's genius. A conformation title may mean a) you figured out which judges like your dog's lines, and b) you were willing to drive across the country to show your dog under those judges. An AKC "herding" title means your dog was able follow tame sheep down a fence line, and it doesn't matter that it took thirty attempts to win those three qualifying scores.

To the extent that titles demonstrate owner care and interest, I love them. As proof of special merit? Meh. As evidence of stellar temperament or excellent health? Surely you jest.

There isn't a title on earth that guarantees a bombproof temperament. And as far as health goes, many titled AKC dogs are physical disasters: champion bulldogs that can't breathe, champion GSDs that can't move normally.

Here's an excerpt from the Bulldog Club of America's Code of Ethics:

Members who contemplate breeding a litter, or who allow the use of their stud dog for the same purpose shall direct their efforts toward producing dogs of quality, of even temperament, vigorous and free of health problems. They shall be familiar with the bulldog breed and its BCA/AKC approved standard and breed only those specimens which conform to it.

Contradictory, no? Not to pick on the bulldog people, but when puppies must be delivered by C-section, and when bulldogs suffer from the highest rate of hip dysplasia on record at the OFA, and when they must be kept indoors and quiet on warm days on account of their brachycephalic issues, the phrase "vigorous and free of health problems" seems to me to be very much at odds with breeding "only those specimens which conform" to the standard.

In light of all this, what sort of chucklehead would insist that only titles and codes of ethics prove a dog is worthy of breeding? Answer: the sort of chucklehead who writes mandatory spay/neuter laws. Take a look at L.A. County's Spay/Neuter Ordinance:

By spaying or neutering your dog, you are helping solve the problem of pet overpopulation and protecting your dog from potential harm. However, since some dogs cannot be spayed or neutered for certain reasons, this ordinance has exemptions for these cases. These are:

1. Dogs which are unable to be spayed or neutered without a high likelihood of suffering serious bodily harm or death due to age or infirmity. Written confirmation from a licensed veterinarian is required to qualify for this exception.
2. Dogs used by law enforcement agencies for law enforcement purposes.
3. Service or assistance dogs that assist disabled persons.
4. Competition dogs. A Competition Dog is a dog which is used to show, to compete or to breed, which is of a breed recognized by and registered with the American Kennel Club (AKC), United Kennel Club (UKC), American Dog Breeders Association (ADBA) or other approved breed registries. The dog or owner must also meet ONE of the following requirements:
1. The dog has competed in at least one dog show or sporting competition sanctioned by a national registry or approved by the department within the last 365 days; or
2. The dog has earned a conformation, obedience, agility, carting, herding, protection, rally, sporting, working or other title from a purebred dog registry referenced above or other registry or dog sport association approved by the department; or
3. The owner or custodian of the dog is a member of a department approved purebred dog breed clubs, which maintains and enforces a code of ethics for dog breeding that includes restrictions from breeding dogs with genetic defects and life threatening health problems that commonly threaten the breed.

If you believe your dog meets one of these exemptions, please complete and return an Exemption Application.

Look familiar? You bet. This arrogant nonsense was produced by the same folks who brought you the Puppy Mill Protection Act. When people who don't know anything about dogs write laws, AB 1634 is what happens. Ed Boks, Judy Mancuso and Lloyd Levine apparently believe that a lame, wheezing pair of AKC bulldogs -- or Labs, or Barbie Collies -- are better breeding prospects than the best working stockdogs in North America.

In contrast, some of the people who know most about dogs are perfectly willing to crossbreed. Legendary Australian stockman Scott Lithgow wrote that his ideal cattledog was from 50-75% border collie, 25% "blue Cattle Dog," about 6% Bull Terrier [not the show dog of that name, but a Staffy Bull type] and with a trace of dingo, all depending on "the strengths of the particular strains of dogs used."

Depending on the strengths of the particular strains of dogs used. Whoa, what a concept.

In his book The Malinois Jan Kaldenbach writes:

Cross-breeding Malinois with German Shepherds, Dutch Shepherds, Boxers and Great Danes has given the Malinois the best characteristics of all the breeds to withstand the stresses and challenges of being a police service dog.

And here's the history of the Red, I mean Irish Setter:

The Irish Setter of the late 1800s was not just a red dog. The AKC registered Irish Setters in a myriad of colors. Frank Forester, a 19th-century sports writer, described the Irish Setter as follows: "The points of the Irish Setter are more bony, angular, and wiry frame, a longer head, a less silky and straigher coat that those of the English. His color ought to be a deep orange-red and white, a common mark is a stripe of white between the eyes and a white ring around the neck, white stockings, and a white tage to the tail."

The Setter that was completely red, however, was preferred in the show ring and that is the direction that the breed took. Between 1874 and 1948, the breed produced 760 conformation champions, but only five field champions.

In the 1940s, Field and Stream magazine put into writing what was already a well-known fact. The Irish Setter was disappearing from the field and an outcross would be necessary to resurrect the breed as a working dog. Sports Afield chimed in with a similar call for an outcross. Ned LaGrange of Pennsylvania spent a small fortune purchasing examples of the last of the working Irish Setters in America and importing dogs from overseas. With the blessing of the Field Dog Stud Book, he began an outcross to red and white field champion English Setters. The National Red Setter Field Trial Club was created to test the dogs and to encourage breeding toward a dog that would successfully compete with the white setters. Thus the modern Red Setter was born and the controversy begun.

Prior to 1975 a relationship existed between the AKC and the Field Dog Stud book in which registration with one body qualified a dog for registration with the other. In 1975 the Irish Setter Club of America petitioned the AKC to deny reciprocal registration, and the AKC granted the request. It is claimed, by critics of the move, that the pressure was placed on the AKC by bench show enthusiasts who were unappreciative of the outcrossing efforts of the National Red Setter Field Trial Club, as well as some AKC field trialers following a series of losses to FDSB red setters. Working Irish Setter kennels today field champion dogs that claim lines from both the FDSB dogs and AKC dogs.

The sanctioning body for sheepdog and cowdog trials in North America, the USBCHA, has never granted titles and never will: the membership would have apoplexy. Which is the reason that North America's finest working stockdogs -- the wisest, most athletic dogs on the planet -- can be seen at USBCHA trials like the one in the YouTube video at the top of this post.

How can you tell if a dog is worth breeding? Watch him work. Watch her work. Do your research on the breed or type and and watch the dog work.

Healthy dogs with great, friendly, rock-solid temperaments -- pedigrees be damned -- should be bred for pet homes. Good working dogs should be bred by working-dog experts and placed in working homes (or experienced, active, pet homes). People who don't know anything about dogs should be strongly discouraged from writing laws affecting them. And if everybody adopts a dog or two, or three, from the local pound: Utopia. "My Utopia," anyway.


[This post was prompted in part by a question from a smart, patient person playing devil's advocate during last year's AB 1634 debate. I still owe her a Starbucks.]

"Killing Dogs in Training of Doctors Is to End"

UPDATE: Edited for syntax. Content unchanged.

From the NY Times:

By next month, all American medical schools will have abandoned a time-honored method of teaching cardiology: operating on dogs to examine their beating hearts, and disposing of them after the lesson.

Case Western Reserve School of Medicine was the last to use the method, but the dean, Dr. Pamela Davis, said it would no longer do so after this month.

On Nov. 19, New York Medical College in Valhalla joined New York’s 11 other medical schools and announced that it would close its dog laboratory.

Among the 126 American medical schools, 11 still sacrifice animals for teaching, according to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an advocacy group that tracks the practice. Other than Case, none of them use dogs.

Francis Belloni, a dean at New York Medical College, said his students now used echocardiograms to study heart function, and the subjects were live medical students rather than live dogs. Dr. Belloni said the use of animals was not done lightly and had value, but added that students would “become just as good doctors without it.”

Somewhere, I'm sure a blogger is posting this article with the headline changed to "Murdering Dogs..." Did he or she enjoy a nice factory-farmed ham for holiday dinner, I wonder. Not for me, thanks. I think about our American factory farms whenever someone gets on a soapbox about, say, those evil, dog-hating Chinese:

Factory meat production is an industrial rather than an agricultural enterprise. Animal husbandry is nonexistent. Industrial pork barons produce pork chops and bacon and the animals themselves are treated only as industrial production units. Genetic manipulation for meat production has produced hog breeds that are high strung and nervous. They live short miserable lives characterized by extreme cruelty and extreme terror.

By nature, pigs are active, inquisitive and intelligent, and they spend much of their time exploring ground cover and rooting for food. They are communal animals with a highly developed system of vocalization that they use in courtship, self defense and raising their young. The female pig, the sow, has a strong instinct to build a nest before giving birth. She will wean her young for several months and take care of them even longer.

In industrialized hog factories, pigs are raised in intensive confinement for their entire lives in huge windowless structures choked by their own foul stenches. Subject to disease from overcrowding and entirely deprived of exercise, sunlight, straw bedding, rooting opportunities and social interactions that are fundamental to their health, factory hogs are kept healthy only by constant doses of subtherapeutic antibiotics. Their growth rates are unnaturally sped-up by feed additives including antibiotics, hormones and toxic metals. Sows endure in tiny crates that are too small for them to turn around, giving birth on bare metal grate floors, their babies taken away after only three weeks of weaning. Driven by frustration and depression, sows continually gnaw on the metal bars of their crates. Severe restrictions on the pigs’ movement over a lifetime impede bone development frequently resulting in broken legs. Injured pigs are “culled” sometimes by being dumped alive into waste lagoons. There are many accounts of brutal treatment of these animals, including teeth pulling, castration without anesthesia, and beating disabled sows unable or too terror stricken to walk to slaughter. According to the U.S. Humane Society, one in five of all factory-raised pigs die prematurely, before reaching the slaughterhouse.

In 1999, Smithfield made a major foray into Poland. At the invitation of the Animal Welfare Institute, Andrzej Lepper, the President of Poland’s largest farmers’ union, came to the United States and toured Smithfield hog factories. Mr. Lepper later recounted that he was shocked by what he saw in the American hog factories which he referred to as “animal concentration camps.” He added that, “industrial husbandry methods of raising hogs are not in harmony with nature.”

Read the article that "deserves to be ranked with Schlosser’s [Fast Food Nation] in the annals of excellent food-chain investigative journalism." And you might want to avoid these products the next time you're at the market. More here: Wikipedia. Testimony before the Senate Committee on Government Affairs [source of the blockquote above]. And an alternative to factory meat production: yes, there are alternatives.