 What harm is there in one litter of puppies?"
We're not interested in doing all that testing. All we want to do is have a litter of puppies. We're not going to show or anything, in fact, we aren't even going to sell the puppies. We are going to give them away. All the neighbors said they'd take one. Besides,
"What harm is there in one litter of puppies?"
The answer is simple mathematics. Say a pet owner breeds a litter without bothering to check the parents for hereditary problems or evaluate them for quality. If six puppies are born, and those puppies each go on to have six puppies, who each, in turn, have six puppies, it doesn't take much to figure out that soon it will be next to impossible to find any representative of the breed which does not have a tremendous potential for hereditary problems. The harm is done to the very breed which the pet owner professes to love, the unsuspecting person who buys a puppy from him or her and the dog itself, who must suffer with a problem that very well could have been prevented. The fact that a pet owner is not going to show a puppy or is not going to take money for it does not relieve him or her of the responsibility, either. It is not any fairer to give an unsuspecting person a dog with problems that could have been prevented than it is to sell them one. Also, unless you have a deposit and contract in writing, don't count on all the neighbors to take a puppy. It is an old joke in the dog fancy that when the puppies show up all the homes disappear. The thought of a warm, cuddly puppy is nice and everybody wants one when they are talking about it, but when the puppies actually show up, there is always an excuse to not take one. |