Hatred of breeders runs very deep, doesn’t it?
Unlike racism or other forms of discrimination, it is often treated as a kind of public service. Crufts tends to bring it all bubbling to the surface each year, and the anger ramps up again.
This has been a particularly polarising year.
But I stand firm in my belief that there are many good breeders who do not deserve this bile. We need to stop treating all breeders like vermin.
Maybe what we need is a new kind of Charles Cruft. Perhaps even a Cuddys.
An award celebrating the small, ethical breeders who quietly do everything right. Judged not on ribbons, but on health, early learning, and lifelong responsibility for the dogs they bring into the world.
Imagine a Breeder of the Year award judged partly by the people who actually own the puppies they’ve bred. Add a board of ethical oversight made up of vets who are also breeders.
A prize for the quiet heroes. The breeders whose dogs almost never end up in rescue because they stand by every puppy for life.
Encourage the public towards those breeders instead.
Right now rescue is increasingly becoming the end point of a broken production line — a funnel for puppy farm rejects. Someone has to disrupt that system and make bad breeding uneconomic. Small, sustainable, responsible breeding should be protected and valued.
Over at The Union of Good Dog People we are getting a surge of new members. Among them today was media vet Sean McCormack.
He arrived quite hot. A lot of people do.
They’ve seen headlines and social media storms. We seem to be blamed for everything lately — apparently including the weather. PETA somehow got tangled into the story, and by the time the fourth-generation rewrites appeared the facts were barely recognisable.
The clickbait machines have been busy reinventing the narrative and occasionally just making things up. At one point The Sun confidently reported that Beagles would fail the IHA. No one seems quite sure where that came from.
We don’t control the media. The misinformation frustrates us too.
So why are breeders making such a fuss about the Innate Health Assessment tool?
Part of the answer is simple.
When the tool was being developed, the small ethical breeders who dedicate their lives to these dogs were not at the table. These are people who breed rarely and carefully, raise puppies in their homes, and provide lifetime aftercare for every dog they bring into the world.
The dogs the tool was initially tested on were often the most extreme cases sadly dumped in rescue — dogs that would clearly fail.
What was never properly road-tested was the collateral damage.
Healthy dogs could still receive one or more “fails” even when they were clearly not suffering.
When concerns were raised, many breeders felt they were met with circular logic. We were told healthy dogs would pass. And if they didn’t, then they must be suffering.
We were told we simply didn’t understand.
At the same time we were reassured the tool was “only voluntary”, while watching it move steadily towards being used as evidence of suffering and potentially embedded in legislation and licensing.
That is why people spoke up.
Not to shut down discussion. Simply to be heard.
All we have ever asked for is a seat at the table. If you want tools that genuinely improve dog welfare, the people who know these breeds best have to help shape them.
Imagine designing a tool for vets to use every day without speaking to a single vet during its creation. You would probably have a few questions too.
Not all breeders are bad. If we refuse to work with the good ones, nothing will ever change.
The Union of Good Dog People is a grassroots movement of people who care deeply about the start of every puppy’s life.
If you share that goal, you are very welcome to join us.
It’s time for the good people to put dogs first and pull together.
Join the Union here: Click the link
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