Page 170 - ShowSight - February 2020

If You Only Read One Thing Today Please Make It This
BY MICHELLE SCOTT continued all of those things (but for the love
of dog, only say that if they actually do make fantastic pets.. the world does not need Joe trotting down the street with his Tibetan Mastiff on a flexi-lead shouting, “It’s okay, he’s friendly!” while his dog solves the problem of the neighbour’s escaping shipoorkingese once and for all).
After all, Joe wasn’t trying to be rude. He just didn’t realize that he was reaching out to a breeder whose heart and soul has been put into their dogs because none of those breeders have bothered to return his emails and tell him why their dogs are so incredible. They’ve been too busy soothing their hurt feelings to notice that Joe ended up paying $100 less for a trainwreck of a puppy from the person who was nice to him... All because the responsible breeders wouldn’t bother to give him the time of day.
I want to take a moment to give you props if you’ve kept reading up until this point. I promise I’m almost done.
Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is this: We know that the world of dogs is in trouble. Or at least we do if we’ve been paying attention. Ani- mal Rights activisim is not going away and it’s not getting better. If we do not bridge the gap between a carefully composed five page letter detailing every moment of dog expe- rience a potential owner has and an email that says, “How much?” we’re just doing the AR wackos’ jobs for them. If we want to save our breeds and our sports and our hobbies we need to be better than this. We need to take the time to show people the difference between a well bred and a poorly bred dog and we need to share our passion, our knowledge, and our love of our dogs with them.
Even if all they asked was, “How much?” >
Next!
This one is probably the most likely and it’s the one that gets my goat the most (and I’ve learned to hide my goat quite effectively at this point in my life)... Joe Pet Guy doesn’t have a freaking clue that he’s supposed to say anything else.
Pet people (and I do not say that in a negative way) are not the same as the mental people who have made their lives revolve mostly or entirely around their dogs (before you freak out some more, I’m including myself in the “mental” category. You might want to consider just going com- mando at this point).
They don’t know the difference between a CH and a BH. They don’t give a rat’s patootie about the BISS at the end of your dog’s name. And they sure as hell don’t know the difference between “vet checked” and “health tested”. After all, the other guy they were talking to said his dogs have never had any prob- lems and the vet says they’re healthy. They think it’s insane that you drove twelve hours one way to participate in a dog trial and since they’re “just looking for a pet” they don’t really care that your dogs are registered and that you’ve been a member of CKC or AKC or insert-your-long- standing-record-keeping-organi- zation-of-choice-here for the last twenty years. None of that trans- lates as “pretty easy to train, great with my kids, and not going to eat the neighbour’s shipoorkingese that keeps getting out of their yard” so unless you take the time to explain it to them it has no value. At all.
Yeah, you read me. I said that— to them—your dogs have no more value than the shipoorkingese next door.
I understand if you need a minute.
Until the collective dog fancy chooses to get down off of its high horse and actually spend some time
educating Joe Pet Guy about why it matters that you know the last ten generations of your dog’s pedigree by heart and can tell him the titles each dog had, how old it was when it died, what it died from, and how many times it turned around before it went to sleep on its dog bed all of the information that you get so damn butthurt (I hate that word but I couldn’t come up with anything more appropriate right now) about him not asking about in his email is just white noise.
To him, while the addition of a puppy to the family is exciting and amazing and wonderful, it’s also a transaction and he needs to know how much that transaction is going to cost. Because, you know, capital- ism and stuff.
But don’t despair! I’ll let you in on a little secret... You can teach everyone who sends you an uni- formed email what it all means!
You can explain that vet checked only means that the puppy was healthy the day that the vet looked at it (and maybe not even then) whereas health tested means that you’ve actually had your dog’s genes examined for potential problems (in addition to everything else you have to do for your specific breed). You can let them know that CH Fluffy of Highnose BISS, MBIS, IGP I, OTCH (I’m just throwing random stuff out there in case you weren’t sure. I’m sincerely sorry if there’s actually a CH Fluffy of Highnose anywhere—no disrespect intended, doggo) has those titles because his body is built in a way that should allow him to remain active and happy for a long time and that his participation and subsequent titling in dog sports means that he’s really quite trainable. You can explain to them why your dogs have way more value than the poorly bred puppies that he’s considering and that your dogs make fantastic pets because of
168 • ShowSight Magazine, February 2020