Читать книгу Designer Dogs: An Exposé - Madeline Bernstein - Страница 10

Chapter 2

Dawn of the Frankendog

This job of playing God is a little too big for me. Nevertheless, someone has to do it, so I’ll try my best to fake it.

—Larry Wall

The Allegory of the Labradoodle

The custom-designed dog craze began in the 1980s with Wally Conron and the labradoodle. Conron was a puppy-breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia when a Hawaiian couple asked if he had any dogs who would help the woman, who was suffering from vision problems, and that the husband, who was usually allergic to dogs, could tolerate.

Conron was determined to solve this dilemma and hypothesized that if he crossbred a Labrador, a common guide dog breed, with a poodle, whose coat is less irritating for allergy sufferers, he could provide a dog that would accommodate the needs of both the wife and the husband. After he mated the dogs and the mother gave birth to five puppies, he waited until the puppies were five months old and then collected hair and saliva samples from them and sent them to the couple. The husband had no allergic reaction to the samples from one of the five puppies; the samples from the other four caused allergic reactions. Conron then repeated the experiment. Of the samples from the next litter, ten puppies, three did not irritate the man’s allergies; samples from the other seven did.

Conron gave one of the dogs whose samples did not irritate the man’s allergies to the guide dog association to train for the woman, but they refused, saying they only wanted to work with purebreds. So, as a marketing gimmick, Conron announced that the dog was a purebred of a new breed he had created. He called it the “labradoodle.”

The story of Wally Conron and the labradoodle is disturbing on several levels. First, why did the guide dog association refuse to train a dog simply because the dog was not a pedigree? Second, why did Conron assume that any one of the dogs could be a good match for the couple? It needed to be proven that the selected dog would not ignite the man’s allergy and would also be a good guide dog for the woman. Guide dogs are part of a unique pairing, rather than a mass-produced, any dog will do pairing. Third, the experiment involved seventeen dogs and what the crossbred puppies would be like was unknown. Conron could have caused fifteen dogs to be born with birth defects that would lead to a lifetime of health issues. The mother dog could have suffered or died giving birth. And then, of course, what would happen with all the other puppies? Conron planned for the couple to take one puppy, but there were no planned homes for the others. If they had been born with health problems, it would have been even harder to find them homes.

Conron’s decision to mastermind a labradoodle haunted him for years. Once his invented breed became publicly known, demand for it exploded. And this is despite the fact that, as Conron learned, labradoodles don’t breed true. Their coats can differ, their behavior is unpredictable, and most aren’t hypoallergenic. In the years since Conron’s experiment, he has frequently admitted that a mixed-breed dog cannot be considered a purebred and that he only called his puppies members of a new breed because he wanted the Royal Guide Dog Association to train one of the dogs to help the woman suffering from vision problems. In 2014, the year mixed-breed dogs were admitted into the Westminster Kennel Club show for the first time, he was particularly outspoken about his mistake.

In an interview published by Psychology Today on April 1, 2014 (“A Designer Dog-Maker Regrets His Creation” by Stanley Coren), Conron said:

I opened a Pandora’s box, that’s what I did. I released a Frankenstein. So many people are just breeding for the money. So many of these dogs have physical problems, and a lot of them are just crazy. . . .

Today I am internationally credited as the first person to breed the labradoodle. People ask me, “Aren’t you proud of yourself?” I tell them “No! Not in the slightest.” I’ve done so much harm to pure breeding and made so many charlatans quite rich. I wonder, in my retirement, whether we bred a designer dog—or a disaster!

The story of Wally Conron and the labradoodle is an allegory of experiments and consequences. And though it’s not my mission to ease Conron’s conscience, it must be said that he wasn’t the first person to mix breeds to create a third breed, or a variant of a parent breed. It’s thought that the first designer dog in the modern history of the United States was born in the 1950s. It was the child of a cocker spaniel and a toy or miniature poodle, called a “cockapoo” or “spoodle.” Information about this breed’s inventor, birth location, and the impetus behind its creation is hard to reliably locate, but it does help flesh out the timeline of the custom-designed dog industry.

Celebrity owners of labradoodles include Jennifer Aniston, Barbara Eden, Christie Brinkley, Henry Winkler, and Tiger Woods, and, as usual, what celebrities have, the public wants. People pay thousands of dollars for labradoodles. Many purchasers assume they’re getting a dog that will be hypoallergenic, but find themselves sneezing when the dog comes close.

With the demand for labradoodles came the usual response from money-hungry puppy mill operators: careless breeding and ample supply. Puppy mill operators also mix a wealth of other breeds with poodles. New breeds ending with “oodle” are born left and right. Each time, two parent dogs are exploited for the experiment and offspring at high risk of genetic diseases are born. The parent dogs suffer, the puppies could be sentenced to a lifetime of suffering, possibly with short life spans, purchasers end up with expensive medical bills for their dogs, and shelters end up with abandoned dogs and must decide whether to keep them alive or euthanize them, a sad practice often performed when a home cannot quickly be found for an animal. The government does not keep tabs on how many animals are euthanized each year, but it’s estimated that approximately 1.5 million shelter animals are euthanized in the United States each year.1

The Pit Bull: A Cautionary Tale

Featured in the television show The Little Rascals, Buster Brown shoes advertisements, and the film Fame, the pit bull was once and is still, if carefully chosen, considered a good family pet. Pit bulls were companions to President Theodore Roosevelt and Helen Keller, and were once viewed as “nanny” dogs—loving, loyal, and wonderful with children. The love for this breed began to wane about twenty-five years ago as its reputation was degraded in response to news reports of dogfighting and vicious mauling incidents.

The bulldog is one of the parent dogs of the pit bull. Beginning in England in the 1600s, the bulldog was used to hunt boar, herd sheep, and participate in bullbaiting and bearbaiting contests, a blood sport extant since medieval times that involved pitting a captive bear or bull, confined in a ring, against dogs. The dogs would fight the bear until the dogs or the bear were dead or the fight was stopped. People would bet on the winner. In England’s Cruelty to Animals Act 1835, bullbaiting and bearbaiting were banned as inhumane. Enter dogfighting: a blood sport for gambling that was designed to fill the gap. As animal fighting—dogfighting and cockfighting—was neither a new sport nor one unique to England (it was already popular in Japan, the Philippines, and Mexico, to name a few examples), the bulldog, with its proven prowess at bullbaiting and bearbaiting, seemed like a good candidate to transition into the dogfighting arena. The bulldog was strong and loyal, had a strong jaw, and was an unrelenting attacker. But there was room for improvement.

For “improvement,” the bulldog was crossbred with a terrier, a dog that is smaller and easier to handle than a bulldog and has an enormous prey drive. Their offspring, with its prey drive, size, strength, stamina, and love of people, which is important for the safety of human handlers, resulted in the perfect fighting dog and may have been the first custom-designed dog. The new breed was what we today call the American pit bull terrier. In this case, rather than crossbreeding to develop hypoallergenic qualities, the crossbreeding was intended to cause greater harm and promote a fight to the death, all for the entertainment of onlookers.

Because of the fear they invoked, these new fighting dogs appealed to the dogfighting world, as well as to criminals. I’ve seen many pit bulls with tough names like “Blade” or “Homicide” who’ve been used for such felonious purposes as guarding a crack stash or assisting in an armed robbery. This criminal element strove to breed the nastiest and scariest dogs on the planet. They did not try to preserve a love of people or encourage gentleness. The breeders mixed the meanest pits, and then mated their offspring with rottweilers to make them far larger and stronger than the breed’s bulldog ancestors. There was no mindfulness applied to the breeding. The breeders weren’t aware of the genetics of the dogs they mixed, and they weren’t concerned about hurting parents or offspring.

Eventually the reputation of the American pit bull terrier, which, along with a few related breeds, is commonly called the pit bull, deteriorated to where it is today. Although many of them are actually wonderful pets, people are afraid of them, landlords often won’t allow them, and many insurance companies refuse to cover them on homeowner policies. They’re also frequently the subject of breed bans and other breed-specific legislation in cities or countrywide. In the United Kingdom, the pit bull terrier was one of four breeds banned in the country’s Dangerous Dogs Act instituted in 1991. In the United States, there are bans on them in hundreds of cities across the country. There has, however, been a countermovement and twelve states have passed laws prohibiting pit bull bans.2

All dogs can bite, and a small dog can do a lot of damage, too (there was a case of a Pomeranian who killed an infant), but the mauling and fatalities caused by pit bulls and reported by the media have scared people into thinking that all pit bulls are sociopaths. The result is that they languish in shelters or are euthanized. The dog is paying the ultimate cost for the human intervention in its design.

There is a version of the pit bull bred today that is micro, but mighty. This small dog, usually custom-made at a buyer’s request, resembles the pit bull, except that it is only about eleven inches tall, half the size of the average pit bull. The theory behind the making of this designer dog is that by shrinking the dog, you shrink the problem, i.e., you still get a pit bull, but it will be manageable. In reality, a micro pit bull will require the same amount of work as a larger pit bull, and is just as likely to be calm or aggressive. There’s also no guarantee that making the dog smaller will allow an owner to be able to physically control it. You may save money on dog food, but the commitment, training, and caretaking necessary, as well as the medical bills, will not be considerably reduced.

The effects of the growing popularity of micro pit bulls are not yet clear, and their rise leaves me with many questions and concerns. Will they become increasingly desirable simply because they’re a designer dog? For a person who has his mind set on getting a designer dog, will a micro pit bull be as desirable as a cockapoo? If more micro pit bulls are bred, will pit bull bans increase? And will they interest the nefarious people who breed fighting dogs? Will these people see the micro pit bull and be inspired to create a ring of micro fighting dogs?

Shrink the Dog, Increase the Costs

Contrary to popular belief, shrinking a dog can actually increase its problems, as we can see in the now-raging craze for “teacup dogs.” Teacups are typically miniatures of already little dogs like Chihuahuas, Pomeranians, and Yorkshire terriers. They’re created by breeding the runts of litters together and continuing to breed the runts of the offspring until the resulting dogs are itty-bitty, teacup size.

Runts are often the unhealthiest of a litter and have medical issues associated with their stunted size; a breeder is exacerbating and amplifying their problems by bringing their negative traits forward to their offspring. The sound use of expert, science-based genetic protocols is virtually nonexistent in this breeding process and a breeder’s conclusions regarding success are based solely on appearance, with no concern as to whether the dog behaves like a sociopath or suffers from a plethora of congenital or environment-­related illnesses. And because legitimate breeders refuse to traffic in teacups, the supply is coming from questionable sources. Many teacups come from South Korean puppy mills.

Teacup breeders often seem to be competing against one another, each one out to make his dogs smaller. And they often have little interest in dealing with puppies who are not teacup in size, since the smaller the dog, the larger the price. When dogs intended to be teacups are born too large, they are often considered “unsatisfactory” and will quickly be sold if they can be. If not, they’re ignored, abandoned, or destroyed.

The enormous medical problems teacups are often born with are frequently exacerbated by a poor quality of life; for example, spending too much time in a purse and not enough time walking. I’m not sure who the first person to carry a teacup dog in her purse was, but celebrities are now regularly photographed doing this. It has become fashionable to do so. I’m only human, so I recognize and admit that teacups are adorable, like Tribbles and Furbys, but accessorizing with plush toys instead would be safer and more humane.

The attraction of teacups stems from what I call “perpetual baby syndrome,” when people love kittens, but hate cats; puppies, but not dogs; and babies, but not teenagers. (The last one probably isn’t just based on looks though!) Baby anythings are universally irresistible. On multiple occasions, spcaLA has encountered people who adopt kittens, turn them loose on the street when they’re fully grown, and then return for more kittens.

So how do we stunt the growth of animals to keep them childlike? Breeding a teacup animal will do the trick, and teacup versions of a wide variety of animals are bred. There are dog and cat teacups, as well as pig and bunny teacups (often called dwarf pigs and dwarf bunnies), to name a few. Do an internet search and many more will come up. Opportunists around the world—puppy mill operators and other unscrupulous, unethical, and ignorant breeders—have figured out that there is high demand for these “forever infants,” and a willingness to pay thousands of dollars for one.

Teacups tend to be treated like novelty items, objects, not living creatures. I often compare what has happened to them to what has happened to phones. Those of us of a certain age remember what it was like to have a house phone wired into the wall. We also remember the first mobile phones, which were about the size of telephone handles, about the weight of a brick, and stretched from your ear to your mouth. But from their humble beginnings, they morphed to smaller flip phones and then to small one-piece phones, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. If you recall the size of the phone that Ben Stiller used in Zoolander, about a square inch, you will understand what teacup breeders are trying to do. Watching the “need” for smaller and smaller phones makes me laugh, but there is nothing funny about living, breathing, emotion- and pain-feeling creatures being made smaller and smaller.

In case the teacup is not small enough, there are designer dogs who come in micro, mini, and pocket sizes (the aforementioned micro pit bull is one example). These tiny dogs are designed to impress, and the smaller the dog, the higher the price. TMZ reported that Paris Hilton paid $25,000 for a pair of tiny Pomeranians in January 2015, one reportedly weighing about six ounces and the other weighing about twelve ounces, and $13,000 for another mini Pomeranian in September 2015. In October 2016, she reportedly purchased an eight-ounce Chihuahua worth $8,000. The exorbitant prices and free red-carpet advertising make this an extremely profitable business for breeders. It also makes the dogs particularly prone to theft. Criminals kidnap (or dognap) them for resale, breeding, and ransom. Hilton’s small Chihuahua Tinkerbell was dognapped in 2004 and she reportedly offered a $5,000 ransom.

Many owners of teacups and even smaller dogs may think there’s no better display of elitism than a designer dog in a designer purse. But despite the costs and the early infatuation with these dogs, they are also prone to being abandoned. The dogs’ health costs are expensive. And if a six-ounce dog pees and poops twice its weight in a $1,500 Louis Vuitton purse, the dog may transform from a best friend to a pest, from the best accessory to a defective one, and then he’s shown the door.

1 Erin Greenwald, “Millions of Dogs Need Homes. Why Is It So Hard to Adopt One?” Washington Post (February 2, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2018/02/02/millions-of-dogs-need-homes-why-is-it-sometimes-hard-to-adopt-one/?utm_term=.72434160b9d8.

2 Dana Campbell, “Pit Bull Bans: The State of Breed–Specific Legislation,” GPSOLO (July/August 2009), https://www.americanbar.org/newsletter/publications/gp_solo_magazine_home/gp_solo_magazine_index/pitbull.html.