In fact, in this particular pet shop, the animals were all taken care of first thing in the morning: bedding changed, food and water put out.  Is that enough?

One of my co-workers saw that a desert animal was not being kept in a dry environment. In fact—he had a huge water bowl taking up half his habitat.  Another co-worker was very  demoralized because a tank of feeder fish was over stocked, with no aeration or filtration, causing almost all the fish to die in less than a week.

We could all see that  virtually all the animals were under some stress: they had just been moved around, and had people staring at them or poking at their glass all day long.

We—as employees—have no say in how animals are treated. They will fire us if we raise concerns. That is a fact. IT IS UP TO THE PUBLIC TO ADDRESS  CONCERNS TO THE MANAGER—AND THE COMPANY. It does no good at all to tell an employee, nor does it any good to BUY THE ANIMAL. That  only re-enforces the business’ policies.  In fact, there are many pet store managers who are not animal lovers. They are retail managers. They have been told by  their corporate managers how to run the store.  They do not care either way if an animal has tipped over a water bowl, or is in a stressful environment. It is an unwritten policy that if the pet buying public is concerned, the  empathetic pet lovers will buy the animals and ‘rescue’ them from the horrible pet shop.  People do this all the time.  When they do this—the pet store buys another animal to sell, and the problem does NOT get solved.

I thought  people knew this—but the pet stores and COMMERCIAL ANIMAL BREEDERS—breeding pets as livestock—do a better job of marketing that the humane activists.

We are not all PETA. We don’t believe that pet animals should be eliminated from the earth, but  PIJAC—the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council—the pet industry lobbying group—is pretty slick at painting us all with a broad brush.

So, what should you do?

1.Talk to the pet store manager directly. If he is not there, ask if he has an email address.

2. Ask if there is a corporate entity that controls policy for the stores, and address them.  Tell them you will give them (x days) to correct the problem, and if they don’t, you will post on social media:  Yelp! & Facebook come to mind;

3. Contact your state department of Agriculture—but also, you have to be a little more sophisticated: you are going to email them, as well as your state senator, state representative, and local humane organization—and ask when you can expect a response;

4. If you don’t get a satisfactory response in a timely fashion (and YOU have to decide what that is), contact local media: television stations, newspapers and magazines;

5. You must work with other concerned animal lovers. Getting organized is very  difficult, but it is the only way to affect change.

6. Talk to your friends about what you  experienced.

Something you should know:  while designers and inventors are always  coming up with new pet products to sell, very few of them are the Furminator or the Kong toys.  Most don’t sell well enough to make manufacturing them worthwhile. However,  it is because of consumer activism that we now have  many high quality, premium pet foods. They  didn’t become successful because of marketing—they became successful because of  word-of-mouth.  You do make a difference.

Years ago, when I became emancipated (that is, moved out of my parents’ home), I moved in with my boyfriend and friends of his.  Some family members started asking where everyone slept, and who slept with whom.

Huh?  In actuality, I slept with my boyfriend, and one of my three roommates..well…she slept with her ‘main’ boyfriend (and later married him and had a child), and she also ‘slept’ with another roommate.

But, whose business was this?  Not mine.  It didn’t affect me.  Why would I care?  So, when the sexually curious asked where everyone slept, I was genuinely baffled, and asked….“Why do YOU ask?”

I have been living with a man, a fantastic roommate, for about 10 years.  The first five years or so, he still slept in what I still call his bedroom.  He told me that it was comfortable.  As he started piling stuff on his bed, it was not so comfortable, and he started sleeping…in another room in the house.

It’s a public part of the house, so when we have guests, I make him straighten it up.  Sometimes, however, people drop by, and the nosy ask, “Who sleeps there ?”

When I respond that my roommate sleeps there, some have actually asked me, “Why do you let him?”

What an absurd question.  He pays rent.  He can sleep wherever he wants, as far as I am concerned.  Why would I start an argument because he is not sleeping in his bedroom? What difference does it make?

These are not the same people who  would ask a politician….I mean, here it come out that Newt Gingrich (the  guy who left a wife in a hospital bed), asked he 2nd wife to be comfortable with him having 2 (or more?) lovers—while he was passing judgement on Bill Clinton for having sex outside of marriage!  & we have Rick Santorum saying that gay people are akin to people committing bestiality, and that if he had his druthers, birth control would be illegal. & these guys are getting money thrown at them so they can possibly defeat Barack Obama. No joke!  Because they would control the rest of us, this matters.  It speaks to their lack of integrity, as well as their attitude about who should be in charge of what.

I don’t understand the logic.  If the reason they are so concerned about this is that  their neighbors are breaking God’s law…don’t they think that GOD can  address the problem if HE thinks it’s a problem?

I know the twisted logic that goes along with being concerned about  who other people have sex with. If we don’t rein them in, and ostracize (or prosecute) them, then all the ostracizers believe is  a waste of energy.  They’d have to put their concerns into really taking action  about real human rights  problems.  They don’t want to do this. It’s easier to pass judgement without taking action.

A dog groomer friend worries that there will be another push for a breed ban.  I am sure she is not the only  dog lover wondering if this will  be put into play again.  So, let’s address what a dangerous dog is:  it’s the dog not under control of the owner (hey—could that be your cuddly dog? ).

As a  dog groomer, I see a lot of pit bulls just because a lot of people want to rescue a dog in a shelter, and in a major market city, there are more Pit Bulls in shelters than any other type of dog. Why?  They are bred by the  backyard breeders.  You know them:  friends of friends, your brother, your cousin—the tough guys who  barely graduated high school, or might have gotten a couple of years of college. They might even identify themselves as (a religion), but  clearly are influences by style, fashion, friends. They never read, but someone told them…they could make a lot of money breeding their dogs. But they don’t consider themselves breeders because they —what? Don’t have a separate kennel building? Don’t have a breeding license? Aren’t inspected?  Aren’t making a living (just beer & cigarette money)?  Why don’t they consider themselves breeders?  They own the mommy dog  (the dam) at the time she whelps the puppies. That’s what a  breeder is.

So, with all those Pits,  and them being TERRIERS…  the statistical odds are that  the macho doofuses of the world who want a tough appearing dog, will get a couple, NOT TRAIN THEM, not have control over them, and, because they are  Pit Bulls, because of the way they are built, IF they attack someone, they will do real damage.  But, so will just about any terrier,  or any  angry dog.

Every year, I shop for home owners insurance, and in addition to being asked my zip code & if I have a flat roof. I am asked it I own: Boxers, Bulldogs, Dobermans, German Shepherds, Great Danes, Pit Bulls, Staffordshire Terriers, Staffordshire Bull Terriers, Akitas, Bull Terriers,  Bull Mastiffs,Cane Corso (really…)  Presa Canario, Dogo Argentino, or Mastiffs.  I don’t own those breeds.  &. it is not that those dogs bite more people–-it is that the owners of those dogs get sued more.

Notice, Belgian Malinois, Tervuren, Beauceron, Black Russian Terriers, Giant Schnauzers, Chow Chows,Scottish Terriers, Lhasa Apsos, American Cocker Spaniels are  not on the list.  Yet, ask any groomer what they get bitten by:  It’s actually the smaller dogs, and many will not groom Lhasas or Chows.

Talk to an emergency room nurse in a hospital in or near a major city, and ask what breed is implicated  when children come in to be treated for dog bites—often, it is Labrador Retrievers!  Those are what there are the most of in suburban areas!  &, I maintain that if the cockers & the tiny designer dogs looked like Pit Bulls—there would be a move to ban them!

So, the bottom line is…you  are not solving the problem by banning breeds.

One of my favorite writers, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote an article called The Trouble Makers, for the New Yorker magazine ( http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_06_a_pitbull.html ) . It was published in the February 6, 2006 edition.  He thoroughly discusses what the problem is:  bad owners. Yet, for some reason, our elected officials, whom we over pay to govern us with integrity, can’t manage to make the owning  of dangerous dogs not worth it by  legislating fines that would make the owner pay for all the damage the dangerous dogs do! (They also let  pedophiles out of jail before they are dead, to make room for the marijuana smokers.  Makes perfect sense).

Making the owners of these dogs pay for all the damages (which would, in effect, make them economic slaves) would  ultimately make the problem go away.  See…not all the owners  of dangerous dogs live in zip codes where they are NOT ALLOWED  to own dangerous dogs, or they don’t have home owners insurance.  Or, the landlord is a slumlord living overseas, & doesn’t give a shit, as long as the  guy pays his rent.

Another thing that would help is for all of us who love animals  to make sure that  kids in lower income communities (these are the kids most ignored when it comes to good information about dogs) get  humane education in the primary grades.  It can be part of a reading, or social studies program. In Chicago, we have www.safehumaneChicago.org  It’s an uphill battle.  It’s up to us—who love dogs, to fight it.

I come from a family of visual artists, so having those genetics and their  role modeling helped me develop my eye for art, and thus what a dog should look like.  Gradually—very gradually, by asking questions, reading breed standards, and watching experienced dog groomers groom dogs, I learned not only how to make a dog look good, but why what I was doing was making a dog look good.

Of course, I am more interested in some  dog breeds than others.  I evolved to be a sighthound person, but because I had a  good friend who bought a French Bulldog to show over 40 years ago, I learned about Frenchies and the other bracheocephalics.

And so, it came to pass, that I can look at most dogs  (I am not a sporting breed person,  but I am very confident about terriers, toy breeds, and sighthounds) and see  immediately whether it is well bred or the result of someone breeding pets for profit.

I sometimes guess wrong.  Sometimes great dogs  throw something with a coat pattern, head, or front that you wonder where it came from.   Genetics is like that…but that’s not what I’m talking about.  I am talking about the pet dog that could have been a show dog, except the breeder could not find a show home for the dog.  I have a friend who raises Miniature Schnauzers (Dale Miller…Barclay Square) who often sells show dogs as pets. She raises some very good dogs.

I am also a pretty good judge of dog behavior.  I asked my brother, a veterinary school graduate, to help me with a dog, and he asked me, “How do you know that dog’s not going to bite you?”  & I told him, “I can read his body language.”

He replied—and I am NOT joking, “Oh, they don’t teach us that in veterinary school.”

Most of the examples Gladwell writes about are what we know visually.  His first example in the book is about a statue that the Getty Museum bought…a kouros.  It was a rare statue, rarely  to come on the market, and the museum asked some expert in geology evaluate the statue.  Because it was of a stone that the  other known kouros were made of, they bought the statue after 14 months of evaluations…but  art experts who  later  saw the statue told the Getty that the museum had been defrauded.   Gladwell goes into some detail about what the art experts didn’t like about the statue.  We learn that the wealthy museum trusted the wrong expert.  This is how  the book begins.  Gladwell talks to other people:  psychologists, sales people, mainly people who strategize in some way, and he learns how they make what we generally think of as snap decisions.  But they are not  snap decisions, really. The decisions are based on hundreds if not thousands of experiences people had, many made when people took a longer time to evaluate an item or interaction.  The gist is:  don’t second guess yourself.

Now, suppose you never have a gut feeling about anything. This is  a great book, because Gladwell  explains how  the people he interviewed learned what they learned.  You are not going to be an expert or specialist unless you are genuinely interested in the subtleties and nuances of how things are.

The book was published in 2005.  I am sure it will become a classic.

I  went to the International Kennel Club dog show a few years back. I  might have even paid over $8 to get in, & possibly for parking more than that for parking. No joke.  I wanted to get a few grooming items  and watch judging of several breeds.  Yeah, very expensive, for the opportunity to step in dog shit.

The nice thing about buying stuff at the dog show is you save shipping.   I went into a pet supply booth that obviously carried Chris Christensen products, and asked for “Ice on Ice.”

“We sold out,” the vendor told me.   I still remember how bummed out I was.

I have stated before that I am as micro an entrepreneur as you can get, but  my understanding of the economics of microbusinesses got me an assistantship to grad school in the early late 1980′s.  The  microbusinesses I got my experience with were dog groomers.  I paid my way through undergraduate school (anthropology/environmental studies) by grooming dogs part time.
Were it not for the microentrepreneur Charlie Prager, the noted Bedlington Terrier breeder who developed and marketed the first portable dog grooming tables and low velocity stand dryers  (“Groom Rite”), there would be no grooming industry.  He made  the needed equipment inexpensive enough so the  service of dog grooming could be provided  cheaply enough to middle class Americans.
You might be too young to remember a time when  a week’s pay would  be enough for your housing, utilities, and maybe other expenses (there was no cable TV or cell phones,  there was the Viet Nam was and the Civil Rights movement made us suddenly aware that the playing field wasn’t level).    Gas was under 30c—way under! The fact was, people had expendable income to have a pet get it’s haircut and go to a salon.  Amusing, no?
So now, I am one of those old time groomers, and I tried and use Chris Christensen Products.   I became hooked.  They are top of the line.

There is an article on Chris in the Dec.2011 Inc. magazine. http://www.inc.com/magazine/201112/meet-chris-christensen-the-paul-mitchell-of-poodles_pagen_2.html

The writer, Josh Dean, points out what a skill dog grooming is, comparing it to moving topiary .  He points out how Chris listened to the fancy and created a market niche for  his company.  Chris and his wife are looking to expand the line at a lower cost to pet owners.  They have a problem, however.

The middle class can no longer afford those high maintenance breeds.  I see more Pit Bulls, Labrador Retrievers, Boxers, Puggles (no joke—designer mixes…& LabraDoodles) than dogs requiring haircuts.
Ethical hobby breeders do not breed for the market, and  don’t breed their dogs unless they can keep them indefinitely.  They know that people don’t have money to take care of a dog these days.
I wish Lisa (Chris’s wife) all the best in attempting to triple the business in three years.  I can no longer afford the gas to get to a dog show, let alone campaign a dog.  And the Big Box store I work for doesn’t appreciate quality or integrity.  That’s sort of funny, too:  the big box stores are  always advertising for groomers, but make it impossible to earn a living wage and  keep their skills up.  “Were the economy better…”  CCS would flatten all the competition. Their products are that good.

Now,  after years of getting the message through to potential pet buyers, we are slipping back.  “Due to the economy…” there are fewer ethical hobby breeders, more backyard breeders, and more sophisticated puppy mills doing better marketing.

What’s the reason you  don’t want to buy a dog from a broker or any middleman?  You want to  find out that the breeder  is breeding good, healthy dogs, and cares about what s/he is breeding.   Any breeder who loves dogs will want to meet you, talk to you, and make sure  the dogs he breeds are the right breed for you.  He will give you written instructions on  feeding, grooming, housebreaking, and other training. He may give you a bibliography.  He will tell you that if, for any reason, you can’t keep the dog, he wants to know about it, and in most cases he will want the dog back.  The ethical hobby breeder doesn’t trust a reseller,  a person selling dogs in a commercial fashion, to do this for him.  He is breeding for the betterment of the breed…not just to make money.

In the past several years, the American Kennel Club has been working with commercial breeders—the USDA (or not) licensed puppy mills, to  help them  sell healthier puppies—claiming that the ethical hobby breeders are not meeting the demand.  I am not making this up. As a result, some of the breed parent clubs now keep their own stud books because they no longer trust the integrity of the AKC.

Some of the newer (in terms of popularity) breeds  have a very stringent code of ethics for their members.  For example, you can Google the Portuguese Water Dog Club of America and  see that if you want a  Portie for breeding, a bunch of people will be interested in  your plans for the puppies.

Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the German Shepherd Dog, Beagle, American Spaniel, and the Cane Corso parent clubs. As a result—we see more and more backyard breeders  over breeding for the market.    That means that there are too many dogs available, not enough good homes, they sell to people who aren’t prepared for a dog, or who can’t legally keep a dog, and the dogs end up in shelters.   Or worse—moe  backyard breeders get more breedable dogs, can’t sell the, , lie about them…& THEY end up  either in shelters or sold to dog fighters.   The classic example of nobody having an ounce of integrity are the many Pit Bull breeders  (this is NOT AN AKC BREED) who started flooding the  market over 20 years ago.  You still have a minority of idiots with too much money who will pay over $500 for a proven fighting dog  from fighting lines, but  for the most part, they can’t give them away, as the dog rescues and animal shelters  always have them & include shots & neutering in their fees—making them way cheaper than what a breeder can sell them for.

Recently, I’ve heard people complaining about how expensive purebreds—even those in rescue—are. Yes, I am shocked as well.   The fact of the matter is—it costs a lot of money to raise healthy dogs. Are these people  also complaining about the price of gas?  Housing?  Health insurance?  College?  “But it’s just a dog!” Right—& you can get ‘just a dog’ from an animal shelter.

I would love to own a Scottish Deerhound.  I can’t afford to buy one, they never go into rescue, & they don’t live very long. I would also love to live in Malibu on the Pacific Ocean,  travel overseas whenever I want, and  never have to work.

What is ultimately going to happen, as  enough of the population will probably not be able to afford to buy housing for at least another few years, is that some breeds may just go extinct.    There won’t be enough wealthy people who will want to breed & house the more rare breeds that there isn’t a commercial market for—to see  them through a rough economy.  There won’t be enough of a gene pool to have them not have genetic problems. That’s a fact.

What will ultimately happen is that more backyard breeders , who are slick about marketing on the internet, will breed their generically unsound ( luxated patellas, juvenile cataracts, liver shunts, etc) dogs, and veterinarians will be making more money  repairing patellas or removing cataracts, or more crippled dogs will die young.  & that will make the genetically sound dogs even more expensive.   That’s capitalism.

Someone recently posted on Craigslist( in Chicago) that he noticed a  few pet rescues seem to charge an awful lot for the pets they offer for adoption, and  their members drive around in fancy cares.  He thought they were selling dogs, and making a profit.

I replied to the guy that  I didn’t think they were making a profit.  Most likely their expenses were high, and, most likely, they were  the type of RESCUE  that is private, and picks and chooses what they rescue…and has no problem getting a high adoption fee for the dogs they adopt out.  And—the people who could afford to support these endeavors had to be upper income—the types to drive fancy cars.

Shocking, but the fact of the matter is—-it costs a lot to own some breeds of dogs, and if you can’t afford the adoption fee (which goes towards the expenses of other dogs ), you most likely can’t afford to own that type of dog.  And—that  type of dog would most likely be a toy breed, a dog requiring professional grooming, or a brarcheocephalic  like a Bulldog, Boston Terrier, or Frenchie.

It got me thinking, however, about the really bogus nonprofits.  There are many.  The deal is that they are set up to not show a profit.  Or, if they do have a surplus , to show how it will be  reinvested in the mission.  They are (allegedly) open to public scrutiny (as opposed to being a closely held company answerable to nobody) but if you look closely, they are not not making a profit.

I think the colleges and universities are the biggest scams.  Don’t get me started on  special programs thought up, athletics, and  endowments. Meanwhile, people are paying higher tuitions to get an education.

One business just the other side of Kosher is Better World Wools.   As you will see from the comment, below, they are   social enterprice.  That means that, as a business, they hold themselves to  their own ethical standards.  They buy & sell used books, & what they don’t sell, they donate. Actually, many bookstores do this….but BWB is set up to take donations of books, and if you donate books to them (a  donation in kind), while you can’t take the tax write-off, you can feel good. Actually, most independet bookstores also take book donations, and spread them around. They have given books to me, to ship to community based projects in Malawi and Zambian, and  I also  take books to a project that gives books to women in prisons.    My 2 issues with BWB are:  1). Due to their huge marketing budget, they  make it impossible for small booksellers to survive—and  soon , due to this kind of practice, all we will have is chain stores in out neighborhoods.   That may be how it  (capitalism)works, but I don’t think that the people who donate books to them understand the larger picture.   Also—think about this…how socially responsible  can this business be?  We don’t know if the principals of this company  make 20 times more in wages than hourly workers. It would be interesting to find out.  I am not saying what they are doing is wrong…I just think that people who want to do good in the world  and who want to buy books should think about all the implications.

Another  rather shady outfit is The Humane Society of the United States.  Their names says they are a humane society—but they fund no shelters or rescues. They are basically a policy development/lobbying group. Granted, they are lobbying for better treatment of animals…but come on!  By misleading people into thinking they are a group that actually takes care of animals, they are draining donations away from local animal shelters that actually are physically taking care of animals. How ethical is THAT?

I met a woman who founded an organization —a non profit…which allows her to take her very well trained dogs  to local elementary schools and talk to kids about taking care of pets.  She does not charge the schools, but she solicits donations.  She  is very open about what she does, and that she has no employees but herself.  She gets some monetary donations, but  she raises money in a variety of ways, and is subject to audit by the state of Illinois.  I think it was very smart of her to  structure her ‘business’ in this way.    Very few schools are in a position to pay her, and very few teachers would take the time to  teach kindness and animal care.

I, myself, am a member of the Chicago Area Peace Corps Association. We are mostly returned  Peace Corps Volunteers…&  we say, “You never stop being a volunteer.”  We get together for monthly dinner meetings & networking (we have a listserv), we volunteer  with other social service groups, and we repackage money:  we give to partnership projects in our countries of service, and try to support other good works. We  are hopelessly inefficient and have no organizational memory.  We are what we are.

Unless you know  the missions of nonprofits, and know what they do, you really can’t address whether they are bogus or not.  Many are just small businesses with a mission—the  sfformentioned social enterprise.  But I know of at least  1 dog rescue that claims to be a registered nonprofit. The  director runs a small pet and grooming shop. Because  she  doesn’t keep good business records, she has been shut down by both the state of Illinois and the IRS several times. She also used to buy puppy mill bred dogs to resell. Somewhere along the line, she got religion, so now is attempting to work with the no-kill animal saving groups and adopt out animals.  I don’t trust her at all, but, in the general scheme of things, her operation is very small, and she tells potential adopters about the dogs’ issues (health, not being housebroken, etc).

I think we Americans have to learn to pick our battles & choose what to get out panties in a bunch about.

I insisted we go out to dinner because I had a Groupon for a sushi place.  KN is very pragmatic about this. He weighs all the pros & cons.  On the one hand, it was raining, and cold, and we had to drive—but I would be doing the driving. On the other hand, I had already paid for most of the bill, would do the driving, it was Japanese—& not my cooking.

The place had mixed reviews, but no matter.  So, we sit  down  at our table, and KN says, “It sucks to be me.”

“Why does it suck to be you?”  I asked.  “You had a great Thanksgiving, and..”
“It was the worst Thanksgiving ever!? he says.

“The food was great. Elaine made that French Silk Pie, and…”

“That guy!  Who cares who he was dating?”  KN went on. He was right. I had invited a friend whom I knew had nowhere else to go, and she asked to bring an acquaintance, and he was a bore.  He thought a fit topic of conversation among older, single women was worst dates. I guess he was just making conversation, and the problem was that a couple of  my other friends encouraged him.  What might have been funny to hear on This American Life, was  a bit obnoxious.  But, in the general scheme of things to me, a mere aggravation. The food was great.  We had other conversation.  However, to someone  for whom English is not a first language…it can sound like dogs barking.

KN had ordered an appetizer, some sort of shaved beef wrapped around asparagus.  It was fine, but …

“Eat more. Don’t you like it?”  KN asked.

“Well, you know my father was a meat packer, and I grew up eating beef  five nights a week.  It’s good, but  really, if I never tasted beef again, I would not miss it.  And hon, you  think my cooking is bad?  You should have tasted my mother’s!  She admitted that  she could barely cook and didn’t enjoy it,”  I explained.

“You mean the one he stalked.”  KN  answered.

“Huh?”

“The  one your father stalked,”  KN repeated.

Riiiight…    My father is now married to my stepmother, whom he  did not stalk.  KN had heard the story of how my father met my mother.  He had seen her leaving a beauty salon in  their neighborhood, and he had gone in  to get her phone number, and they would only give my father her name. So he asked around, among his friends, and he learned she worked for Sear’s, downtown, and went to her job and started hanging around and asking her out (this started, with my father, a lifelong habit of  appearing where his children worked, and snooping…whether it was an office or a retail business).

From the perspective of a guy who has no idea how his parents met, and who never pursued a girlfriend, I guess this  would seem like stalking.     And he knows that my father did not stalk my stepmother, whom my father is married to now.  In any case,  we both got a laugh out of this.

And we went home, and I had the very amusing pleasure of watching KN eat potato chips with chopsticks (so he would not get his keyboard oily).  This is  my life…

I’m a sighthound fancier, and form follows function—as they say—. while I’ve had  a few serious health issues with my dogs in the past, nothing chronic, nothing that required constant attention.  I  still live with a Saluki who is 14 years old, and has a heart murmur and a 12-year-old tough as nails Whippet.

But the Frenchies? The bracheocephalics?  You are asking for heartbreak.

When I moved out of my  parents home and got one of my first grooming jobs, it was with Joan Fredericksen.  She raised Boston Terriers.  At one time, Bostons & Frenchies were the same breed.  Now, the ideal Boston  is actually a refined Frenchie.  If you are a  real conformation dog fancier, and you read the breed standards, you can see the  stewards of these breeds put a lot of thought into the ideal conformation of both these breeds.  They also love the personalities.  You can really get an idea of their personalities when you see them with other  dogs. They love to play, but they are  teasers and aggravators:  they will nudge other dogs, and when the nudged dog  lets them know he won’t tolerate what’s going on, they Bostons shriek and run.  They have patella issues, and often eye issues.  Because  of the prominent eyes, they often abbraid their corneas.  Joan had terrible problems with the dogs rubbing their eyes and abbraiding their corneas, as well as paying for  C sections and having more mismarked pups than  the Boston  pattern. She stopped stopped breeding Bostons when y=she had immediate successes with another breed.

I moved back to Chicago and became acquainted with a former  dog show handler, Matt Kassan.  He had an Afghan Hound when we met, but  for a number of reasons, gave that dog up, and one thing led to another, and he got the Frenchie pup.  Back in the early 1970′s, they were a very rare breed, and I know another handler got the pup for Matt …and that’s how I learned the standard.

They were not over bred back then. Again, this was the early 1970′s.  How things change.  What happened was that  the hobby breeders sold  pups with full registration, expecting the  buyers to get the pups spayed and neutered.  They probably also expected the pet buyers to stay in touch…but people move, get divorced, lose papers, and  someone knows someone who wants a Frenchie—miniature Bulldogs—and gets a breedable bitch, or 2, and some photographer has a client who wants one of these cuties in a print ad, and then they are in more and more print ads, and movies or TV commercials & the demand heats up, and everyone is breeding every bitch…and worse, the general public either doesn’t know how to find an ethical hobby breeder, or  goes into a pet store (which has gotten them   shipped from puppy mills—these days, European puppy mills), and the guy who wasn’t even planning on buying anything plunks down his credit card  and surprises him wife with a puppy (happened to a grooming client of mine.   She was horrified.)

But while the  early hobby breeders, euthanized the pups with cleft palates, in the 1970′s, nobody was checking for luxated patellas, liver shunts, or spinal issues.  Now, in the 21st century, many  hobby breeders may be doing more genetic testing, and selling pets with limited registration or already neutered, but the cat is out of the bag, and  the commercial sellers—be they backyard breeders or puppy mills, are raising dogs as livestock, and by the time the hereditary defect shows up, the owners have lost the papers, and would have no intention of holding the breeder responsible anyways. The veterinarians, making a bundle off these dogs,  don’t tell the owners that  the hereditary defects were disc9verable, and that’s just how it is.

I have recently worked at kennels offering dog daycare where there were more Frenchies and Boston Terriers than Miniature Schnauzersor West Highland White Terriers. Virtually all the pet Frenchies have either cherry eye (nictating membrane irritated) or eyelid entropy, heart or liver problems,  club feet, and I’ve seen 2 paralyzed and in dog wheel chairs, needing their bladders & bowels expressed manually. No joke.  So the $2000 dog ends up costing over $5000.  The buyers/owners of these dogs blame the breeders, but have done nothing to put the breeders out of business.

I would tell anyone  who wants a Boston or Frenchie to  contact either  the French Bulldog Club of America or Boston Terrier Club of America, and ask to be put in touch with local breeders AND I would tell them to also contact the French Bulldog & Boston Terrier Rescues (some have links to the parent club, some operate without the sanction) and ask the coordinator about health or training issues.

Not every dog that looks cute, is.  Frenchies happen to be, but  this is not a healthy breed.  Unless you have a lot of expendable income, this may not be the breed for you.