Question on Border collies now in amish hands

[Dal & Mad's Mom]

Is there an official ABCA stance on large scale breeders? I am talking about people producing 50 to 200+ pups a year, very few of which ever do any meaningful work on livestock. Some of these breeders do keep their pups clean, health test the parents and make an effort to sell to responsible owners, but I don't see how they are contributing anything to the breed as a whole. When you are raising that many pups you just don't have the time to train the parents on stock and actually know which ones are worth breeding in the first place. I see litters advertised sired by dogs that are under a year old. Videos show the sire running in circles in a round pen, the breeder brags about his working ability and puppy buyers eat it up.

 

 

This is also a thing I wondered about even though I chose to use the amish end of it. Locally most amish in Pa use the ckc to register but, when I saw that the parents of the dogs registered were now in Amish hands it made me think. I think the AKC does sanction the mills in Pa for using their name to advertise. I've seen it mentioned in recent articles.

 

Eileen I pm'd you but, based on the quirk in my account you wont be able to reply.

[Kelliwic Border Collies]

Is there an official ABCA stance on large scale breeders? I am talking about people producing 50 to 200+ pups a year,

 

I think there was talk a year or two ago about ABCA creating a list of high-volume breeders, but as far as I know, it never happened. I don't know if it was never officially approved/agreed upon, or whether it just fell by the wayside.

[Eileen Stein]

Is there an official ABCA stance on large scale breeders? I am talking about people producing 50 to 200+ pups a year, very few of which ever do any meaningful work on livestock. Some of these breeders do keep their pups clean, health test the parents and make an effort to sell to responsible owners, but I don't see how they are contributing anything to the breed as a whole. When you are raising that many pups you just don't have the time to train the parents on stock and actually know which ones are worth breeding in the first place. I see litters advertised sired by dogs that are under a year old. Videos show the sire running in circles in a round pen, the breeder brags about his working ability and puppy buyers eat it up.

 

There's no official ABCA stance on large scale breeders, except for the general position that border collies should be bred only for proven working ability (and as you note, that's rarely done by these high volume breeders, if only because it's not really possible). The board certainly does not approve of the kind of breeders you describe. A couple of years ago we did consider, as Megan says, publishing a list of high volume breeders, along with educational materials about recognizing a good breeder that would make it clear high volume was not a good thing. There seemed to be general support on the board for doing this, and I think a few high volume breeders actually stopped registering with the ABCA when they heard it was under consideration. But it never came to a vote because it became apparent that our software currently would not permit us to identify the high volume breeders with sufficient accuracy. I continue to hope this problem will be solved, because I think it would be a good thing to do.

[Liz P]

There seemed to be general support on the board for doing this, and I think a few high volume breeders actually stopped registering with the ABCA when they heard it was under consideration. But it never came to a vote because it became apparent that our software currently would not permit us to identify the high volume breeders with sufficient accuracy. I continue to hope this problem will be solved, because I think it would be a good thing to do.

 

Do you mean that the software is unable to count the number of pups a person registers automatically? Would it be possible instead to flag breeders who seem to be registering a lot of pups, pull their files (or create a file?) and manually count over the course of a year or more? Is there any way we could get the software that the ISDS uses? (I love that they list things like COI on their pedigrees.)

 

One breeder I can think of in particular dual registers all his/her litters with the ABCA and AKC. This person does not hide the numbers by registering pups under the names of relatives or friends. I would think that Patty would recognize this person's name since papers for about one litter a month are processed (some months it is many litters).

[Eileen Stein]

Do you mean that the software is unable to count the number of pups a person registers automatically? Would it be possible instead to flag breeders who seem to be registering a lot of pups, pull their files (or create a file?) and manually count over the course of a year or more? Is there any way we could get the software that the ISDS uses? (I love that they list things like COI on their pedigrees.)

 

One breeder I can think of in particular dual registers all his/her litters with the ABCA and AKC. This person does not hide the numbers by registering pups under the names of relatives or friends. I would think that Patty would recognize this person's name since papers for about one litter a month are processed (some months it is many litters).

 

I just don't know enough technically to know why the software couldn't do it; I only know our IT people said it couldn't be done. This is in addition to the problem of different names, different versions of the same name, different addresses, and so forth.

 

I'm sure Patty recognizes some people as registering a lot of pups, but I don't see how we could do a list of just the people Patty thinks of. It would have to be a neutral, comprehensive, objective list, without a lot of omissions and inconsistencies that people could point to as showing how unfair it was.

[Liz P]

I just don't know enough technically to know why the software couldn't do it; I only know our IT people said it couldn't be done. This is in addition to the problem of different names, different versions of the same name, different addresses, and so forth.

 

I'm sure Patty recognizes some people as registering a lot of pups, but I don't see how we could do a list of just the people Patty thinks of. It would have to be a neutral, comprehensive, objective list, without a lot of omissions and inconsistencies that people could point to as showing how unfair it was.

 

I see your point. I do really appreciate that the ABCA is aware of and actually cares about the issue. It makes me hopeful that a solution will eventually be found.

 

Last night I was sent a copy of an announcement that the breeder I was thinking of made earlier this year. This person now only registers a very small percentage of the pups with the ABCA (but all of them with the AKC). I would be curious to hear how closely the announcement coincided with the ABCAs discussions on making a list of high volume breeders.

[njnovice]

Glen Highland Farm pays puppy mills for dogs?!? I hope you're wrong about this.

I know for a fact that they do indeed pay for at least some puppy mill dogs. I know this because I adopted one that I was told they paid $100 for to rescue her mom and her sisters.

 

Unfortunately, I had to return the dog because she had severe epilepsy which manifested itself a couple days after I brought her home. I wanted a healthy dog, and was told she was healthy. My vet said there was no way that her symptoms could be that severe yet have never manifested themselves in the few months she was at GHF. It was heartbreaking to have to return her, but her episodes were terrifying our other animals and we simply can't afford to have a special needs dog. If Mick came down with something, I'd find a way to pay for it, but I just can't start out with an unhealthy dog.