Puppy Mills and the American Kennel Club

The following are excerpts from an article written by Bo Bengtson in "Best in Show" which I thought might be worth discussing.

...[snip]...
The full article is here, together with Mr Bengston's letter to the AKC
Chairman of the Board Alan Kalter and AKC President Dennis Sprung and the response from the AKC.

http://www.bestinshowdaily.com/blog/...n-kennel-club/

Does anyone have any comments they would like to discuss on this subject?

I'm American (DUH!!) and I have no true links to pure bred dogs or the breeding world. That being said, my opinions on this subject are uneducated and should be taken with a grain of salt as admittedly, I hardly know what I'm talking about.

Moving right along, I think the article is biased, personally. The author doesn't prove all his points well at all and he is a judge for dog shows and also was a breeder a long time ago.

Much of his article about how pets are kept is speculation. He also does not mention the fact that these mill dogs are always of poor show quality or sick or something, which you'd think a dog judge would mention in an article like this.

I agree that the AKC should not generally support puppy mills, but maybe he should judge people less, and judge dogs more. Just my opinion. If he's concerned about the welfare of animals, he's going to have to do better than stating some opinions on his blog.

We don't know all the facts and I can't see why the AKC would publicly support a place that has been ousted for horrible practices, poor quality dogs, or other ethical issues that directly relate to the dogs. Have not done extensive research, but it makes no real sense to me.

He also made no such mention where he directly linked and proved that this place was a horrible place. I think he needs to take it easy.

The article was not on his blog. It was on http://www.bestinshowdaily.com/

See http://www.bestinshowdaily.com/about-us/ to find out what it is.

Well the blog was listed under his name on blogs on that website. I do not know who is allowed to blog there, though. If the general public is allowed, then it makes more of a difference, but if he is a blogger that works for the site...

Added in the fact that the AKC supports slanted backed GSD's, Chows with too much hair, Mastinos with too many wrinkles and has a questionable standard of breeds in general I'm really not all that surprised that they'd support a place like that.

Again, I'm not well linked into the breeding world and AKC, so I don't know a lot about this stuff, admittedly.

I do not know anything about the AKC - I just thought it was interesting, so I checked with Azz whether I could post that link - he read the article and he OK'd it.