Read an Excerpt
From the introduction
How many dog lovers are aware that, despite the praise and admiration we shower upon our best friends, not everything we do for them is in their own best interests? Sure, the coats are pretty, but Labs and shepherds need hydrotherapy for hip dysplasia if they’re to continue sidewalk entertaining. Shar-peis and boxers look distinctive with those folds on the face, but owners book return visits to animal hospitals for interminable allergies and epilepsy, while goldens and Scottish deerhounds take pet taxis to oncology wards and ICUs. We’re so busy dragging Boomer and Bailey around town that we don’t stop to think that much of their special care is only necessary because of problems their biggest fans have helped inflict upon them.
There can no longer be any doubt. As was long suspected, ample studies confirm that requiring breeds to be distinctive has led to dramatically higher levels of cancer, structural deformities, skin conditions, eye and ear infections, and a host of afflictions that are multiplying. Many purebreds are officially in peril and dog lovers must confront this sad reality. Forcing Labs to go on looking Labby and pugs pugnacious—expecting them to “conform,” as they say in the show ring, to arbitrary beauty-pageant ideals—has resulted in creatures esthetically pleasing to behold, depending on your personal tastes, but physically and often mentally inferior to the average mutt. Compromising health and temperament with a concern for surface appearance has given dogs a host of defects including “extreme anatomies,” say concerned vets, cartoon features that consumers find cute but are in fact deformities causing discomfort, pain, and shorter lives—and the agony owners feel when having to make that final decision sooner than they thought.
Why do we go on hurting the ones we love? Why must German shepherds limp through life and French bulldogs barely breathe? Enthusiasts attached to the breeds they had growing up surely don’t wish to see their beloved favorites suffer, but they might want to be more aware that congenital illness and certain signature looks, even in the so-called hypoallergenic models, have become serious problems in recent years. I argue that the root of the problem lies in the past. Rigid tastes, latent class consciousness, a belief in blood “purity,” naïve notions on authenticity—and a tendency to sometimes love dogs for the wrong reasons—override a wealth of information available on the dangers of inbreeding, the downsides to extreme anatomies, and the evils of the pet industry today. Well-intentioned animal lovers with minds open to this broader historical perspective might wake up one morning to a revelation: dogs don’t need to be neatly standardized, packaged, and sealed to be our friends. How much easier it would make people’s lives to learn that for every prepaid, photogenic purebred ordered months in advance of birth with promises of “predictability” from “reputable” breeders, perfectly wonderful specimens of dog are available minutes away at the local shelter, with at least as much happiness to offer and oft en with no breeding at all.