Seven Pups for Seven People

Part Two and Part Three  and text summary

Watch this video.  It's long, but it's worth it.

This kind of autopsy on what really happens to litters of puppies is too rarely done.

From what I can tell, most "dog breeders" are little more than "hump and dump" dog dealers.

Yes, there are people who will REALLY take back a dog any time it needs to be re-homed, but NO, those people are NOT the norm in the world of dog sales, and there is a LOT of difference between saying it and actually doing it.

The simple truth is that about 20 percent of all dogs born in the U.S. every year are abandoned to their death, and an equal or higher number end up being bounced from their first "forever" owner to their second or third owner, without any continuity of care or training.

One of the few writers to ever give an unblinking look at what really happened to a litter that they themselves bred, was J.R. Ackerley, the author of My Dog Tulip. 

Ackerley starts off breeding his dog with all good intent, but in the end the litter that is produced is whelped by a temperamentally poor bitch (Tulip) to a stud dog of no consequence. 

The eight pups that result quickly overwhelm Ackerley and his apartment to the point that, despite all apparent intention of doing the right thing at the front end, on the back end he ends up abandoning the pups to anyone with a fiver who will walk one out the door.

What happens next is predictable:  disease, disappearance, abandonement and death. 

And this was J.R. Ackerley!  He was not a mean person, a knuckle-dragger, an illiterate, or a person without some means. 

This was simply one more person who did not understand the full responsibility that comes when you bring a living thing into this world.  When faced with shouldering that responsibility he failed.  Yes, he lost a little of his dignity but those pups lost their life.

Responsibility. 

It's the R-word no one really wants to talk about too much in the world of dogs.  

Instead, people want to talk about property rights and ribbons.  But responsibility to the dog?  Responsibility to the puppies being whelped? 

When was the last time anyone said too much about that?

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