Amer­i­can pedi­greed dogs, prod­ucts of a large, estab­lished indus­try, aren’t cheap. As pets, they can cost more than $1,000 – and that’s before vet fees. Safe Har­bor Lab Res­cue esti­mates that there are more than 20 mil­lion pure­bred dogs in the Unit­ed States. ​“By pure breed­ing, breed­ers can main­tain and enhance cer­tain traits,” says Pat­ti Strand, a long­time Dal­ma­t­ian breed­er who sits on the board of the Amer­i­can Ken­nel Club (AKC). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a buy­er can usu­al­ly pre­dict what will kill their pet as well.

Patti Strand, a Dalmatian breeder and board member of the American Kennel Club, opposes regulation. ‘We live in a free society,’ says Strand. ‘America is a lot different from Europe.’

Thanks to unreg­u­lat­ed inbreed­ing, many dog breeds suf­fer chron­ic dis­eases and con­di­tions. For exam­ple, gold­en retriev­ers die of can­cer about 60 per­cent of the time, accord­ing to the Gold­en Retriev­er Club of Amer­i­ca. Show-style Ger­man Shep­herds are noto­ri­ous for their slump­ing, eas­i­ly dis­joint­ed hips, and pugs’ wheez­ing is the result of a severe facial deformity.

Such ills should not be sur­pris­ing: In some breeds, dogs have a 75 per­cent inbreed­ing coef­fi­cient (the indi­ca­tion of how relat­ed they are), accord­ing to Susan Thor­pe-Var­gas, a breed­er of Samoyeds who holds a Ph.D. in genet­ics. (A broth­er and sis­ter have a coef­fi­cient of 25 per­cent.) The late John Arm­strong, a vet­eri­nar­i­an with the Canine Diver­si­ty Project, report­ed that cer­tain unusu­al­ly inbred lines of poo­dles have an inbreed­ing coef­fi­cient of 70 percent.

Accord­ing to data from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia school of vet­eri­nary med­i­cine, which pub­lished a study of one heav­i­ly inbred group of inbred bea­gles, three-fourths of pup­pies with a 67 per­cent or high­er coef­fi­cient will die with­in 10 days. The dogs who sur­vive are often sad­dled with genet­ic dis­ease, poor immune sys­tems and short­ened life expectan­cies. ​“It’s killing them. They’ll even­tu­al­ly hit a genet­ic cul-de-sac and be too inbred to repro­duce,” says Thor­pe-Var­gas, author of Genet­ics and Breed­ing Strate­gies: Essays for the Dog Breeder.

In Europe, sev­er­al coun­tries have made efforts to reform breed­ing and com­pet­i­tive show­ing. Ger­man breed­ers must have all mat­ings approved by a breed war­den, which dis­cour­ages inbreed­ing of unsafe pairs. In Britain, the out­cry fol­low­ing the 2008 BBC doc­u­men­tary Pedi­gree Dogs Exposed prompt­ed the Ken­nel Club, the UK’s largest dog reg­istry and gov­ern­ing body, to reg­u­late health screen­ing and breed­ing. ​“It doesn’t have to be like this,” doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Jemi­ma Har­ri­son wrote in an e‑mail to In These Times. ​“We real­ly can have beau­ti­ful pedi­gree dogs that are not struck down by dis­eases or encum­bered by phys­i­cal hand­i­caps forced on them by us.”

When looks can kill

The AKC is the largest pedi­gree dog reg­istry in the Unit­ed States. Besides reg­u­lat­ing lit­ter and dog reg­is­tra­tion, it sets the ​“stan­dard” for each breed, a spe­cif­ic set of require­ments for height, weight and build. These stan­dards force breed­ers to assume the role of geneti­cist, try­ing to con­trol for desir­able cos­met­ic traits and weed out those deemed unfa­vor­able by the AKC.

Some of the most icon­ic canine fea­tures, such as a bull dog’s big head and squat body, are the result of selec­tive breed­ing over many gen­er­a­tions. How­ev­er, adher­ence to these stan­dards is often detri­men­tal to dogs. Many Eng­lish bull dogs, for exam­ple, are unable to mate with­out assis­tance, so breed­ers must resort to cost­ly arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion. And because these dogs are bred for their large heads, a Cae­sare­an sec­tion is required 90 per­cent of the time, accord­ing to sev­er­al bull dog breed­ing sites.

In These Times spoke to three vet­eri­nar­i­ans who dis­put­ed the notion that inbreed­ing is a pri­ma­ry, or even par­tial, cause of pure­bred dogs’ seri­ous health prob­lems. Robert Hutchi­son, an Ohio-based vet­eri­nar­i­an whose work includes arti­fi­cial­ly insem­i­nat­ing show dogs, acknowl­edges that breed­ers do tend toward dif­fer­ent phys­i­cal traits (a large head, short snout, etc.) depend­ing on the most win­ning dogs of the moment. But he con­tends that, although breed­ing for cer­tain traits doesn’t always turn out best for the ani­mals, breed­ers self-cor­rect if they see problems.

Some breeds, how­ev­er, are clear­ly hurt by AKC stan­dards. Pugs suf­fer from res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems because of their pushed-in faces that extend the soft palate into the throat, block­ing air. The AKC stan­dard man­dates that the ​“muz­zle is short, blunt, square, but not upfaced…A pug’s bite should be very slight­ly under­shot.” (The Pug Dog Club of Amer­i­ca did not respond to inter­view requests.) Because pugs can­not breathe well, they can’t eas­i­ly exer­cise and as a result many are obese. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the Ortho­pe­dic Foun­da­tion for Ani­mals ranked pugs as the sec­ond-worst breed in terms of hip dys­pla­sia, with about 64 per­cent of the dogs affect­ed. Bull dogs rank first, with more than 73 per­cent affected.

Genet­ic test­ing can rem­e­dy some prob­lems, but not all. Many fatal dis­eases, such as the bleed­ing dis­or­der Von Willebrand’s that occurs in dober­man pin­sch­ers, car­ry a spe­cif­ic genet­ic mark­er. If a dog is a car­ri­er of the gene, it can be spayed or neutered to resist the spread of the condition.

Yet the AKC allows sick dogs to reg­is­ter, breed and win. Thor­pe-Var­gas advo­cates that reg­istries such as the AKC rewrite pol­i­cy to out­law unhealthy dogs from reg­is­tra­tion. This would bar breed­ers from know­ing­ly pass­ing on dev­as­tat­ing dis­eases and would great­ly pare down the num­ber of affect­ed dogs.

How­ev­er, AKC spokes­woman Lisa Peter­son says that her orga­ni­za­tion ​“is not a health reg­istry.” Asked about breed­er prac­tices she responds: ​“You sound like you’ve been watch­ing that BBC documentary.”

To reg­is­ter a dog with the AKC, a breed­er must prove pure pedi­gree lin­eage and pay a $20 fee. For a lit­ter, the fee is $35 plus $2 per pup­py. If a dog with a doc­u­ment­ed genet­ic dis­ease con­tributes to a lit­ter, its pups are wel­comed, even though they may be car­ri­ers. Stud dogs can be bred as many times as their own­er wants, even though this reduces the gene pool of a breed even fur­ther. For­eign dogs, even those who are ​“pedi­greed” or from the breed’s coun­try of ori­gin, are often reject­ed by the AKC as viable mates, which fur­ther lim­its genet­ic diversity.

Dol­lars before dogs

The idea of AKC-man­dat­ed health screen­ing ​“is smart,” says Chica­go vet­eri­nar­i­an Lisa Cieply, ​“but I think you’d have a tough time mak­ing it a require­ment.” How­ev­er, the AKC and many breed­ers vehe­ment­ly defend the lack of reg­u­la­tion, say­ing that most breed­ers are respon­si­ble. Strand, the Dal­ma­t­ian breed­er who sits on the board of the AKC, oppos­es leg­isla­tive reg­u­la­tion in par­tic­u­lar, say­ing that self-reg­u­la­tion by breed­ers is suf­fi­cient. ​“We live in a free soci­ety,” she says. ​“Amer­i­ca is a lot dif­fer­ent from Europe.”

Steve Par­sons, a dober­man pin­sch­er breed­er based in Utah, is one of the few will­ing to speak out. ​“The AKC is a busi­ness orga­ni­za­tion, and if they start to impose more rules, they’ll have less rev­enue,” Par­sons says. ​“There real­ly are tru­ly respon­si­ble peo­ple who take care of their dogs, but there are a lot of peo­ple who don’t because it will inter­fere with their rev­enue stream.”

Clubs ded­i­cat­ed to each AKC-rec­og­nized breed (there are more than 150) do try to counter these prob­lems, and many man­date that their mem­bers test par­ents before mat­ing. How­ev­er, Thor­pe-Var­gas says that while some clubs are inter­est­ed in pro­tect­ing their breeds, they have yet to pro­hib­it inbreeding.

The insu­lar men­tal­i­ty pre­vents mean­ing­ful reform, as some breed­ers keep health prob­lems qui­et and con­tin­ue breed­ing from the same trou­bled line, Par­sons says. ​“I’ve been at shows and heard peo­ple ask, ​‘Didn’t that dog’s dad die of car­dio [sud­den car­diac arrest com­mon in Dober­mans]?’ They’ll say, ​‘Shhh, he doesn’t want any­one to know.’ ”

Peter­son says that these clubs, along with canine health reg­istries, ensure that breed­ers do not cre­ate a dog with a con­gen­i­tal defect or problem.

Breed clubs wield a great deal of influ­ence with regard to AKC stan­dards. If a club push­es for a change of breed stan­dard or test­ing require­ments, the AKC may respond.

But Par­sons says his fel­low dober­man breed­ers refuse to respect his anti-inbreed­ing posi­tion, and that many clubs will not accept some­one who is out­spo­ken. After Pedi­gree Dogs Exposed was broad­cast, one British breed­er was fired from her posi­tion in a breed club for less-than-sun­ny comments.

Pro­po­nents of the sta­tus quo are quick to point out that rep­utable breed­ers who belong to clubs are enthu­si­as­tic about test­ing and improv­ing the breed, so there is no need for reg­u­la­tion. But until there is an over­haul of breed­ing stan­dards in the AKC and pure­bred dog com­mu­ni­ty, many breeds will con­tin­ue to be plagued by dis­ease. Thor­pe-Var­gas puts it this way: ​“They say to me, ​‘I’ve been doing this for 30 years.’ They don’t know and don’t want to know the harm they’re doing.”

Cor­rec­tions: The orig­i­nal ver­sion of this sto­ry implied that John Arm­strong is still alive. He is not. It also implied that the inbred poo­dles Arm­strong stud­ied, which had an inbreed­ing co-effi­cient of 70 per­cent, are com­mon. In fact Arm­strong chose to study those poo­dles because they were extreme­ly and unusu­al­ly inbred. The sto­ry has also been amend­ed to clar­i­fy that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia school of vet­eri­nary med­i­cine study focused on one par­tic­u­lar­ly inbred group of beagles.

Editor’s Note: A few minor fac­tu­al corrections/​clarifications have been made to the sto­ry, but In These Times stands by Sara Peck’s sto­ry. Here is Peck’s response to the broad­er crit­i­cisms of her sto­ry offered by read­ers in the com­ments below.

Sara Peck’s response: I real­ized the issue of inbreed­ing would upset some mem­bers of the pure­bred dog com­mu­ni­ty, and am glad a healthy dis­cus­sion about the sto­ry has tak­en place below. My arti­cle was not writ­ten ​“with a click of a mouse,” as one com­menter dis­mis­sive­ly wrote. And no, I did not manip­u­late infor­ma­tion to suit an anti-dog breed­ing agen­da. I grew up with pure­bred dogs and loved all of them, which is why I want­ed to write about this issue.

It is pos­si­ble to have beau­ti­ful purebed dogs with­out genet­ic defor­mi­ties or health prob­lems. But it is unde­ni­able that cer­tain breeds are sad­dled with cer­tain ill­ness­es. What I advo­cate is a restruc­tur­ing of the breed­ing sys­tem to bet­ter serve the best inter­ests of dogs — not the stan­dards of the AKC or dog breed clubs, or the prof­its of the breed­ing industry.

Dogs are won­der­ful com­pan­ions, and yes, the var­i­ous breed­ing com­mu­ni­ties are ded­i­cat­ed to fund­ing research to help their prized canines. How­ev­er, the cur­rent sys­tem rewards those who make deci­sions genet­i­cal­ly detri­men­tal to the dogs in ques­tion. I hope my arti­cle starts a debate about how we can breed health­i­er dogs, and ensures that future gen­er­a­tions of kids will be able to grow up with healthy ani­mal friends.