Personal opinions vs actually bad breeding

Friendly reminder that just because you don’t like a breeder or disagree with someone’s program, doesn’t necessarily make that breeder “bad.” The internet makes it easy for people to dehumanize others and forget there are real people on the other end. I have a lot of respect for those who choose to be kind despite differences in opinion.

Holding every breeder to your personal standard of excellence and demonizing them when they don’t fit it is unreasonable. It doesn’t make someone a bad breeder just because you don’t like them or their choices. Treating breeders as if they are not people with full lives outside of this space, with mental and physical health, with families, homes, careers, and personal limitations to what is accessible for them is unkind and unhelpful.

Sharing your experiences with the goal of being informative is one thing but personal attacks, slander, name calling, etc. are uncalled for and it really speaks more volumes about the individuals partaking in the hatefulness than anything else. Don’t get me wrong, everyone is entitled to their opinion and conversations should be had. I am not for standing by and allowing true wrong doings, heinous acts, or abusive behavior to slip under the radar. This goes both ways… how you conduct yourself as a breeder AKA a professional in the industry leaves an impression and speaks volumes. As breeders, I feel like we should be constantly striving to better our programs and build our community, not tear it down.

There are truly problematic people out there who are actually abusing or neglecting dogs/puppies, hoarding ungodly numbers of dogs (I’m talking 20, 30, even 50 plus dogs, numbers that no person can reasonably care for without staff onsite), who are completely unsupportive of their puppy owners, or are totally ill prepared to actually raise a litter. There are endless truly bad breeders who are perpetuating the poor outlook the general public has on breeding as a whole. I just can’t help but feel like if all this energy spent bashing breeders who are doing good by their dogs, puppies, and owners was put towards people who are actually problematic, maybe a positive difference could be made.