Oh, the irony.

Certainly one of biggest obstacles to saving dogs is having the money to do it.  Dogs are not cheap, especially rescue dogs that often carry expensive medical baggage that has to be unloaded before they can find a new home.  Having to keep my foster numbers down due to our current living situation, I have decided to use my free time to raise as much money as possible, stuffing every penny I can find into the “rescue fund”.

Much to my surprise, greeting card sales have been doing well.  That, coupled with some inspiration from a fellow volunteer, has given me the courage needed to try my hand at a creating a few other things to sell.  Using lots of borrowed ideas from the Internet has me searching for furniture and other odds and ends that I can refurbish and hopefully make a profit on… details on all of that to come, assuming I ever successfully finish a project that I start.  All of this is to say that I have been hunting for junk lately… which is why I made the terrible decision to visit the local Flea Market last weekend.

This Flea Market is not like others that I have visited, with traveling vendors and lots of great antique dealers that visit for just a few days.  Instead, it is a huge metal shed where vendors rent permanent booths and sell everything from dish soap to cell phones to puppies (yes… that is where this story is going).  The building is enormous, with hundreds of chain-link divided booths.  It is dingy, dark and the air is filled with cigarette smoke.  A sign hangs on the entrance door, welcoming you with the words “no recording devices allowed inside”.  What they are trying to hide is unknown, although the entire place elicits a feeling of trouble.  Needless to say, I didn’t take any photos, hence the word-heavy post.

I was well aware of the fact that many irresponsible breeders sell their puppies at this place.  Heartlessly, they hand them over to people like a piece of property.  They feed on people’s impulse emotions, ignoring the reality that the purchaser has put no thought into the care and commitment the dog will require.  Some of these so-called pure-bred dogs sell for hundreds of dollars, with no registration to prove their bloodlines.  Most of the puppies are very young and receive zero vet care before being put up for display at the Flea Market – a place covered in the highly-contagious and deadly Parvo virus.  It takes days for an infected puppy to show symptoms and in the meantime, he can shed the virus all over the Flea Market, contaminating the environment for a full year.

Within days of going home, many of these purchased puppies begin to vomit, become lethargic and eventually get so sick that they cannot lift their heads before passing away.  Having spent all of their available cash to purchase the dog, many of the new owners turn to rescue groups for money to fix/save their puppy.  Being accustomed to receiving government support whenever unexpected expenses occur, they are shocked and angry that there are no funds available to save their dog.  But, Welfare doesn’t cover puppies.  Rescue groups do what they can to help, but the problem is bigger than any solution we currently have available and many of these puppies do not make it.

Driving to the Flea Market, I knew this was the reality.  But, I convinced myself it couldn’t be that bad… I could stomach it if I found a few great pieces to work on.  I was wrong.

Before we even reached the building, it started.  A block from the Flea Market, a man stood in a parking lot, a puppy in each arm.  The sign next to him read “puppies for sale”.  Across the street, seven kennels were stacked like a mountain, a puppy in each one.  Another “puppies for sale” sign sat in front of them.  Within minutes of entering the building, I spotted a kennel with one tiny black puppy inside.  Her breeders sat under a vinyl sign with pictures of Yorkies on it.  I gave them the stink eye and kept walking, trying to focus on not bumping into anyone or touch anything.  We walked down several aisles of booths filled with everything from socks to belts to candy… (zero antiques or furniture, by the way).  We made it about half way through the building, no more dog sightings… and then it happened, someone poked my shoulder.

I turned around to see a tiny lady with grey hair and a crooked stance.  She asked “you with AARF”?  At which point, I realized I was wearing my AARF t-shirt (idiot move).  Scott and I nodded and the lady launched into a rambling story about being a dog lover and that she is in a difficult situation.  She wanted to know if AARF could help her place some of her dogs because her neighbors are tired of her dogs barking and they have contacted animal control.  She has been given 30 days to get rid of all of the dogs she has before they are confiscated by the pound…. which she estimates to be around 36 dogs and 10 puppies.  You see, it takes her about 3-4 hours to clean their pens and they bark during that time.  Otherwise, they are very quiet (yeah, right).  She doesn’t understand why they are so upset with her, after all, her pack is half the size it was before her husband passed away.  (Do the math on that one!)

She then lead us over to her booth where she had six kennels lined up on a table, each with a small dog inside.  She wanted to know if we could take the one on the end… an adorable long-haired Chihuahua that couldn’t have been more than eight pounds.  He has a heart murmur and several other health problems, she didn’t know what exactly.  The breeder explained that it is hard for her to find homes for her dogs because she wants them to go to good homes, not ones where the newness wears off and the dog gets stuck in the backyard.  I found this ironic, as it seems that her home isn’t all that great either, after gathering from her that the dogs have little to no vet care and she is the only one attending to 46 dogs.  But, logic wasn’t very present in this situation… as became more and more obvious…

Scott told her that we might be able to help, but that any rescue group would require that she has every one of the dogs that she keeps spayed or neutered, because rescue groups work every day to combat the overpopulation problem.  Her response was not surprising, “…now I could argue either side of that.  Because, if everyone stops breeding, there will be no more pure-bred dogs, just the ones like they have in the shelters… you know, mutts.”  Mind you, none of her dogs are registered pure-bred dogs and considering that she did not seem particularly careful about keeping her dogs separate, there is a good chance that she is breeding mutts.  Furthermore, she admited breeding the one that had several health problems, indicating that she is perpetuating genetic defects by breeding them.

Regardless of these obvious problems, arguing that dogs should not be sterilized so that breeds do not go extinct, when you just admitted that you cannot find good homes for the ones you have… is far from logical.  6-8 million animals are euthanized in US shelters every year, 25% of those are pure-bred (that figure is probably low because it assumes that every shelter worker recognizes a pure-bred when they see one).  At any given point in time, PetFinder has hundreds of long-haired Chihuahuas, Miniature Poodles and Pomeranians (her breeds of choice) searching for homes.  I guarantee you many of the dogs she has breed end up at the shelter… she herself admitted that she couldn’t find them all homes!

Of course, if she was working to preserve a specific bloodline or even a rare breed of dog, I would be willing to take up her argument.  I am not against all breeding.  Remember, I own a pure-bred.  What I am against is people irresponsibly perpetuating a problem, treating dogs as property and worst of all putting the safety of animals at stake for monetary gain.  A responsible breeder never makes a dime, they spend all of the profits on caring for the dogs in their care.  They have regimented and organized breeding procedures to minimize genetic problems and maximize the breed standard, focusing efforts on protecting the breeds they work with.  Instead, this lady told us that she of course has to charge something for her dogs… in order to feed the other ones in her care.

The most frustrating part of it all is that these people really believe that they are dog lovers and proclaim it to the world.  In reality, they don’t love dogs, they love what dogs do for them.  Love infers wanting the best for someone (or thing)… and that is clearly not the case when the dogs do not even receive heartworm prevention (which she admitted).  If you love dogs, you don’t exploit them, you protect them.  It is the same thing as a child abuser saying that they love the child they abuse… it doesn’t fit the standard definition of love.

What it boils down to was that she wanted us to take the dogs that she could not breed (the used up studs) and find them homes… so that she would have the room needed to continue her breeding operation.  She wanted to use us and our desire to help dogs so that she could perpetuate a problem that we have given our lives to fix.  Because of that, we could not help her dogs.  The innocent victims.

It was hard to walk away from her dogs, knowing that their fate was not good.  But, the longer we stood there, the more our tempers flared and we had to admit we would never convince someone that the very foundation of her beliefs is logically unsound.  I could see Scott’s anger boiling and before he punched out an old lady in public, we handed contact information for a place that could help get all of her animals spayed and neutered.  I am certain she tossed it in the trash as we walked away.

As we left, we noticed the booth next to her was a Pit Bull breeder.  Two of the most gorgeous Pits I have ever seen adorned their double-sized booth.  On the bright side, neither showed any evidence of having been in dog fights… something I doubt is true for all of the puppies they produce.  At that point, we were both well past our tolerance level.  We headed for the door, blind to everything around us… ignoring at least one more booth with dogs in it.  As we dashed out the door, I watched another guy pull into the parking lot and pull a giant kennel out of his car… filled with puppies.

Instead of antiques, we left on Saturday with a harsh reminder of reality.  No matter how many we help, there will always be millions more that we are not helping.  Until dogs are recognized as individuals and not as property, we will continue to fight an uphill battle.  But, we will keep fighting… because it matters to the ones we can help.  I am certain I will see at least one of those dogs again… when they need rescue help.