Very well done and to the point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UovSOAgI8Ck&feature=share

*Like*!
Thank you for posting it Barb!

Sadly, they (HSUS, PETA, etc.) have just as many videos showing the deplorable conditions that many domesticated animals live in.

Neither side has got it right at this point. The problem with "free will" is that some people are just plain stupid and have no compassion for the animals.

Dogs that are kenneled with little-to-no human interaction on a daily basis are in the backyards of people who post here routinely. (By the way, I don't count shoving the food bowl under the gate once or twice a day, or 30 minutes of run time in the paddock, as human interaction.)

Dogs that spend most of their time on a truck traveling from show to show isn't a great life either. Even if it is for only a few weeks or months at a time. Living from crate to ex-pen to crate each day is pretty miserable.

We need, as a collective group, to take a long hard look at the reality our dogs live in.

I headed in the direction of having too many dogs at home once upon a time. Life changed for me and I have only four now. They live in the house with me when I'm home and have the run of the yard and garage when I'm gone. I show at Specialty Shows, All-Breed Shows, work on obtaining Rally and Obedience titles, as well as Hunt Test titles. Each one of my dogs gets my undivided attention, hugs, and one-on-one play-time with me each and every day.

While it sounds like it, I don't intend to toot my own horn, but if I can get just one person to change the way they treat their dogs, then I'm happy.

While I do not support HSUS or PETA I too feel the same as you regarding our pets.

I took great interest in your comment about dogs who live from crate to expen and back to crate again. Sadly, it's not just while on some handler's truck. Many live this way all year long at home, large numbers of dogs who go from crate to the ONE yard their owner has bothered to invest in. Instead of spending the money to have a proper building with inside and outside runs for the dogs to come and go and at least have a life, they literally go from crate to yard, except when in the whelping box, of course. Even if ran in groups, they still have a lot of time spent lying in crates each day. In fact, being on the handler's truck would be an improvement over being at home. How sad.

What's sad is that you few people with an ax to grind about how breeders who do things differently from you give the AR folks more fire. You sound like a bunch of pissy little school girls. Do you know these people personally? Do you see how they take care of their dogs? You just assume they do this or that. MYOB. As long as the dogs are well taken care of and not abused, knock it off. Unless you want to have happen here what is happening in the UK then save it! Sure animal abuse happens but to judge everyone else and bring on your holier than thou attitudes is what is really sad. We have AR people breathing down our necks enough as it is. We need to stop this petty bickering crap and ban together as the farmers in this video showed. Otherwise, no matter how good *YOU* think you are, it won't matter. The AR folks and the laws they want to pass with take care of you too.

No, what is sad is that the dogs live this way!

This is not about us being holier than thou, if it was we'd be sure everyone knew who we were, how can we be taking credit for something anomymously? That just makes no sense at all.

Your statement saying "sure, animal abuse happens but what is really sad is to judge everyone else and bring on our attitudes" is very, very telling about YOUR attitude and priorities. My doG!!!!!!! I hope you don't even PRETEND to call yourself an animal lover.

No high horses here. Just someone who doesn't like the thought of dogs spending hours and hours waiting to get out of their crates. Never been able to successfully just bury my head and pretend its okay or turn around and call the people who ARE concerned "pissy school girls". And yes, I've seen it first hand.

I will not call "Sadly" or any of the others with complaints bad names, but really folks, don't you know you are adding fuel to HSUS's fire? This whole movement has gained steam. When the first innocent sounding things came up, breeders thought it would never happen to them. It was some goofy thing that was going on in Some-where-else-ville. At last, folks have gotten the message and understand how deadly serious this is. But you good guys who wish every dog could sleep on someone's bed, need to watch what you say. Your innocent words and actions give ammunition to the enemy.

Just think about the actual proposed law- all you need is an interest in the dog and 50 related puppies. That JR handler you used where you had to do a co-ownership. She now has xx co-owned dogs and they have puppies- the Jr Handler now falls under these rules. Those dogs you placed under co-ownership to be part of the future decisions. You may now fall under this proposed law. It is not about the welfare of the animals- it is part of eliminating all doemstic animals. HSUS leader Wayne Pacelle stated "Every responsible breeder is a puppy mill, every family farm is a factory farm, every responsible hunter is a poacher"

Yes, More-to-It, there's definitely more to it. I think Saddened was right when she said "Neither side has got it right at this point. The problem with "free will" is that some people are just plain stupid and have no compassion for the animals".

No one likes what HSUS etc are doing. I hate that so many unethical breeders have given them so much fuel and I hate being tarred with the same brush as them. If you think the answer is NOT coming on here and having frank discussions, I doubt that's going to do a dam thing. Getting breeders to clean up their acts and creating some peer pressure to breed more ethically and respectfully toward their animals instead of just PRETENDING it doesn't exist, hmmmm........we might be onto something here,.

I love my dogs dearly. They sleep on my bed at night and go places with me. I walk them through the neighborhood. I let them run on my property. They are very special to me. However not everyone shares the same relationship with their dogs as you or I do. It's frankly none of my business to tell them otherwise unless of course the dogs are starving, beaten or have health problems from neglect. But this labeling of other breeders and scapegoating is not productive to winning the battle against the AR camps. Putting "peer pressure" on them to "breed as you do" only alienates them and divides us further. We have to remain united or we will fall right along side them. As someone else posted, they see ALL breeders the same and make no distinction. They purposely make up labels and laws and show the same propaganda videos over and over again to appeal to the animal lover side in us. Then the good breeders say oh we don't want that either so we let laws slide in that will affect us as well. We become complacent,until it becomes too late as is what happened at Crufts. Everyone wanted to do what's right and help keep our dogs healthy, but then it became a witch hunt and good dogs and people were hurt in the process.

BTW, the Labrador is on the "watch list" now for breeds in the UK.

I'll leave you with this quote from Ingrid (PETA): "
""I don't use the word 'pet.' I think it's speciesist language. I prefer "companion animal." For one thing, we would no longer allow breeding. People could not create different breeds. There would be no pet shops. If people had companion animals in their homes, those animals would have to be refugees from the animal shelters and the streets. You would have a protective relationship with them just as you would with an orphaned child. But as the surplus of cats and dogs (artificially engineered by centuries of forced breeding) declined, eventually companion animals would be phased out, and we would return to a more symbiotic relationship - enjoyment at a distance."
-- Ingrid Newkirk, PeTA vice-president, quoted in The Harper's Forum Book, Jack Hitt, ed., 1989, p. 223"

Just cannot help but wonder if some of the posters have thought this whole scenario through to the big picture.
IF all is allowed to come to pass as the AR's want, IF all rescued dogs( or others for that matter)are all spayed and neutered and IF there is NO breeding allowed it sure stands to reason since dogs do not live too much past 12-16 yrs old,that sometime in the not too distant future there will be NO dogs avail for pets, show, hunting or anything at all.Is that a world that we want to live in?
Have no desire to argue, so this will be my last post on this thread.

Barb I could not agree more. This is a very scary situation. We all need to understand in the AR eyes we are all lumped together...reputable breeders/puppy mills. I have never seen state legislation that draws a definition...have you? Like it or not, we are all in this together if we are going to try to defeat this.

I am sure the AR folks are counting on us segregating ourselves...easier for them to pick off...one by one. Get your head out of the sand.

"We all need to understand in the AR eyes we are all lumped together...reputable breeders/puppy mills. I have never seen state legislation that draws a definition...have you? Like it or not, we are all in this together if we are going to try to defeat this."

Absolutely!!

BarbS, with all due respect, your vision is as extreme as HSUS/PETA and is an unrealistic and illogical view.

While I don't agree with HSUS/PETA lumping everyone together, I also disagree with the volume breeders who think they have the right to breed as much and as many dogs as they want to in order to make a living.

Common sense needs to prevail in the matter and the extremes need to stop the insanity.

Breeders should be more responsible, limiting their breeding to when they want a puppy for themselves to show/compete with.

Breeders should also keep in contact with their puppy buyers to ensure the owners are being responsible owners. They should agree to take puppies/dogs back in the event of emergency to re-home the animals they brought into the world. If more breeders did that, we wouldn't have so many dogs in shelters and HSUS/PETA wouldn't have any "ammunition" against us.

Sadly you just don't get it. The AR groups do not work in a logical and sane manner. You cannot reason with them. They have an agenda and that is to take ALL OF OUR RIGHTS to own, breed and show dogs. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with whether or not we breed in a certain way. They will chip away at each group until there is no one left to defend you and your overly idealistic view point.

Commercial breeders have tried extremely hard to clean up their act. Unless you've actually visited the majority of their facilities, you cannot base your opinion of ALL of them on the few bad ones that you see in AR propaganda videos. You also have NO RIGHT to dictate to others how they should run their business. This is a free country and people have the right to make money. The majority of purebreds come from commercial breeders and MOST are fairly healthy and their owners are extremely happy or they'd all go out of business. Like it or not dogs are a product. A commodity to be bought and sold. If it were an overly defective and sick product, no one would demand this product. You have to look at numbers. The commercial pet industry is a billion dollar a year industry. It's not going to go away because you don't like the way they breed their dogs. They are also not going to go away at the request of the AR groups. They are the ones putting money into fighting for your right to breed dogs.

We can't control everyone and everything that happens in life. We just do the best *we* can and let others do what they feel is right. Unless you give your puppies away, you are getting money for them. Same thing.

Sadly you are playing right into the hands of the AR groups. Sadly, you will lose your rights to own and breed if you stay on that path.

Okay, Okay you have drawn me back into this ONE last time because I am the OP and feel responsible to answer your accusations just once.Although, I doubt you will listen to anything I have to say, here goes.

You Say "Breeders should be more responsible, limiting their breeding to when they want a puppy for themselves to show/compete with.
Breeders should also keep in contact with their puppy buyers to ensure the owners are being responsible owners. They should agree to take puppies/dogs back in the event of emergency to re-home the animals they brought into the world. If more breeders did that, we wouldn't have so many dogs in shelters and HSUS/PETA wouldn't have any "ammunition" against us."

Hanging the high #'s of dogs in shelters on us is either naive or politically calculated. Hasn't anyone ever told you that the AR's bring puppies and dogs in from other states and in some cases even other countries to give the illusion of dealing with full shelters, presumably for more donations or for propoganda photo ops? Lots of documentation on that.
Quite frankly,everyone that I personally work with in Labradors routinely does pretty much the same as what you have suggested. So Talk about extreme! You say you don't agree with the AR's but you sound just like one of their trolls accusing everyone, including people you don't know and lumping all of us into your short sighted view with false accusations. Not saying that bad things never happen,have witnessed some atrocities myself, but only that it is not nearly as prevalent in the Lab community as you are trying to portray(for whatever reason). We often take care of our own. Personally,I have first hand knowledge of dogs in a couple of shelters kicked and badly treated much worse by the so called AR "protectors" than any show breeder has ever done in front of me.So lets call a spade a spade shall we? Have no real knowledge(just assumptions)of what circles you are privy to but neither do you of me. If you have not come into contact with anyone who cares for their dogs as you have listed above, then something is seriously wrong & I feel for you.I do not need to justify how I do "anything" to an anonymous person whose motives we do not really know,but the fact of the matter is that you are just every bit as wrong as you say others are. All of those positive things that you listed have been a fact of life for myself and most/many Lab friends.Many "walk the walk". Having said that much,I do not care to get into one of those big nasty arguments that we often see on here and I am sure you will probably come back with more rhetoric but as far as I am concerned this stops here as I see absolutely no reason to continue. My only hope is that you would do as you say and not as you accuse for the future of our breed and others.