The Doggie in the Window

by Rory Kress

  “When you get performance dogs that work on the cold end of things, I don’t think people realize what goes on there. Not only are these dogs selected for a [particular] set of genes, but also you’ve trained and enhanced these dogs. And you’re feeding them slabs of often fatty, raw meat or specialized diets that are high in fat,” Overall said. “So they’re on a specialized diet, and they are conditioned to those temperatures… Furthermore, there are huge immune effects of these extremes in temperature that are well known and established in laboratory animals of all kinds including dogs. But they have never made their way into a USDA regulation.”

  What’s more, the Animal Welfare Act regulations do not account for any differences in dietary requirements in conjunction with temperatures in breeding facilities.

  FOOD

  Animal Welfare Act

  Dogs and cats must be fed at least once each day, except as otherwise might be required to provide adequate veterinary care. The food must be uncontaminated, wholesome, palatable, and of sufficient quantity and nutritive value to maintain the normal condition and weight of the animal. The diet must be appropriate for the individual animal’s age and condition. Food receptacles must be used for dogs and cats, must be readily accessible to all dogs and cats, and must be located so as to minimize contamination by excreta and pests, and be protected from rain and snow.

  Translation

  Breeders must only feed their dogs once a day. The food must be clean and appropriate for the dog in question. The Animal Welfare Act gives no specifics on what kind of food is best. In most cases, breeders will purchase whatever bulk kibble is cheapest.

  WATER

  Animal Welfare Act

  If potable water is not continually available to the dogs and cats, it must be offered to the dogs and cats as often as necessary to ensure their health and well-being, but not less than twice daily for at least 1 hour each time, unless restricted by the attending veterinarian.

  Translation

  Dogs must be offered water twice a day for at least an hour each time. That is, if water is not continually provided throughout the day.

  The statute here leaves a lot of room for interpretation—and optimization of the breeder’s time and resources. In most cases, I’ve seen this instruction carried out by the breeders hooking PVC pipelines to the tops of the cages. These pipes then carry water to a type of metal nozzle that most people would recognize from its more common use as the nib of a rodent’s or gerbil’s water bottle. After all, continually refilling water bowls in a commercial dog-breeding facility where there are hundreds of dogs would be enormously time consuming for the workers.

  When I read these food and water requirements to Overall, I noted that to my untrained medical eye, they seem to create a dangerous confluence of adverse conditions for a dog when taken in conjunction with the wide range of acceptable temperatures on the books.

  “They are a perfect storm. What you’re talking about are requirements that are minimally compatible with life,” Overall said.

  On the issue of providing water, Overall explained that while a dog might survive in the conditions mandated by the Animal Welfare Act, the animal’s quality of life and long-term health would be severely compromised.

  “What you’re setting dogs up for with those schedules are profound fluctuations in electrolyte levels and dehydration levels,” she said. “[Their] red blood cells will become more concentrated. We try to tamp out those extremes for health reasons.”

  She also noted that in her world of scientific research, where she has published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and edits an academic journal in the field, any study that keeps a dog in conditions where water is similarly limited would not be eligible for publication in most scholarly journals—unless, of course, the study was specifically investigating the effects of water deprivation.

  “Studies have to be done ethically with ad libitum access to water,” she said.

  I then described to Overall the water access workaround I’d seen quite frequently where, in many commercial dog-breeding facilities, PVC pipes line the top of cages with a thin metal tube dipping down into the dog’s space for him to lick when he desires a drink of water. I asked Overall if these types of setups could be considered ad libitum access to water.

  “That’s not ad libitum access to water,” she said unequivocally. “Let’s go back to the Five Freedoms and ask if that gives them the freedom to exhibit their normal behavior… Dogs are going to [drink from] a bowl of water because part of what they do with their tongue is thermal regulation, and they really like to coat it… [Dogs] basically fling [their tongues] back to get water.”

  The problem with licking-activated dispensers, as Overall summed it up, is that they do not give the dog the opportunity to drink and coat its tongue as its anatomy was designed to do. These water dispensers, however, are not banned by the Animal Welfare Act regulations or by USDA enforcement.

  FLOORING

  Animal Welfare Act

  Primary enclosures equipped with mesh or wire floors shall be so constructed as to allow feces to pass through the spaces of the mesh or wire: Provided, however, that such floors shall be constructed so as to protect the animals’ feet and legs from injury.

  Translation

  These enclosures are not your standard doghouse setups in a backyard. More often than not, dogs in breeding facilities live in kennels that are suspended above the ground and are often stacked, one on top of another. The floors of these crates are rarely, if ever, solid. For the most part, this is a practical consideration for a busy breeder so that most of the dogs’ waste falls through the slats in the floor onto the ground below—or into the crate of the dog below. The solids that remain in the cages can then be hosed out easily without collecting puddles, as the Animal Welfare Act strictly mandates that surfaces remain free of standing moisture. The floors themselves must not sag or dip. If the floor is made of metal wire, these strands must be wider than one-eighth of an inch in diameter or be otherwise coated with plastic or fiberglass. By comparison, the width of this type of metal wire, known as nine gauge, is comparable to a lower-note string on a bass guitar.

  “That’s not very wide. When you actually go and look at these floors, it’s appalling,” Overall said. “These wire floors actually damage dogs’ feet: they damage their pronation, they damage their ability to bear weight, they damage the articulation of the joint, and they certainly don’t allow the dogs to have the full range of experiences they would choose to if they could have natural access.”

  While these standards are minimal at best, they are at least standards that can be enforced. More pressing, however, is what the Animal Welfare Act fails to regulate at all.

  BREEDING FREQUENCY

  The Animal Welfare Act imposes no limits on how often a female can be bred. Most commercial operations will at least attempt to breed a female on every heat—that’s every six months or even more frequently in some smaller breeds. With no legal reason not to, it makes financial sense for a breeder to try and get the most of out of their breeding stock. But is it humane to the dogs?

  “No responsible breeder would do that. No human would do it: you don’t give your body time to recover,” Overall said. “Pregnancy is a toll, and it is not a benign procedure… You wouldn’t breed yourself on every heat.”

  GENETIC SCREENING

  The Animal Welfare Act has no provisions for preventing genetic abnormalities in commercially bred dogs—a point that several experts, including bioethicist Bernie Rollin, underscored. As such, a breeder might be routinely producing unhealthy, genetically compromised animals by pairing the same dogs for mating over and over again. Often, a breeder is not even aware that he is causing genetic abnormalities because the products of these infelicitous pairings are already shipped off through a broker to be sold elsewhere before the problem can present itself. In the pure breeds that most of these commercial operations are churning out, it is especially likely that dogs are being inbred to p
roduce puppies that carry on negative genetic traits. Yet the Animal Welfare Act says nothing about preventing these problems.

  Every purebred dog, by definition, is inbred to some degree. To breed them responsibly and have the best chance of producing healthy dogs takes great effort to source a genetically varied line and meticulous, long-term record keeping to see if, and more likely when, genetic disorders present. At USDA-licensed facilities, however, there is nothing to stop a breeder from taking two littermates and pairing them together again and again.

  Izzie’s breed, the wheaten terrier, is most often genetically predisposed to protein wasting disorders and Addison’s disease. Knowing this, we run a pricey, detailed urine screening on her at every annual checkup. So far, she’s passed every test. However, it is a costly precaution that I began taking willingly during the reporting of this book, knowing now that she was likely inbred in one of these facilities where there is no legal reason not to.

  HUMAN CONTACT AND SOCIALIZATION

  Animal Welfare Act

  [Breeders] should consider providing positive physical contact with humans that encourages exercise through play or other similar activities. If a dog is housed, held, or maintained at a facility without sensory contact with another dog, it must be provided with positive physical contact with humans at least daily.

  Translation

  This language is as good as an omission from the statute entirely.

  The difference between “should consider providing” and “must provide” is stark. In the case of most commercial breeders, “sensory contact with another dog” may mean living in a stacked cage with hundreds of other dogs whose feces is hosed through the wire-mesh lid every day and where the round-the-clock barking never ceases. After all, not all sensory contact is positive sensory contact. No breeder would be penalized for failing to carry out this regulation with a daily trip to the local dog park or a nightly game of fetch. Ultimately, the Animal Welfare Act regulations fail to mandate any amount of human contact, interaction, or socialization beyond yearly visits from a veterinarian.

  Considering that these animals are being mass-produced for the specific purpose of living side by side with humans in their homes, it seems that nurturing a dog who is accustomed to and even enjoys a person’s touch and presence should be a vital part of the breeder’s process. As Overall sees it, this omission leads to problems both behaviorally and chemically in the dogs.

  “Dogs probably coevolved with humans. Certainly they have the longest domestication history… We have had a unique relationship, and we know that we have had that relationship for at least thirty-five thousand years. We are part of their lives,” she explained. “And now we know that how you interact with something affects which proteins are transcribed [from an animal’s DNA]. If you have a parent who has never had these experiences and exposures [to humans], you may have a different set of transcribed proteins as an offspring. And certainly the offspring don’t get adequate contact, which is what you want if you want a puppy to be as social as possible.”

  END OF LIFE AND “RETIREMENT”

  Animal Welfare Act

  Euthanasia means the humane destruction of an animal accomplished by a method that produces rapid unconsciousness and subsequent death without evidence of pain or distress, or a method that utilizes anesthesia produced by an agent that causes painless loss of consciousness and subsequent death.

  Translation

  A breeding facility can terminate a dog’s life in any way its owners or operators choose at any time, so long as the method is quick and appears—to us human bystanders—to be painless. For specifics, the USDA refers breeders to the recommendations from the American Veterinary Medical Association’s (AVMA) euthanasia panel. These recommendations do acknowledge that euthanasia at breeding facilities will differ from the process in a clinical setting but insist the procedures be done professionally and compassionately with veterinary oversight.

  But gunshots, of course, are typically cheap and expedient at producing the mandated “rapid unconsciousness and subsequent death”—although the AVMA guidelines state that the group does not recommend death by gunshot for routine euthanasia of dogs. But just in case, the AVMA offers plenty of rules governing exactly what kinds of bullets are considered humane. The guidelines even include a helpful illustration of a dog with a red dot on its head, indicating exactly where a bullet should go—in case you couldn’t figure that one out yourself.10 And yes, your own pup’s veterinarian is more than likely a dues-paying member of this very same AVMA.

  Anatomic site for gunshot in dogs is located midway between the level of the eyes and base of the ears, slightly off midline with aim directed across the dog toward the spine. 11

  With Overall’s expert take on the Animal Welfare Act in mind, I turned to the USDA to find out what kind of science went into developing the nuts and bolts of the statute. I was politely referred to Dr. Robert Gibbens, the western regional director for the USDA’s Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which runs the agency’s Animal Care group. His office directly oversees the inspections of our country’s breeding operations across the Midwest where the majority are concentrated. He’s also a licensed veterinarian and a dog owner.

  “The authors [of the Animal Welfare Act] were looking at common sense. Because I don’t think back then there was a lot of science. There’s still not a lot of science into how you measure welfare. You can certainly see signs of bad welfare. Like any animal, dogs exhibit a variety of signs if they aren’t kept in conditions that are good for their health and well-being. But I think it’s harder to measure good welfare. Is the dog healthy? Does the dog appear to be stressed? But you can’t ask them,” Gibbens says. “When those regulations and standards were written, we put a lot of what we saw as humans into those standards. And clearly we think as humans, we don’t think as dogs… More science needs to be done.”12

  But then Gibbens affirms one of my chief concerns about the Animal Welfare Act: the USDA is operating on the hope that breeders will go above and beyond what the law mandates.

  “We’re not just encouraging [breeders] to meet our standards. We are encouraging them to exceed our standards,” he says.

  But without any incentive to do so—and without any repercussions for just meeting the bare minimum—why should they bother to do more? Especially when, to do so, it would cost money.

  At some point, most breeders look at their litters and decide which pups to breed and which to sell. I think about Izzie: she’s noticeably small for a wheaten terrier and has thin hair that, as a puppy, was patchy at best but has since filled out somewhat. Maybe she was the runt of the litter or her uneven hair growth disqualified her from becoming breeding stock. Whatever it was that sent her off on the long road to Long Island where I purchased her, her fate would have been very different had she been kept behind to breed in the USDA-licensed facility she came from. Now that I understand the Animal Welfare Act requirements, I can picture exactly what my Izzie’s life would look like if her breeder had kept her as stock according to the rules, no better, no worse.

  She could have lived her entire life in fourteen square feet of cage space. Because that small area is double the minimum required for her size, her breeder would not be required to provide her with any mental stimulation or exercise. The floor of this fourteen-square-foot cage could be constructed of a wire mesh material where the wires could be as thin as a bass guitar string and could be constructed outdoors so long as she had an area available to her for shelter from rain, direct sun, and snow. This wire mesh would allow the urine and the feces of the dog in a cage above her to fall through into her crate, as hers would fall to the dog below her feet. Her breeder would not be required to provide her with any temperature regulation so long as it stayed above 45° and below 85°. She could be provided with a self-feeder for her kibble and a water drip she can lick to access. If her breeder wasn’t up for installing a twenty-four-hour water drip, he could simply give her a bowl of
water twice a day for an hour each, temperatures notwithstanding. There would be no requirement that the breeder interact with her or otherwise socialize her with other humans or dogs as long as she was kept within earshot of the other dogs around her. She could be bred at every heat or once every six months until she could no longer produce a litter. Then she could be retired to remain in that cage until her life naturally ended or, if her breeder was one of the better ones, she might be adopted out to a rescue. But if neither of those options appealed, she could simply be euthanized. Or, more likely, shot.

  This is the life of a breeding dog in a facility that is entirely up to code with the Animal Welfare Act. This is the treatment our government upholds.

  At this time, seventeen states maintain their own additional regulations and require licensing on the state level to fill in some of the gaps left behind by the Animal Welfare Act standards and USDA enforcement. But only ten states actually subject their licensees to routine and unannounced inspections without complaint or cause beyond an initial inspection during the license application process.

  Ultimately, this means that the conditions described by the Animal Welfare Act are completely legal—even if animal welfare experts like Overall and others agree that they are inhumane. Even in those states that have additional regulations, many do not go much further at all. A breeder’s decision to go above and beyond this statute for the care of his dogs is just that: the breeder’s decision.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dogs Don’t Vote

  We all know about puppy mills. Ask anyone walking his French bulldog or her goldendoodle down the street how they feel about these industrial-strength breeders, and you’ll surely get an impassioned tirade about how evil they are. But ask them where their dogs actually came from, and the majority will have to answer, just as I do, that their four-legged-friend came from a pet store, from the internet, or from a friend.