The Doggie in the Window

by Rory Kress

  And I know Race feels it too. His first words say it all.

  First comes Mama. Then comes Dada.

  Then it’s Izzie, Izzie, Izzie.

  EPILOGUE

  How Do You Solve a Problem Like Izzie?

  It’s my job to report the facts and present them to you as accurately as possible and without bias. Throughout the reporting and the writing of this book, I’ve done everything I can to ensure accuracy, but I’ve been somewhat less successful in divorcing myself from my opinions. Or in keeping myself from making new opinions entirely.

  I came to this story certain of only one thing: I love my dog. While that truth has not been shaken, I have been changed in the reporting of this story. But my one bias has not. I believe that to have a personal relationship with a dog is a life-altering privilege that humanity should never lose but must always continue to earn through honor and respect. Not every person is entitled to a dog. We take these ubiquitous creatures for granted. I myself have been guilty of this. But for those of us who can appreciate the awesome responsibility and the soul-enriching beauty of this relationship that is older than even the language we have to describe it, it is truly an honor beyond words to be one who has the opportunity to walk beside this creature from its birth to its death.

  But where do we go from here?

  As I’ve tried to demonstrate throughout this book, there are two main problems with the commercial breeding of dogs in this country. The first problem is that the laws and regulations at the federal level are not adequate. The second problem is that the USDA’s enforcement of these federal regulations is not adequate. With laws that do not protect the dogs and an agency that is not doing its duty to enforce even these minimal standards, we are left with commercially bred dogs that are treated as a factory-farmed commodity and not as a companion animal that has evolved to have a unique bond with us. Worse still, we have an American public that abhors puppy mills and yet does not realize that a USDA stamp of approval is no guarantee that a dog came from a humane operation.

  In many cases, breeders are not evil dog-haters. It’s easy to paint with broad brushstrokes, and it’s true, there are plenty of bad actors out there. But often, they are economically strapped farmers who were left with few options as Big Ag rolled in and pushed them out. They typically live in remote, rural areas and are tied to their land in such a way that it’s impossible to simply tell them to get a real job. And because the regulations ask so little of them, it’s hard to see why they would move into another line of business. Puppy farming has become an industry of last resort for these farmers, because the barriers to entry are so dangerously low. So it’s easy to see why people have fallen into this industry to try and turn a profit, not for the genuine love of dogs. And then it’s easy to see how that motivation impacts the care they give these animals.

  Changing the rules is challenging but not impossible. To alter many of the provisions in the Animal Welfare Act would not necessarily require an amendment. All it would take is a secretary of agriculture who can be convinced to redefine the rules much as Secretary Vilsack did when he agreed to redefine what constitutes a retail pet store and close the gaping internet-sales loophole. Other provisions that are entirely omitted by the Animal Welfare Act—genetic testing for breed health or a limit on the number of litters a female dog is allowed to breed in her lifetime—would require an amendment.

  On the enforcement side, projects like Purdue’s efforts with the Canine Care Certified program are a start but may not be sufficient. Experts from across the spectrum of animal care are divided on their thoughts about how to resolve this problem. Some, like John Goodwin at the Humane Society, believe that better regulations are needed but that the USDA already has the infrastructure for enforcement and could be a force for change if they are empowered or pushed to do a much better job. He worries that efforts like the Purdue project are too cozy with the retail pet industry and will, as a result, lead to third-party inspections that are not truly neutral.

  “I really think the answer is not to have the industry doing self-inspections but to raise the USDA’s rules to the highest standards—to the standards that the American public expects,” he says. “At least with the USDA inspectors, they aren’t being paid for by the people being inspected. Can you imagine if BP spills oil all over the Gulf by Louisiana, and instead of having government inspectors go over there to oversee the cleanup, we just leave it to BP to inspect? Nobody would trust that, and they shouldn’t… The good thing about government agencies is that they are susceptible to voters. We get new governments in. We get a new president who appoints a new secretary of agriculture. We get a new governor who puts in a new head of the state department of agriculture. So there’s a system with a mechanism in place to bring about change. It’s slow, but at least it’s there… I’m agnostic about which agency does [the inspections], but I’m passionate that the current rules need to be dramatically upgraded and need to have better and more consistent enforcement. That’s not an endorsement of the USDA, and it’s not a criticism either. It’s just that there is a system in place, and how do we maximize its impact to shut down puppy mills?”1

  Others see it differently. Mary LaHay, president of Iowa Friends of Companion Animals, believes that enforcing the regulations is a consumer-protection issue that must come out from being under the oversight of the USDA. After all, she points out, these dogs are not an agricultural product.

  “It needs to be under commerce or something like that, where the shoddy business practices can be attended to. Even under the agriculture umbrella, [dog breeding] isn’t being given the kind of attention most agricultural products are given,” LaHay says. “Any other agricultural product, if there was an issue with it, all the oversight agencies would very quickly be able to trace it back to its original source. And for food and everything, that’s important, and I understand that, and I agree with that. But it’s not being done that way with puppies. And it needs to be. Agriculture does not give [dog-breeding inspection] the funding it needs, the attention it needs. And [dog breeding] just plain old doesn’t belong under agriculture.”2

  Sara Amundson at the Humane Society Legislative Fund also wants to seek reform through consumer-protection efforts, particularly given the interstate-commerce implications of breeding dogs in rural areas and then shipping them to customers hundreds of miles away.

  “It’s an interstate commerce issue, no ifs, ands, or buts,” Amundson says. “That is why none of these states are going to be able to resolve this in isolation. As long as those dogs are being sold across state lines, we’ve got to have that interplay between the federal government and the state governments.”3

  Animal ethics expert Bernard Rollin also sees the need to get dog breeding out from under the oversight of agriculture, as he is adamant that dogs cannot be considered livestock.

  “[Dogs have] assumed a different role in human life,” Rollin says. “The role of a member of the family. The role—as one judge put it—of giving and receiving love. With pigs, you generally don’t give or receive love, even under good pig-husbandry conditions. But dogs are a different story.”4

  Rollin believes the solution is ultimately in the hands of the consumer. He finds it abhorrent to breed any dogs at all while more than a million perfectly healthy shelter dogs are euthanized every year for the crime of simply not being adopted.5 To him, it is the consumer who is to blame for not respecting the lifelong—for better or for worse, in sickness and in health—relationship that comes with bringing a dog into the home.

  “If you know when you acquire a dog that you’re taking on a heavy burden, you’re going to be less likely to acquire one than if you think you can dispose of it casually,” Rollin says. “I don’t want to live in a nanny state. But that means we have to be responsible. It wouldn’t be that far out of line for kids to start getting educated in elementary school on pet ownership and what that entails… You’re taking responsibility for a life.”

  Surprisingly, eve
n those who side with the commercial breeding industry agree that change is needed.

  “I think we need to have inspectors who are qualified—if, in fact, we continue to regulate dog breeders at the federal level. We need to have qualified inspectors who understand dogs and understand dog breeders, because there’s an animal husbandry aspect in all of it that’s not there,” Mindy Patterson of animal ownership–rights organization the Cavalry Group, who often speaks on behalf of breeders, tells me.6

  I ask her if her desire to see USDA inspectors with a deeper understanding of animal husbandry comes from an opinion that dogs are livestock. I’m surprised when the question throws her.

  “You know, I have to think about that,” she says. “No one has ever posed that question to me. I’d have to think about that. But yeah, I mean, as dogs, I don’t know… I’m going to refrain from giving an answer on that one without giving it some thought, but I can send you an answer later if you like.”

  I agree and return to Patterson several times over the weeks that follow our conversation. She promises that she’s working on an answer to the livestock question and that it will come soon as she, herself, decides where exactly she stands on the issue. Ultimately, an answer never comes.

  Patterson says that she’s well aware that there are bad breeders out there and that she opposes them as much as anyone else.

  “I am all for animal welfare. I am one of the biggest animal lovers out there. I would never, ever condone wrongdoing or animal violence of any kind, ever. But you know, [dog breeders] have been painted with this broad brush of being animal abusers,” Patterson says. “I’m a mom, and I’ve got a daughter who’s going to have kids one of these days. I’m broken-hearted that her kids may not know the privilege of riding a horse or owning a horse or going to the circus. And she’ll never see elephants or be able to go see orcas at SeaWorld… All these things are the incremental elimination of animals—the human-animal bond and the human-animal contact and interaction… Because if you don’t see them or get to touch them and experience them, then you don’t care about them.”

  Patterson’s viewpoint about commercial dog breeding—and circus elephants and SeaWorld, for that matter—is in diametric opposition to anything I’ve heard from the animal welfare groups. That much, I expected. However, I do find it interesting that she and her opponents on the animal welfare side have one complaint in common: both sides take issue with USDA enforcement.

  But of course, Patterson’s group and others like it remain wary of animal welfare groups and take aim at the fact that shelters often charge consumers to adopt.

  “There are people who believe that breeders shouldn’t make money from it, that all dogs should be adopted,” she says. “But if you adopt a dog, you’re certainly paying for the dog. So it’s okay for the rescues to make money, but not a dog breeder? That mentality conflicts with the private ownership and breeding of animals.”

  In my interview with Brian Klippenstein, just a few months before he became the USDA transition leader for the Trump administration, he echoed many of Patterson’s opinions: that money changes hands for rescue dogs and that groups like the Humane Society are trying to eliminate all animal ownership while making millions for themselves by enjoying nonprofit tax exemptions. But his comments about state-by-state regulations will perhaps be more telling as we look at how any presidency that is excessively cozy with Big Ag will treat the USDA’s work with commercial dog breeders.

  “Each state has the power to regulate. It’s such a term of art: where you have enough and you cross over into too much. But we don’t think it should be regulated so that a real abuser can operate with impunity,” Klippenstein said. “The USDA should have a role, but it shouldn’t be exclusionary of the states. And this is just a general sense we have that people nearby probably set up and enforce rules better than folks from a distance. But having the USDA set minimum standards is, you know, that’s something we don’t oppose.”7

  He went on, however, to speak about the constitutional protections of interstate commerce and the dangers of allowing one state to set standards high enough to effectively legislate away any competitors from other states, something he worked to fight in the egg industry when he ran Protect the Harvest.

  “With state regulations, I think you can go too far, where you are just trying to set a standard, or are you trying to shield your state’s producers from external competition?” he asked wryly.

  As for me, I have trouble buying the argument that state regulators are trying to put anyone out of business. In fact, I worry that relying on states to pass regulations poses a significant challenge to reforming the industry. It creates a patchwork of laws that are more restrictive in some places than others regarding the care of an animal that itself doesn’t change when it crosses state lines. But the real problem is that states are being compelled to pass laws because the federal requirements are so weak, as the former assistant attorney general for Missouri told me.

  But no matter who enforces it—commerce, agriculture, local police, independent auditing service—it’s clear that dogs remain philosophically challenging for us to pin down. And just because we lump them into one government agency doesn’t change the truth about what dogs really are.

  So I concluded my last interview with the USDA’s Gibbens by asking him one more time if dogs are agriculture.

  “Not [according to] the Animal Welfare Act, no,” he said.8

  “I guess that’s why it’s still a bit of a puzzlement why the USDA would be called upon to enforce the Animal Welfare Act, if dogs aren’t considered agriculture in it,” I said. “And are dogs livestock?”

  “Certainly there are people in the industry who would see them that way,” Gibbens said. “But we don’t view them as livestock. [Are dogs] part of the Department of Agriculture? Absolutely. Is it agriculture in that way? Yes.”

  So we’re still left scratching our heads, staring at these four-legged enigmas at the foot of the bed. At once, we feel so close to them that they are a part of our family. But we allow them to be delivered to our loving arms as a mass-produced agricultural commodity. And at the end of the day, all of us—on all sides of the debate—are confounded by how to classify them and regulate the industry that breeds them. But if our government is going to go to the trouble of regulating dog breeding, shouldn’t it at least devise rules that are worthy of enforcing and then, you know, actually enforce them? Because the regulated breeding industry, as it is in place today, is set up to let us love dogs to death.

  People will always want dogs in their lives. Among those people, there are those who will always adopt from a shelter or a rescue. You may notice that in these pages, I did not make an attempt to convince you to adopt. Hopefully the facts that I’ve laid out for you can lead you to make a decision for yourself about what is right. As to whether we should be breeding dogs at all as a society? That is not a question I feel it’s my place to answer. Instead, I’ve sought to hold the current, inadequate system accountable.

  While I believe that convincing everyone to adopt is a tremendously worthy endeavor—and others are currently doing an admirable job of it—I am not quite as optimistic that we can universally change human nature. I hope it happens someday that all dogs are adopted and there are none left without homes and then euthanized. But I don’t believe I will see this in my lifetime. To those who have already adopted or who have been convinced to only do so in the future, I offer my support and respect. You have given a home to a dog who truly needs and deserves one.

  But as a realist—or as a pessimist—I have to address the fact that people will keep buying dogs for quite some time to come. So in the meantime, it is our duty and our right to improve this taxpayer-funded regulatory system that is charged with protecting the welfare of the dogs that are bred for us. While our lawmakers are vital in this process, the real power lies with you, the consumer. We have to ask the right questions, demand transparency from our government, and refuse to purchase dogs from br
eeders or retailers who cannot or will not provide us with the information we deserve about where their puppies come from. Purchasing a dog should not be convenient; it should take serious research and soul searching to make this lifetime commitment. But if humanity has already put a few thousand years into transforming the wild canine into a dog, you can invest just a few extra months into finding a responsibly sourced dog of your own.

  As I write this, there is a foot of fresh snow accumulating on our front yard. The stone chimney across the street is puffing white smoke into the frozen tree above it. Izzie is staring at me, begging me to put on my boots and open the front door. When I do, she will bolt down the block, diving across piles of snow and dipping her snout into the powder. She will tease me, galloping in close before speeding off out of my grasp. When she quickly gets too cold, she’ll run to the door and signal that it’s enough. I’ll take her in and wrap her in a fluffy beach towel and hold her close to warm her tiny body, her small but immense heart echoing through her frame and into my own. We’ll huddle like this, together in the warmth, while the snow keeps falling outside and somewhere out there, maybe not so far away, hundreds of thousands of other dogs tremble in their frozen cages with no concept of hope or redemption.

  Will they ever feel joy? I hope we can give them a chance.

  Endnotes

  CHAPTER ONE

  1“Pet Statistics,” American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, accessed August 3, 2017, https://www.aspca.org/animal-homelessness/shelter-intake-and-surrender/pet-statistics.

  2Daniel Engber, “Pepper Goes to Washington,” Slate Magazine, June 3, 2009, http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/pepper/2009/06/pepper_goes_to_washington.html.

  3Associated Press, “Campaign on to End Theft of Family Pets for Science,” Express, July 10, 1965, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/25472203/.