The HSUS continues to attempt to advance its agenda, but hopefully more and more of us are catching on to the fact that do not have the best interest of dogs or any other animals at heart, just its own pocketbooks and its animal rights, not welfare mind you, but rights agenda. The HSUS claims it is working to regulate and perhaps close down “puppy mills.”  Instead it is really working to regulate all breeders including the reputable ethical breeders of purebred dogs whether show dogs, service dogs, pilot dogs, working dogs, and field dogs.  The dogs that breeders do not include in their particular breeding purpose, are available to families as wonderful family dogs. All of my show dogs are also my family dogs as are the dogs of most breeders.  I want to close down the substandard breeders more than anyone as I have seen the abuses and neglect that their dogs suffer.  However, the HSUS wishes to shut down all breeders and ultimately, with PETA, end the ownership of animals. The legislation already passed or being introduced in states and communities has brought with it the violation of the civil rights of individual breeders even to impounding their dogs with trumped up charges. Some of these breeders have never been able to get their dogs back.  Please read the following closely:

from the Sportsmen’s and Animal Owners’ Voting Alliance:

A SAOVA message to sportsmen, pet owners and farmers concerned  about protecting their traditions, avocations and livelihoods from anti-hunting, anti-breeding, animal guardianship advocates. Forwarding and cross posting, with attribution, encouraged. It’s all about numbers.

Recently HSUS aired an announcement on their website congratulating
Wisconsin Governor, Jim Doyle, and the state legislature for enacting a law
“to regulate large scale puppy producing operations, known as puppy mills.”
AB 250 regulates anyone who sells more than 25 dogs or 3 litters a year.  In
HSUS language, this separates small-scale breeders from puppy mills.

HSUS continues by stating, “In addition to Wisconsin, bills to regulate
puppy mills were enacted by the 2009 state legislatures in Arizona,
Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Nebraska, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and
Washington.”   WRONG!  In their zeal to pat themselves on the back and keep
the momentum alive for potential success in their multi-million dollar
campaign to regulate dog breeders, HSUS forgot how to count!  It seems they
also forgot to check the results as posted on their own website.  Arizona
bill HB2517, sponsored by Rep. Nancy Young Wright (D, 26), failed as did
Nebraska LB677 sponsored by Sen. Ken Haar (District 21).

In an unprecedented drive, HSUS introduced 33 commercial
breeder/regulation/licensing bills across the country from late 2008 thru
2009.  Of these 21 died, 8 passed; 4 are pending – due to either the
legislatures still in session or bills qualifying to be held over for 2010.

Full listing is available on the SAOVA website
http://www.saova.org/news/StateBreederBills2009.pdf

Numbers played a huge role in the drafting and promotion of the HSUS
commercial breeder/regulation/licensing bills – a long name to use but I am
loathe to call them “puppy mill” bills even long enough to write this
commentary. 

What is the definition of commercial or large scale dog breeding?  The
answer according to HSUS appears to depend on what the region can be
convinced to believe. To crack down on alleged puppy mills in Washington
State, HSUS determined 10 intact females was the magic number; Tennessee,
Montana Minnesota, and others used 20 as the beginning point for licensing;
North Carolina’s commercial breeder bill was set at 15, and in Illinois HSUS
determined that only by licensing breeders beginning with 3 intact females
would the state be saved from being overrun with puppy mills.  One HSUS
state director recently explained – a hobby breeder is someone with 6 who
breeds only one or two litters a year; anything more than that is a
commercial breeder/puppy mill. 

Another strategy in the HSUS legislation is to limit breeders by placing
caps on ownership.  A 25-dog magic number was proposed in legislation this
year as the limit of breedable dogs one could own in Colorado, Delaware,
Oregon, Massachusetts, and Washington. 

There is no logic to the idea that an owner can care for 25 dogs but not 26,
or even 100.  Ownership caps are nothing more than a limitation of personal
rights and the ability to build a breeding program, run a business, or earn
a living. 

USING NUMBERS TO CREATE A CRISIS

To keep legislation moving, it is always useful to have a crisis at hand.

HSUS claims there are more than 10,000 large, puppy mills housing 200,000 to
400,000 breeding dogs producing up to 4 million puppies a year.  If
Americans add approximately 8 million dogs to their households a year and
HSUS also claims nearly 50% of these come from friends, is HSUS saying the
other 50% come from substandard sources?

In Tennessee before the commercial breeder bill was enacted, HSUS claimed
10,000 puppies were for sale every day in the state.  In North Carolina,
HSUS claims their previous estimate of 200 puppy mills was in error – the
number is actually 400 and growing as the state is becoming home to breeders
fleeing states where regulatory laws have been passed.  Illinois voters were
urged to enact Chloe’s Bill to prevent before the onslaught of puppy mills
could become a blight on the State’s reputation.

The same sound bites are distributed in every state with a pending breeder
bill and the proclaimed crisis of abuse or overpopulation is NOT new.

In “The Humane Society of the U.S.: It’s Not about Animal Shelters” Daniel
Oliver writes:

“HSUS promotes restrictions on pet breeding and ownership that would sharply
limit the supply of pets and ultimately deny many responsible pet owners the
pet of their choice. It maintains that there is a ‘raging pet-overpopulation
crisis . . . an appalling overabundance of dogs and cats caused by human
carelessness and irresponsible breeding.’  Because an estimated 4.5 million
dogs and cats are euthanized each year in the U.S., HSUS has called for the
elimination of large dog breeding kennels and the enactment of mandatory pet
sterilization laws.”

Oliver continues that in 1993, HSUS proposed mandatory pet sterilization
laws and high license fees to deal with alleged pet overpopulation.  HSUS
called on local, county, and state legislators to enact either voluntary or
mandatory dog and cat breeding bans and to initiate mandatory pet
sterilization laws, including a two-year moratorium on all breeding.  For
each puppy or kitten born in violation of the moratorium, the owner or
person possessing the animal would pay a penalty of $100.

TAKING BACK THE INITIATIVE

To quote Washington, D.C. analyst Steve Kopperud, “The problem we have has
almost doubled because we have allowed the activists to define us; we have
allowed the activists to tell the public what we do and how we do it and
frankly, we’re sitting back and continuing to allow that to happen.”

We are the experts and must take back that role.  We must get our message
back to the public and to our legislators.  We can no longer afford to have
HSUS and animal rightist philosophers frame the issues, labeling us as
exploiters and legislating away our rights.  The battle will begin again in
2010 and we need to be ready. 

Keep up to date on the issues at SAOVA’s new blog:
http://saovanews.blogspot.com/

Susan Wolf

Sportsmen’s and Animal Owners’ Voting Alliance –  <http://saova.org>
http://saova.org

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