It’s also extremely racist??? If you’ve noticed, purebreeders like to use “backyard breeder” as a way to validate what they’re doing. Backyard breeder almost EXCLUSIVELY refers to lower class people of color. An Inuit family is trying to breed their two natural dogs together? They call them backyard breeders. Only rich white people can breed dogs. When the average person does it, they’re labeled as a backyard breeder.

People who shit on BYBing are not shitting on some random Inuit family breeding sled dogs together, they’re shitting on Joe Blow down the road who thinks he needs to breed his “King Shebbard” with his “bloo nose Pitt Bull” to make money.

People who have money can be BYB, and in some circles of BYB the “breeders” are almost always upper middle class WASP people (cough doodle breeders cough)

There is a lot of white people accusing POC in various breeds’ country of origin, frequently the original people breeding the very same breed they claim to love, of being BYBs simply because they’re holding them to American/British/Westernized standards of breeding which does not apply to the entire world and also how it applies EVEN IN Westernized countries/US/UK varies breed by breed. And that absolutely is a problem, yes.

But I would also agree that the majority of people in certain breeds and types considered BYBs are um. Not POC. The majority of people considered BYBs and are breeding bully breeds and certain types of toy breed and mastiffs, sure, are POC and lower income. And the majority of people considered BYBs and are breeding doodles and bulldogs and guardian breeds are going to be white with quite a lot of disposable income. Puppy mills are majority Amish-run on the east coast, so they are white people with a lot of income deliberately living as though they are low income due to their religious values. There’s some nuance here that you two are missing.

How the problem is handled is different, too- in my area there’s a lot of people BYBing doodles, berners, and newfies (in the words of a local friend- pretty WASPy breeds and types tbh). The vast majority of people producing these dogs are white, with plenty of disposable income, selling puppies for $3-6k, meaning their target demographic for sales is certainly not going to be lower income POC either. While these people are met with complaining, there’s really not much else that’s being done about them.

However if you go into the cities you will see pit bull ordinance after pit bull ordinance along with added pressure to spay/neuter pit bulls and a lot of guilt tripping regarding just how many bully breeds and chihuahua/mixes are in shelters. There is a lot of effort to keep the population that predominantly has these breeds, lower income POC, from breeding their dogs. And nearly no effort put into keeping the higher income white people from doing the same outside of some minimal complaining in breed circles.

equipped a fancy new toy holder to the hyena

scientists: ok prove it (for free)

But there comes a point where someone who’s only trained their own dogs hits their limit of what they know how to do simply because they would never have their own dogs act like that, they would have selected a different dog, they would have done more research, they would have started sooner, they wouldn’t have let the problem get that bad.

There is a huge difference between fixing your own problems vs fixing someone else’s. And usually when you fix someone else’s, you’re doing it by their specifications and also on a time crunch.

These dogs would never have been my problem in the first place if I wasn’t a dog trainer that sees ~30 different cases per week (COVID19 numbers- multiply that by 5 for pre-COVID numbers).

It’s one of the reasons I think all mentor/apprentice programs for dog training should include training a different rescue dog per week. The dog itself gets some much needed training which ups its chances at getting adopted and also ups its chances at actually staying in its new home, and the trainer-in-training gets some much needed experience and variety instead of only training dogs they’re well suited to.

But also re: your tags- That’s something my pet trainer mentor said to me once. I get dogs because I like training and competing. Literally all of my pet clients do not want to do that extensively level of training and none of them are as forgiving of “bad dog behaviors” as I am. I’m willing to wrap my entire life around making my dogs happy and my clients would just like a companion that bounces around the yard and sometimes goes for a hike. I don’t correct the puppy biting because I just teach bite inhibition and then a retrieve. I don’t correct the jumping because I just put it to a cue and leave it at that. If my dog bowls me over it’s just a part of owning a dog. Meanwhile I’m also out teaching highly specific behaviors under stress and prepping my dogs for real world jobs.

There’s a difference between what a lot of people on social media consider to be “how to train and own dogs well” (and it’s mostly competition-based) vs how the general public actually wants to own and train dogs and being a dog trainer that competes and also works with the general public there’s a line one must straddle in order to make everyone in the situation happy.

There are plenty of dogs that I get in that have no business being owned by the people who have them. And Yet. And what am I supposed to do about it except formulate a lesson plan and hit the ground running? There are plenty of times I bite my tongue when a client says something exceptionally stupid, such as needing to hit their dog in order to show them who’s alpha, because I first need to address the dog’s behavior that makes the client want to hit them in front of the client without hitting the dog so that I can show them there’s a better way to fix their problems. Just yelling at the person not to hit their dog isn’t going to get anyone anywhere except the class returned and the dog back to being hit at home.

I even joke that sometimes as a dog trainer my actual job is marriage councilor and babysitter, because sometimes people bring me a “problem dog” when the actual issue is a serious relationship problem or an inability to control one’s children around the dog. Sometimes people know that’s the real problem and got a dog to “fix things” (much like how many people have babies to “fix things”) and surprise! The addition of a young terrible creature did not fix the stress in your home life! Now there is more stress! So I have to fix that too.

They are so hung up on the look and type for the show ring that the dog could have zero drive to pull but if it looks the part it’s “purpose bred”. So intent on the dog getting its Championship and being worthy for breeding before the dog has even proven it is a ACTUAL good representative of the breed (aka a dog that can do its fucking job). 

Acting like working titles are just for fun as if it is not a crucial aspect of the breed (The malamute’s function as a sled dog is to be considered above all else re: the standard). Getting a barn hunt or a low level obedience title on their show dogs and acting like this = a working dog. Like this is why I get so up in arms about the show only people. This is why I roll my eyes at these same people saying “form follows function” over and over because if form followed function you’d be working your dog and ensuring that not only does the dog meet the standard from a visual standpoint, but meets the standard from a working standpoint before deeming the dog worthy of a Championship or breeding.