29/03/2026
While many of us here are strongly in favour of adoption, myself included, there are still many of us, again, myself included, who do enjoy having a puppy. We can teach them to fit in with our lives. We do our best to socialise them, teach them right from wrong, train them, and keep them safe. But after reading the following post from Lighten Up Dog Training, it certainly made me sit up and take notice. Puppy Parties and Pass the Puppy, I've never even heard of let alone encountered, and after reading this, I never want to experience any of it. I can guarantee that nothing like this has ever, or will ever, take place at LDT. Emma is a respected Behaviourist and someone I always recommend, and turn to, for problems that I know I'm not qualified to address. Read through what I'm sharing; I think a lot of you will change your concept of owning a puppy.
IF I COULD CHANGE THE WORLD FOR PUPPIES...
What three changes would I make?
I've been thinking a lot about some of your lovely comments recently about your dogs and the things that happened to them when they were young.
What would I change, if I could?
That's not an easy question to answer. There's a numbers game to play in terms of the things that could make the most difference to the biggest number of puppies.
And that's entirely a cultural thing.
In France, in the UK, in Australia, in Canada, we don't have street dogs to speak of, where the rate of survival past a year of age is so low despite how much care the community may offer.
There, trap, neuter, vaccination and return policies may help the most dogs in this world live healthier lives, however short they may be.
For dogs who roam more freely but who belong to certain streets or homes, providing community support for vaccination and neutering may offer the best solution.
So, on a global level, that's one thing I'd do if I had three magic wishes.
But what else? What for our puppies in our homes?
One thing I'd do immediately is outlaw the use of dogs in racing for licensed gambling. Greyhound racing. Get rid of racing for money particularly in England, Ireland and Australia, and I feel like we'd be looking differently at the world. Given that Wales and Scotland have now made racing on oval tracks illegal, it's time England and NI caught up at least.
I'd also make people accountable to the dogs they use in other forms, be it hunting, hauling, herding or sport. You use a dog, and you're responsible for their wellbeing from birth to death. No more treating dogs like disposable commodities.
But that wouldn't affect quite as many dogs in some countries as the next wish I'd use: banning the breeding of dogs in agroindustrial facilities. By 'agroindustrial', I mean what equate to factory farmed puppies in barns, sheds and hangars in rural areas.
Surprising as it may seem, this is controversial to some people. Including some countries' Chief Veterinary Officers. Oh, you know, the same CVOs who said that greyhound racing doesn't need banning, it just needs more rigorous licensingđ©
Several academic institutions, particularly in the UK and Ireland, have been seemingly committed over the last decade or so to investigating just how little a puppy needs to develop in fairly ordinary ways. Because the UK and Irish governments have favoured simple biosecurity measures to reduce disease and larger facilities in rural areas which are easier to oversee, puppy farms are not just booming, they are increasingly favoured by our governments, by DEFRA and DAFM.
Aren't we seeing the effects of that in the behaviour world đ©
My final wish would be that we leave 'puppy parties' and 'pass the puppy' back in the 1980s from whence they sprang.
I don't know whose great idea that was: "I know... how about we let a bunch of crazy puppies all get super-charged on high octane puppy play with other unfamiliar puppies, so it's REALLY arousing for young dogs who haven't developed great social skills yet?"
And yet these kind of puppy play sessions are still fashionable despite the huge fallout they have. I'm currently working with a dog who was terrorised, aged 16 weeks, at a veterinary clinic puppy party, by two six-month-old huskies and a young German shepherd who was so overwrought that all she could do was try and herd everything into order.
And people wonder why puppies are then going nuts at other dogs? Arousal? Sure! Anxiety, uncertainty, chaos, high octane fun, frustration... all with young dogs who should be depending on us for impulse control support and aid with regulation.
I'd also put an end to 'pass the puppy'. That's another relic from the 80s that deserves to stay there. Can you just imagine a scenario in which, to help our young children feel cool about strangers, we lock them in a room with 20 strangers and pass them from one to the other?
I mean we all know how that would work out. I'm pretty sure that's a lasting recipe for early trauma to be honest. If nothing else, all it does is remove agency from the dog.
You all know I'm a huge fan of Ken Ramirez's Eye of the Trainer programme with his nine steps for care and husbandry. How about we do that instead?! Start with Chirag Patel's Counting Game... a little bit of being a puppy gym, some fun games, hands off until the puppy chooses that it'd be quite nice to have a nap squeezed up to this new and fantastic person in their life.
I mean no blame for any of us who've done this with pups. Most of the time, puppy free-for-alls and passing the parcel turn out okay.
But we can do so much better.
We can build regulation in much better ways. We can build resilience in profoundly more sensible ways.
So that.... those are the things I'd change. Accountable humans, banning institutional harms, getting rid of industrial models of puppy 'production' and moving on from ideas that probably seemed great 50 years ago and aren't so hot in the cold light of day some five decades later.
How about you? What would you change for puppies that would make the biggest difference for your dog and for others?
