09/15/2026
🚂 Toot Toot. All aboard the Unethical Breeder Express.
(this might get long but well worth the read...)
I have come to a conclusion. I don't know what an ethical breeder is anymore. There. I said it.
I used to think I knew. I thought things like taking care of your dogs, trying to produce healthy dogs with good minds, knowing what you're breeding, standing behind what you produce, taking your dogs back if something goes wrong, learning from your mistakes and generally giving a s**t for longer than the eight weeks it takes to raise a litter probably had something to do with it.
Apparently, I was underthinking this. Because after spending entirely too much time on Facebook lately, I've learned that **“ethical breeder” mostly means “breeder who does things exactly the way I think they should be done.”** And damn, the rulebook is getting complicated.
Make money breeding dogs?
**Greeder.**
Lose money breeding dogs?
Congratulations. You have achieved moral purity through poor financial performance.
Have a lot of dogs?
Puppy mill.
Have very few dogs?
Better have enough experience.
Health test?
Which tests?
Did those tests?
Where are the links?
Have nearly 20 years of history behind generations of those dogs?
Doesn't count. Where's the certificate?
Keep puppies past eight weeks to train them, evaluate them and learn more about them?
Obviously nobody wanted them.
Place puppies at eight weeks?
You're just pushing them out the door so you don't have to care for them. Minimal time, maximum profit.
Have a waiting list?
**REPUTABLE BREEDER™.**
Don't have a waiting list?
Straight to jail. Probably backyard breeder jail. I'm assuming it's behind somebody's garage.
Breed for companionship?
Not a real purpose.
Breed for working ability?
Too much dog for the average home.
Breed for color?
Monster.
Produce a pretty dog completely by accident?
**Suspicious.** 😂
And God help you if you make a decision the internet specifically told you to make. I actually tested this one recently.
For months I've heard: **“STOP DOCKING THE TAILS!”** Okay. Had the opportunity to leave a few tails. Left them. Thought, hell, let's see what people actually prefer. Posted one. Immediately: **“WHY DIDN'T YOU DOCK THE TAIL?!”** 😂😂😂
EXCUSE ME. I HAVE PROVIDED THE TAIL. WHERE DID EVERYBODY GO? And honestly, that's about all I need to say about tails because the tail isn't the point. **The contradiction is.** It finally occurred to me that if doing something gets you condemned and doing the exact opposite **also** gets you condemned, maybe condemnation isn't particularly useful information.
That one took me longer to learn than I'd like to admit. Because when criticism is constant, it gets in your head. Maybe I should change this. Maybe people have a point about that. Maybe this isn't what people want anymore. Maybe I need to explain myself better. Maybe, maybe, maybe. And then one day you do the opposite and **a completely different mob arrives.** Oh. Well, s**t. 😂
Turns out “the internet” isn't one giant customer standing outside my gate waiting for me to finally get the recipe right. It's millions of people with different preferences, different experiences, different standards, different agendas and, occasionally, **a shocking amount of free time.**
And Facebook comments may possibly be the worst market research on planet Earth. It costs absolutely nothing to have an extremely passionate opinion about a dog you were never going to own. READ THAT AGAIN... I'll pauseee......
That's where I think this conversation about “ethical breeding” has gone completely off the rails. Because we've started confusing **preferences with principles.** There absolutely ARE principles. Neglect is wrong. Knowingly producing unhealthy dogs without caring about the consequences is wrong. Ignoring temperament is wrong. Producing dogs and refusing responsibility for them when something goes sideways is wrong. Not learning from what you've produced is irresponsible. Those things actually affect dogs and the people we are attempting to provide them for.
But whether your program looks exactly like somebody else's? That's a different conversation. And I think we've gotten really bad at knowing the difference. I don't need every breeder to operate like Lazy D Ranch to believe they're a good breeder. Hell, I wouldn't expect them to. There are breeders I respect tremendously who do things I don't do. Some live for the show ring. Some breed working dogs. Some breed performance dogs. Some breed primarily companions. Some have two litters. Some have considerably more. Some keep puppies longer. Some have waiting lists from here to Christmas. Some probably have a spreadsheet so beautiful it would make me question every organizational decision I've made since 2007.
Good for them.
**Different isn't automatically wrong.**
What matters to me is what happens to the dogs. I have to live with the dogs I produce. My families have to live with them. I have to decide what information matters when I'm planning a breeding. I have to look at health, temperament, structure, family history and what previous generations actually produced. I have to decide what I keep, what I change, what I never repeat and what worked so damn well I'd be stupid not to repeat it. And twenty years into this, I have something now that I couldn't have bought when I started:
**time.**
I've watched generations of these dogs be born, grow up, reproduce, retire, grow old and die. I've had dogs from these families live 15, 16, 17 years. I've heard from owners when something went wrong. I've heard from them when everything went right. I've watched families come back years later for their second dog. And their third. Or tenth!
We DNA test. We use radiographs. We use veterinary evaluation. We temperament test. We evaluate structure. We train dogs. We keep records. We guarantee hereditary/genetic health. We require dogs to come back to us rather than enter shelters or rescues. We stay on their microchips as a secondary contact. And when somebody calls me years later because life went sideways and they can't keep their dog? **It's still my dog too. Call me.** That's what responsibility looks like **to me**.
Does another breeder have to do every single one of those things exactly the way I do them for me to consider them responsible? No.
And there's the apparently revolutionary thought. I don't think ethics are meaningless. I think we've made the **labels** meaningless by slapping them on everybody we disagree with.
Backyard breeder.
Puppy mill.
Greeder.
Unethical.
Reputable.
At this point, calling somebody a “backyard breeder” tells me considerably less about their dogs than telling me **why** you think they're doing something wrong.
So, tell me what the breeder actually does. What happens when there's a problem? What do they know about the dogs behind the dogs they're breeding today? What are they trying to produce? Do they learn from what they've produced? Do they stand behind it? What happens when one needs to come home? Are they still answering the phone ten years later? And perhaps the most important question of all: **What are the dogs actually like?**
Because somewhere along the way, the internet became absolutely obsessed with deciding who deserves the title of **REPUTABLE BREEDER™**, and we occasionally seem to have misplaced the fu***ng dogs. I haven't. They're the whole point.
So I think I'm retiring from trying to qualify for Facebook's Reputable Breeder Badge. Not only does it sound exhaustion- it's literally impossible!!! The application is apparently 743 pages long, everybody received a different copy, **and none of us are being graded by the same rubric anyway.** Also, apparently the tail portion of the examination is a trick question. 😂
I'll keep doing what I've done for nearly twenty years: learn, adjust when the information tells me I should, take responsibility for what I produce, and make decisions I can stand behind. Everybody else can decide whether that aligns with what they want in a breeder. And if it doesn't? That's okay too. There are a lot of good breeders doing things differently. Go find the one whose philosophy makes sense to you.
As for my official internet classification? Hell, I don't know. Ethical on Monday. Backyard breeder by Wednesday. Puppy mill Thursday afternoon. Reputable again briefly Friday morning, pending review of the tail situation.
**TOOT FU***NG TOOT. 🚂**
All aboard. Next stop: I don't know. **Probably my backyard. 😂**
Enjoy "John" my viral wonder (2.3M views on Fb. Over 1M in Insta) from Josi-Jake26 litter who STAYED HERE! Yes, after over 1000 inquires on this one dog alone- I gave up and kept him... superb specimen of what 20 years of breeding has taught me.
If you can look at this dog and still think I'm a piece of s**t- so be it. I must like the stank!😘
ToOt TOOT!!! 🤣
