Dog's

Harlan Pepper: wingnut or poseur?

You've seen Best In Show? Funny. Yet it has a flaw: it fails to capture the battiness of dog people. Compared to the unbelievable truth, the movie is but a pale shadow. Yes, you are skeptical now, but all will be revealed when, like me, you try to buy a purebred dog.

Because I don't personally know anybody batty enough to breed dogs, I've been searching the web for a litter of Labrador retriever puppies. This is a mind-boggling undertaking. I have unearthed some interesting facts. Such as:

Breeders of Labrador retrievers come in one of two species: hobbyists and hunters. Hobby breeders are sentimental suburban females who all seem to own at least one dog named "Diva." These are the women you see loping along in sensible shoes in Animal Planet dog shows. They breed dogs that look pretty while trotting in circles.

Full-on professional facilities, on the other hand, are run by he-men and/or lesbians in camouflage who train gun dogs and like to photograph them with dead ducks hanging out of their mouths [1]. These dogs are bred to enjoy the pleasant sound of gunfire, and spend their lives rootling in the underbrush for dead ducks to pose with.



You know how you've always wondered why our cities are populated by packs of fat, misshapen yellow labs with one bulging blue eye? After brooding on the philosophies of the two breeder species, I have deduced the answer: neither will sell a puppy to a non-professional doggist like me unless the creature is either too deformed for the show ring or too dumb to find dead ducks. In other words, "pet-quality" Labrador retrievers are, by definition, retarded.

Dog breeders may be described in many ways, but "masters of web design" is unlikely to top the list. You never in your life saw so many pawprint rainbows, wagging cartoon spaniels, wavy flags, snowflakes, dog-silhouette background images, "support our troops" ribbons, and bizarre MIDI soundtracks. Often the thing is one endless scroll of centered 18 point Comic Sans and blurry snapshots of puppies in Santa hats. I don't like to stereotype, but the hobbyist ladies seem particularly to excel at this web design style. And let's face it, an exclamation that probably won't be escaping anyone's lips any time soon is "boy, do those dog breeders ever understand the apostrophe!" These dog websites are definitely a dropped stitch in the crocheted tea cozy of civilization.

The Labrador retriever is America's #1 dog, but this glut is clearly the result of puppy mills, since no "reputable" breeder ever has actual puppies for sale. There is no way to tell this from the their websites, though. This is because dog breeders have no concept of time. It is not uncommon to come across the words "we currently have a litter of 4-week-old puppies" and "site last updated 4/99" on the same page. If you are used to one-clicking on Amazon, this will curl your hair.

Dog breeders almost without exception refer to their dogs as "boys" and "girls" (or "boy's" and "girl's"). Sometimes the girls are "ladies," and occasionally "bitches," but the boys are never "men" or "dickwads." I blame the patriarchy.
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[1] There is a correlation between guns, feathers, and photography, and I'm gonna get to the bottom of it.