In the state I live in, and the state next to it, it's illegal to sell animals at Flea Markets. However, in this state, someone was selling a dog cage with all the contents included. A puppy was in the crate. Broken tail, obviously starving. Very badly starving, almost dying. A woman took pity on the dog, bought the crate, and immediately brought the dog to a highly respected rescue. Someone fostered the dog for a few months until it was relatively healthy. Someone close to me adopted the dog, based on my recommendation on a dog that would match well with his other dog's personality. The dog was a Pointer. At 9-10 months old, he weighed 19 pounds. As adults, they are supposed to weigh 55-75 pounds, depending on if they are 25-28 inches at the shoulder. At 9 or 10 months old, they should be weighing close to 50 pounds. So, this dog was about 25-30 pounds underweight. The someone close to me (SCM) was awesome, and gave him the care and support and the love he needed. Broken tails that have healed cannot be fixed, so the end of the Pointer's tail was always at about a 40 degree angle. Not only did this dog fatten up, get heavily muscled, but you could see the bones in his legs straightening over time, because of the nutrition. He was finally able to run like a regular dog, instead of a fucked up way of running because the bones in his legs were actually soft and rubbery, instead of hard like they should be. His personality was completely unscathed, thankfully. Happy, loving, a joy to be around. He was about 55 pounds, I believe, something like that, not an inch of fat on him.
He had a helluva nose on him. SCM's other dog was a type of pointer, and they hunted. He didn't get the second dog with the expectation of hunting him, but he turned out to be a great hunter. When he turned three, he died. SCM had him for just a little over two years. At three years of age, Pointer's immune system failed and he had massive Mast Cell Tumors all over his body, internally in his intestinal system, you could see a tiny spot of tumor grow to the size of a quarter over just a matter of 3-4 days. When he started pooping pure blood, he was put down. Unfortuantely, it had never bothered him emotionally. He was the same cheerful, loving, happy dog that we had to kill. And yes, I was there and held him as he went.
He was a product of hunter greed. Many many shit hunters breed a litter every year, try and sell off the puppies to keep just one. They dump the puppies in shelters or on the sides of the street, for all I know, to just keep the one that they will hunt with for a year. Then they dump that dog in the off season, because it's too expensive to keep a dog for a year. But somehow it's less expensive to breed every year?
On the other hand, there are extremely responsible hunters who do not do this, who rescue the dogs of the breed they choose (you can't rescue everything, no matter how much you'd want to, and by choosing to rescue the breeds they hunt, that means those dogs won't end up in shelters, which relieves the overall burden of dogs in rescue).
So, watch out at your local Flea Markets for this thing. It happens all the time.
Note: I got the initial weight of the dog wrong so I fixed it. It was less than I remembered. Plus, I checked his history with the rescue, and the information on the site was different than what was given to SCM. It wasn't very different, so I'm not going to bother to change it, other than it happened in this state. The end result is the same.
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On hunting dogs, why not put something up about those who "hunt" deer with dogs. In my state, it's common for some "hunters" to keep huge packs of mixed hounds (never spaying or neutering any of them, of course) and every fall turn the pack loose on one side of the woods & wait with cold beer & guns for the pack to basically run any & everything towards them to shoot. Then afterwards, they just collect whatever dogs came back & go home.
The dogs that don't make it back before last call get left in the woods to starve, eat neighboring livestock and be shot, or just go feral and generally reek havoc.
Which isn't exactly a horrible fate when you consider that those that make it home look forward to being crammed into an overcrowded pen and being fed anything from stale bread to tainted raw meat (whatever the grocery store threw out that week).
I'm sure there's pics of some of these dogs somewhere online which would really get the point across (I've actually adopted one of these hounds and if I can find the before pic, I'll send it to you). It would be awesome to contrast it with hunters who do care and breed their hounds careful and produce amazing hunting animals.
Sorry for the length!
My sister and her DH had a pointer. His relative (cousin or something) breeds/trains hunting dogs and this pointer was gunshy. They got her for free. She was a good dog and had a good life.
The next dog they got was from same hunter/trainer and also free. This time a black lab. The reason she was 'culled'? Her last few litters were 1-3 puppies each. Not producing nearly enough pups to accomodate the breeding/training program.
My sister was smart enough to have both dogs spayed as soon as she could. She has no interest in breeding any kind of dogs. The shelters, rescues and local pound usually has plenty of every breed to choose from on any given day.
Not all hunting breeders are bad, but some are dispicable to put it mildly. They should be shot.
75lbs is WAY too heavy for a pointer. Since he had a nose, it is safe to assume he was field bred. Field bred pointers are much smaller than their very distant cousins.. show pointers. The 25-28" is also way tall for field pointers.
Yeah, the numbers Moontoad cited were from the AKC standard (UKC is a smidge smaller heightwise).
While I doubt the dog's breeder was adhering to a particulary stringent breeding program of any type, the point is dog was still small, even for field lines, and if it *was* from (even puppy mill) show lines, then it was extremely small.
Sheesh.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to play down the fact that the dog was starved and abused. Just wanted to say that show/field pointers are very different so the numbers were a bit skewed. I now realize what I was trying to say didn't come out 'right' and I apologize for that.
Actually, he ended up being close to 55 pounds once he was healthy. He grew a lot after he had the right nutrition, and wasn't stunted at all, surprisingly. Field bred, yeah, but he didn't look very fieldy. More like he came from a show line that was being turned into a field line, if that makes sense. He had the body size and shape of a show Pointer, but more the face of a field line. He still shows up in the rescue's "adopted dogs" list, and I bawl my eyes out everytime I see him.
Oh, and I know a ton of show line Pointers that have fantastic noses, have show championships and are master hunters, get the highest marks given for hunting ability way beyond a master hunter award. Pointers are a breed that are shown in the ring in the condition that they are used for hunting, as well. Just because a Pointer (or any pointing breed) is a show line doesn't mean they are lacking in ability to hunt. My breed is also heavily into dual ability as well, both show and hunt. They are shown in the ring in field condition, too.
I just had to type in and say that I really appreciate this blog. I can't even read the local paper anymore without crying about all the unwanted dogs out there and I cant even stand to go into a pet store knowing where most of those cute little puppies come from. I wish I could adopt them all. People suck. Thanks for devoting time to this huge problem and hopefully we can educate more people about puppy mills and the like. By the way this is a horrible story! Poor little fellow.
Re the flea market trade in dogs...who saw "Dealing Dogs?" Now there is an education about a part of the dog world no one wants to think about.
Oh, yeah, I'm doing several posts about how dogs get from a "breeder" to customer. It's far too much to put in one post, so I have to break it down. Fugly, can you mail me about "Dealing Dogs"? I need to see if I can find a subtitled or captioned version of it. Or someone willing to give up their free time to watch it and send me a copy with the transcript.
speaking of flea markets, did you ever see the documentary on HBO called "Dealing Dogs?" WOW. The Last Chance for Animals group sent an undercover reporter into one of the worse dog dealers in the country. The Martin Kennels. They were shut down.. but anyway, I digress.. he got a lot of his dogs at flea markets. Just sick.
oops, I guess I should read all the way down before I comment! LOL, i see FHOTD mentioned dealing dogs.. as hard as it was to watch, I felt I had to. When I was in college I worked at a pet store.. I had no idea about puppy mills until my first trip to the airport to pick up a shipment of pups. Over 1/2 of them were sick, a couple arrived dead and none of them were suitable to put in our little puppy window.. they all needed weight and care to get their coats smooth... just disgraceful. I learned a lot in my short time there, I just couldn't do it and the more I researched the more I realized what it all was - I was very, very naive to that point. Horrible
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