Is the AKC A Hoax?
While dog training, Los Angeles pet parents witness many sham organizations but perhaps none quite as ubiquitous and paradoxical as the AKC. What type of club values a tradition that trumpets and fully supports pain, dismemberment, and mutilation? Not a very humane or sane one.
American Kennel Club (AKC) Puppy Mill or Puppy Advocate?
The AKC encourages barbaric, outdated, painful, and unnecessary ear cropping and tail docking of a dog’s ears and tail to conform to breed made up human “standards” and tradition. Throughout history, not all traditions are unhealthy, but many sure were such as slavery, suppressing women’s rights, anti-Semitism and the Nazi party were all traditions. The Ku Klux Klan, (KKK) is a club and a tradition (a double whammy).
Do we really want to follow unhealthy, destructive, and ignorant traditions to continue death, oppression, pain, and suffering onto others? I would hope in this “civilized” time this would be a rhetorical question and the answer would be moot, but sadly this doesn’t seem to be the case.
We have brains with a prefrontal cortex, capable of independent thought, which enables us to make decisions contrary to the established norm or tradition. Subvert the dominant paradigm – a heretical principle on which humanity, society, culture, innovation, and the human race move forward, with compassion, love.
As a book review from, The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma of the Individual in Modern Society
by C. G. Jung states, “In this challenging and provocative work, Dr. Carl Jung—one of history’s greatest minds—argues that civilization’s future depends on our ability as individuals to resist the collective forces of society. Only by gaining an awareness and understanding of one’s unconscious mind and true, inner nature—’the undiscovered self’—can we as individuals acquire the self-knowledge that is antithetical to ideological fanaticism. But this requires that we face our fear of the duality of the human psyche—the existence of good and the capacity for evil in every individual. In this seminal book, Jung compellingly argues that only then can we begin to cope with the dangers posed by mass society—’the sum total of individuals’—and resist the potential threats posed by those in power.”
Without independent thought and challenge of the established beliefs and traditions, we are lemmings running off cliffs with the followers who failed to think independently of what tradition dictates.
This brings me to the American Kennel Club, (AKC). Yes, the same AKC with the pretty pictures of dogs on their website is the same club whose pernicious policies fully support pain, centuries-old outdated, barbaric, and abusive practices in the name of superficiality, aesthetics, and ego. In particular, tail cropping, severing a dog’s tail or ear docking, mutilating a dog’s ears and cat declawing (amputating a cat’s toes), akin to chopping off your fingers, nose or a few toes.
A rational person may conclude that this is a highly immoral, unethical, painful, and dangerous medical procedure (especially since most operations are done without anesthesia or sedation) that would only be sanctioned for in the very rare instance of a dire medical health necessity.
However, sadly in most cases, these abusive procedures are not done for medical reasons at all but rather for dog breeders’ psychological dysfunctional shortcomings and vanity. Make no mistake about it, tail docking, ear cropping, and declawing are elective, cosmetic procedures forced on an animal that has no say or voice to defend themselves.
Preventative surgery for ear docking or tail docking is like taking an Advil a month before you may go out and drink alcohol with your friends just in case you get a headache at some point in the distant future. Sound crazy yet? Full speed ahead to crazy town.
People, in all of their enlightenment and awakening, continue to follow the crowd and the foolish that made up a tradition regardless of how abusive, ignorant and nonsensical it may be and continue along the path of confusion. It takes courage to swim against the stream in the name of compassion and kindness. Force is for cowards, compassion takes courage.
Never mind countless medical organizations who denounce ear cropping and tail docking such as the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the American Animal Hospital Association, the American Humane Association, in addition to countless countries all over the world denouncing and condemning ear cropping and tail docking and declawing as uncivilized, unnecessary, painful and harmful to animals.
The laymen folks in the AKC feel they know best what animals want and enjoy thumbing their noses at plebeian doctors and science and fully support inflicting pain and suffering on innocent sentient beings in the name of looks, tradition, and breed “standards.” Here is the AKC’s embarrassing and harmful position statement.
Huh, surely you must be joking that the same organization that hypocritically flaunts the words, “We protect the health and well-being of all dogs and – We cherish dogs as companions,” would not and could not be a living, breathing paradox. Sadly they are just another organization deemed to go down in the history books as a feckless sham and shameful organization that furthered pain and suffering for selfish club members’ ignorance, insecurities, and low self-esteem.
To spin one’s club and organization as humane and caring, even though it is patently false, is a slap in the face to all dog lovers around the world.
Please do not support the AKC and tell them to stop inflicting pain and suffering and being a club based on hypocrisy. One cannot believe in the humane treatment and welfare of dogs and then in the same breath advocate chopping off limbs and dismembering innocent sentient beings. That is the same paradoxical rationale that states, “humane” killing for farm animals. I have denounced my affiliation with the AKC, and encourage others to do the same until these inconsistencies are abolished.
Could you imagine being forced to chop off your tongue because someone thought you might look better without it and rationalize this act by stating that tradition called for it in order to win a trophy at a show?
Is The AKC A Puppy Mill?
I don’t have to go into great detail for the general public to know how much harm and destruction puppy mills inflict on dogs, cats, and inevitably families that end up buying these health stricken victims. You can read the plethora of position statements on my dog training resources page, to see just some of the numerous organizations that denounce and oppose this abuse to fully realize this atrocity.
But you wouldn’t expect a club that hypocritically claims to value companion animals, to be funded by the same lobbyist and constituents who support, makeup and represent the puppy mills of the world. Welcome to the American Kennel Club who seem to be no more than wolves in sheep’s clothing.
As recently noted by perspicacious author Dr. Marc Bekoff, in his recent article How Many Dog Breeders Do We Really Need? If you haven’t read Marc’s article depicting the conflicts and problems from within the AKC, please do so.
The Westminster Dog Show Charade
When an organization has a conflict of interests, such as lobbying, this leads to inherent structural problems and corruption that eventually lead to that organization’s demise. This is the problem with the jobbery of politicians, the United States pension and entitlement programs, government largess, the financial industry (analysts, proprietary traders, investment bankers, and the illusion of a Chinese wall) and the protectionism and fiat currency manipulation that ensues until inevitable entropy.
But I digress, most corrupt, unregulated, nepotistic, and cronyistic organizations are corrupt at the core. The AKC is one of those organizations that fit this conflict of interest’s definition to a tee with their insouciance towards dogs.
The Money Behind The AKC
Follow the money. Who pays the AKC’s bills and makes them a “legitimate” organization masquerading as an animal advocate club proclaiming, “We protect the health and well-being of all dogs and – We cherish dogs as companions”?
But the AKC is part of the problem, not the solution. Commercial breeders, AKA puppy mills (or any person or organization that puts dollars over the health, humane, and ethical treatment and well-being of an animal) is an unhealthy, unethical and immoral organization. Numbers don’t lie, it’s all in black and white for the world to read.
An organization is defined by what it primarily does to make money. Google is an advertising/data mining, consumer surveillance company, not a search engine provider. You are the product, not the customer as your rights dwindle away with no privacy protections. Similarly, The AKC looks more like a puppy mill organization, not the advocate of animal welfare and certainly not animal rights purported on their website.
Puppy mills enslave dogs and cats and force them to live in shockingly, horrid conditions that are not fit for any life form. They disregard the health and well-being of an animal and treat them like dispensable inanimate objects, discarding them in the trash when they are not sold and enslaving dogs and cats in ungodly, deplorable conditions. AKC’s main funding and source of revenue come from puppy mill organizations.
AKC Conclusion
The AKC has not made strides in the humane, ethical treatment, and animal welfare department since its founding in 1884. They have lost their moral compass or more accurately never had one. It is incredible that people still recognize or care what the confused AKC has to say until this paradox is cleared up and the doctors on staff face the grim reality of their cognitive dissidence over advocating ear cropping, tail docking, and cat declawing and begin funded by commercial breeders and puppy mills.
Tradition in and of itself is not unhealthy. But when an organization or someone follow tradition blindly, provides no independent thought or abdicates basic animal and nonhuman animal rights that we must stand up for the voiceless. Why does the audacity of some clubs or traditions go unscathed and where is the outrage?
The AKC’s wry mission statement is alarming and fraught with hypocrisy. Just because other sentient beings do not communicate with words as human animals do, does not mean that we should abuse, strip them of their rights, and treat them with utter disdain with deleterious mission statements and a lack of perspicacity and pari passu. Someone should remind the CEO and president of the AKC Dennis B. Sprung, “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.” Dalai Lama
