Here Or There

Good GOD how I hate show breeders! And I am beginning to hate rescue people almost as much! Geez!! And to think I used to think people who love pets are all the same, or all like me. All they would be interested in is knowing what kind of dog a person has, is it friendly, or how cute it is and how it loves to play. But no, these people do not think of that. Nowadays all they want to know is is your dog a rescue or did you buy it from a breeder. I get on Craigslist and see the ads people put up there for their dogs, and next thing I see is a total war breaking out! Nowadays if you get a dog off of Craigslist, the Craigslist police complain because the buyer is supporting backyard breeding practices. And the griping just never ends! I totally hate getting into discussions like this! It's not my place anymore. And really people should just keep their mouths SHUT when it's not their business.

Backyard breeders will always be there. No matter how hard someone argues. If a person wants a pet, they cannot rely totally on show/responsible breeders. As beautiful as it would be if everyone got their pets from a responsible breeder, it isn't going to happen. I am always taken back to this friend on the INXS website, and the experience she had with a show cat breeder. That breeder refused to sell to her because she lived in an apartment with no fencing, which I thought was a stupid reason for not wanting to sell her a kitten. But that's how those kinds of breeders are. And it is because of instances like that that backyard breeders will always be around. She went to a rescue and got herself a kitty eventually, but if she'd had her heart set on getting a specific breed of cat, that show breeder would have left her no choice but to go to a backyard breeder. And that is what I am trying to say. I remember bringing up this subject in the Craigslist pet forum, and within seconds got all kinds of "down-thumbing". I told them they can down-thumb me all they want to, but it's the truth! I look in shelters sometimes, but I never see anything I want. Most of what they have are large dogs, or mongrels, and I don't particularly like mixed breeds. I am not saying they cannot be good pets, I'm just saying I don't particularly care for them myself. With purebreeds you know what you are getting.

Anyway that is why I feel there will always be backyard breeders. That is why I hate show breeders! I always look at the bigger picture. Not just what is immediately in front of me. My experience with show breeders has always been they will not help you at all unless you have shown at least one dog. Or cat, I am sure. But then you have to get that one dog (or cat) first that is show-worthy. How do you do that if no show breeder would ever sell to you? If you see someone is in need of help, you should help them. If you see someone is drowning, you don't just stand there and let the person drown. If you have a heart, you jump in and save them. If show breeders would do that more often, they would be awesome! Yet show breeders who do that are always frowned upon and ridiculed. I've seen it happen before. People say they breed for the love of the breed, but I don't think that's the reason show breeders breed. From what I have seen, they breed and show to get more attention. Its the same senario as bullies beating up other kids on the playground, they do it for nothing but attention and respect. If show breeders and responsible breeders really did what they do for the love of the breeds, they would be a lot more helpful, and far less assholes, to newbies.

This was what I had to face when I was breeding and looking for a mentor. I was told by the ECC to contact a local show breeder, Rio, who has been breeding chihuahuas for a long time. I lived in Olympia at the time, and she lived in Rochester, which was only 30 miles away from me. I'd seen her dogs before, and I thought they looked nice, and I had met her before too and she seemed OK. Not cool, but OK. Well, I called her and the first thing she did was put words in my mouth. She claimed I was calling her to purchase a pup from her and I said no. I said I am calling because I need a mentor and I was referred to her by the ECC. I spoke to her the way I speak to all my friends, I was as polite as I could be, considering she was being pushy and nagging. I told her that I had just bought a dog from Will O' Wisp, and she suggested I look to them for mentoring. But there was a problem. Will O' Wisp was 300 miles away from me in Spokane. Rio was only 30 miles away from me. It would have been hard to have Will O' Wisp as a mentor when they lived so far away from me. I just never asked them. A couple weeks later, Rio called me again and asked if I had ever contacted Will O' Wisp and I said no. I saw no point in it. So I looked for as many books as I could find about how to breed show dogs, read them and absorbed them. That was how I got mentored.

Well, a couple years later, I "met up" with Rio again on an e-mail forum. It was a forum of all show breeders. I thought I could learn a lot about how to breed properly from them. So I got on there and asked questions. As any newbie should, I did keep an open mind. But every time I sent in a question, I either did not get a response, or I did not get a direct answer to my question. Just the run-around. Show breeders treat other show breeders like they are some kind of deity. And outsiders and newbies get treated like shit. I remember I crossed one person just because I responded to a questionnaire that they said was not directed at me. I thought it was a public questionnaire, and I always had fun filling those out on MySpace, and it gave my readers a chance to get to know me. So I filled it out, not knowing it was supposed to be for someone else to fill out. Well this guy John Cippolina (Jack Nipplemama in my story) got PISSED!!! He started bitching up blue streak! LOL! And this was a guy who everyone said gives a lot of his time to help newbies. I could not believe it. If he got so bitchy and pissy because I filled out a questionnaire, that I had NO idea was meant solely for someone else, then I was so glad he is not my mentor!! I don't know if he was just being bitchier than usual because he was behind a computer screen and could just get away with it easier, or if there really were some underlying anger issues there. I could just sit there and picture the veins in his forehead popping, one by one. I never showed him any disrespect until he just about pushed me to the limit. It takes a lot to make me mad, but once I get mad I can blow. But I did not blow. I did ask him who pissed in his Cheerios. LOL! Next thing I know I have show breeders that people on that group hadn't heard from in months riding all over me. And I don't even feel that I was at fault. John was the one who started bitching at me. I didn't bitch at him. Yet all those dumb show breeders were taking his side, simply because he had been breeding dogs for 30-something years. That's another reason I hate show breeders. John was being an asshole, I wasn't. Even after he pushed me almost to my limit, I still did not bitch at him. Though I do believe that if we had been standing in the same room and he came at me with that attitude, I might have lost it and scratched his eyeballs out. LOL!

Well, the next thing I know, Rio is telling me things about myself that I didn't even know. Like I had been breeding chihuahuas a lot longer than she has. I started breeding chihuahuas in 2001, she's been breeding since 1996. This told me that Rio was hearing misinformation about me from somewhere, which led me to believe that show breeders gossip. I tried telling her the truth, but even after explaining myself about 100 times to her, she still did not get it! Which led me to believe that show breeders don't believe anything that anyone says except other show breeders. The trouble with listening only to gossip, and not getting actual facts for yourself, gossip gets jumbled from one person to another. Especially where show breeders are involved I would assume, because their brains are smaller than those of an average person. Either that, or they are simply voice-activated robots that can only take in little bits of information at a time. I could really sit here all day long and say this kind of stuff about the show breeders I saw in that forum. This is how I saw them. They made me basically feel the way I do today about show breeders. These things, if an average person had done them, that person would be considered rude, judgmental and no one would ever want to be around that person. But show breeders seem to be able to be that way because other show breeders will always forgive them, not because they are right, but because they've been breeding and showing for 20 or 30 years. That seems to automatically make that person right, and the newbies wrong. You can say a lot of things about me as well, but one thing you can never say is I am unfair. I meet new people with an open mind. I don't let what others say about someone get in the way of how I feel about that person. I even gave Patti a chance to prove herself! And she too turned out to be bitchy. And I did nothing to make her that way, on purpose. Coming up in my next book. :) From that you can judge for yourself.