January 28, 2010
Quote of the month...
"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg "
Abraham Lincoln
Hypocritic Oath
Hippocrates wrote his famous oath for doctors many centuries ago, although it is no longer used in its original form by today’s graduating doctors. The basic guidelines of his oath were to only do good things for your patients or do no harm, meaning that the patient should not die from the cure.
Other built in messages of his oath were to teach medicine to others, do the best you can with your abilities, don’t give or advise lethal drugs even if asked, don’t take the life of the unborn, keep to good ethics and morals in your personal life too, don’t do what is best left for specialists and always keep the good of the patient as your highest priority.
Apart from medicinal use this is good advice to follow in just about every aspect of life, even Mudi owning and breeding:
- do the best you can with your dogs and above all don’t do them harm
- teach others good ownership and breeding principles
- do the best you can do with your knowledge and abilities
- don’t give wrong advice, even when asked
- don’t cull litters or put down dogs unnecessarily
- treat all of your dogs ethically and morally correct
- breeding is not for everyone
- always do what is best for your dogs
After several events came to the surface this year, I had to ask, why is it that Mudi owners and breeders seem to intentionally go in the opposite direction from this oath, oblivious to their own contrariety…
- An owner that has had a Mudi for 8 years told their opinions about the Mudi breeders in Hungary not being very good on a forum. They praised those in other countries nearer to them for doing the best Mudi breeding. However they had just bought a Mudi puppy from a Hungarian breeder and from one of the most infamous Mudi breeders. If there are other breeders doing a better job of breeding why reward the ones that are not doing a good job with your purchase?
- An owner of a website claims the importance of the COI and low inbreeding, yet the COI’s they list are very inaccurate, giving much lower COI’s than are correct for their litters. They continue to give seriously flawed COI’s even after they were told about their inaccuracy. This is intentional misuse of a good thing to mislead others.
- A breeder makes claims about the importance of health and the dogs they breed with being unrelated to epileptics, yet they do not even know who all the epileptics are. So while in ignorance they are right, in reality they are far from the truth. Using scare tactics to sell pups is a well known marketing ploy, but when the claim is not backed up by reality it’s known as a scam.
- An owner claims on their website that dogs from one kennel are not good and they would not take a puppy from the same kennel today, they also make a pronouncement about only breeding proven performance dogs. So what to do with these two dogs they have but would not buy again from the kennel they criticized…breed them of course. This is a clear stroke of brilliance considering that the pups for sale and planned litters page brags about the accomplishments of the two parent dogs in question, one of which is a companion dog only. Whatever the purpose of placing diametrically opposed claims on the same website is, it remains a mystery.
- An owner claims that the dog they have was very difficult as a pup (but fails to mention they wanted a puppy with a strong personality) and when it was taken to the city at one year of age the dog was afraid of the city traffic (shame on the owner for spending more time on the agility field then in the real world), the dog then had training accidents (accidents happen but can be prevented in most cases by the owner) and competition failures (this is the owners fault for entering before the dog was ready). These things are never the dogs, the breed, or the breeders fault, but the owners! Anything that ever goes wrong is never the dogs fault – responsibility lies solely with the owner! Every competent dog trainer knows this, place blame where it belongs – on the person that holds the leash.
- An owner complains that their pup had many problems growing up and they would not take a pup from this kennel again, oblivious to the fact that this very dog continually places in the top levels of competitions (country and world). If the dog was as bad of a puppy choice as this owner claims, that puppy would never have achieved such accolades as this one has and the ingrate owner should not have bred it once nor have current plans to breed it again. What is the point of this claim but to disgrace the dog which did everything it can possibly do for an incredibly ungrateful owner.
- Breeders complain about the size of dogs that other breeder’s use, but the puppies they kept which also grew larger/smaller than the standard size, they then use themselves for breeding. Apparently they have a different standard than everyone else.
- An owner that bragged about their dog for years begins to fabricate a damaging claim about the origins of that once beloved dog, yet continues to show that self-dishonored dog successfully in all the same events. How can someone claim their dog is not what it is, yet still go on to compete and claim titles?
- Some breeders claim proving sport performance ability in breeding dogs is necessary to create more performance able dogs, however they ignore the fact that most sport competitor dogs today come from not sport competitor parents. If you want a dog that is a high achiever in sports, you get one from the same parents as the achiever has, not from the achiever itself. You cannot make a cake from another cake, you need the ingredients that made the cake you want in the first place. But most of all, high achiever canines come only from talented human trainers that can work with the dog they have, top competitors are created after birth, not before it.
The creators of these topics may claim to serve a purpose, but what they do is not good for the breed, the dogs or the people in it and everyone that tolerates or turns a blind eye to these concerns is just as responsible. No one does the right thing because it is the right thing to do, people do the right thing out of fear of recrimination, but if there is no reproach to worry about from others, then there is no reason for anything and chaos rules.
If I could give year end awards for these hypocrisies…
- Deceptive Advertising Award, for the slickest marketing campaign
- Bait and Switch Award, distinction for the do as I say, not as I do principle
- Spin Doctor Award, the reward for concocting the best reversal of reality
- Smear Campaign Award, the truth tampering trophy
- Fine Print Award, the it’s ok for me, but not for you point of view prize
- Scapegoat Award, a tribute for total lack of responsibility
- Ingrate Award, the perfect accolade for the lack of thankfulness
- Label Tampering Award, the product may not resemble the picture gift
- Fitless for Use Award, distinction for ignoring your own suitable for reproduction code
- False Advertising Award, for best use of unverifiable claims
- Gaslighting Award, the intentional misuse of information honor
A few other awards would be for publically aligning yourself with as many other well known people as you can to raise your own image (Branding Award), talking about your accomplishments as much as you disparage others (Propaganda Award) and the widely coveted Failure to Inform Award for the intentional neglect to place important information when and where able.
How many people would win more than one of these awards?
A decade now passes and a new one begins, so there was never a better time to step back from doing what is not in the best interest of our dogs, the Mudi breed and the people involved in it and make an oath that is good for others, our dogs and ourselves. My January 2020 article can be the opposite of this one if we all take a moment to make a new oath to do just this one simple thing. That gives us ten years to think of awards that Hippocrates himself would bestow…
Next time: Current Events
