AKC Sells Out

Please cross-post!

Talk about the foxes BUYING the henhouse! That’s exactly what it looks like the largest seller of puppy mill puppies and the largest breeder of puppy mill puppies in the US have done! Under the guise of “saving” the AKC, the “professional” management staff and the upper management have climbed into a very sleazy bed with Petland Stores and the Hunte Corporation.

Supposedly the AKC staff and management (let’s make sure to keep those separate from the AKC breeders who obviously had nothing to do with this walk on the slimy side) have decided they need more money. So instead of doing something intelligent like maybe moving out of their expensive New York offices to another, less expensive area or city, they sell licensing rights to the very people MOST of the dog world is trying to SHUT DOWN!

Can you say, “fire the professional staff and recall every elected official or director who supported this misbegotten mistake?”
I can! If this is true (and if it isn’t I’ll be very happy to apologize to the AKC) then this is NOT a simple case of disagreement between people of goodwill who just don’t agree. This is an out and out betrayal of everything reputable and honest dog people, breeders and dog guardians believe in and have worked towards for decades!

The obvious first step for all of us is to contact the AKC and let them know we are paying attention and are not happy with this decision. Next, DO NOT SHOP at Petland OR BUY items with the AKC logo on them until they get out of bed with Petland and Hunte. If anybody has any other suggestions, bark in!

Here’s what President Isabel and Attorney General Rosie Moondog had to say about the possible AKC sell-out.

Isabel and Rosie: The Dynamic Duo wrote:
Hey Joy! It has come to our attention that the American Kennel Club is teaming up with Petland (a pet store chain that sells puppies). Apparently Petland will be allowed to use the AKC logo and Petland will be getting consumers to register their new pups with the AKC (a money making proposition for them). You have one guess as to who supplies Petland with its puppies.

Give up? It’s none other than the Hunte Corporation- the country’s largest distributor of puppy mill pups. This new arrangement will put the AKC’s stamp of approval on the puppy mill industry and will be a major set back in our fight against ending puppy milling. To their credit, many of the AKC’s membership have contested this deal, but the executives and Board of Directors are planning ongoing ahead with this insane plan anyway.

We are urging all Dogsters to contact the AKC and tell them this partnership is wrong and that they should be using their influence to help shut down the Hunte Corporation, and the puppy mill industry, not encouraging and legitimizing it!

Here’s the URL to the AKC contact page.

Let your barks be heard!!!

Roxie’s mom, Karen, sent in this information about the situation from a delgate who was at the recent AKC meeting.

Karen Vigil wrote:
HI Joy,
This is kind of long but I got it off another site. AKC endorsing Petland?????
This must be a mistake. Or is it?

*****PERMISSION TO CROSS POST GRANTED*****
September 13, 2006
From: Sally Nist, AKC Delegate, RCKC
To: Rapid City Kennel Club members

This will be somewhat short as it is late and I will write a more complete report tomorrow. I am just back from the fall Delegate meeting. It began with the normal committee elections and a vote on the first proposed amendment. That was an amendment limiting outside activities by delegates. AKC said it was to assist us if we had to remove a delegate for conflict of interest but it was really setting a stage of sorts. The existing restrictions were enlarged to keep people out of the delegate body whodidn’t support “AKC objects”.

Dennis Sprung and Board members explained that we could then keep “animal rights” people from “taking over the AKC”.

After lunch came the regular reports from the Treasurer, the new archive program, etc. Buried in the Treasurer’s report was a very quick mention of a “new contractual relationship” between AKC and the Petland chain of stores (120 in the US, with 20 more planned for 2007). The difference between Petland and PetSmart or PetCo is that they sell puppies at Petland.

During the final portion of the meeting, several delegates–who were completely caught off guard by thie news of the contract — brought up their concern and asked for more information. We were told that “we would never see the contract (which I heard from another delegate was just signed last Friday)”, it is necessary for AKC to meet the bottom line, and that it was the wave of the future and we should get on board. At one point David Merriim, the attorney for AKC actually said he had not seen the contract (great boos and laughter ensued) and that if we don’t work with Petland to get more dogs
registered we will be looking at $75 entry fees and become an “elitist organization”.

NOTE: you will be able to read the full details in a couple of days on the AKC website so excuse me if my quotes are not completely accurate. They may not be 100% correct but very, very close.

From what we could gather from the very sketchy info parsed out by the AKC staff to the delegates, the Board of Directors and the “Management Team” have signed a contract with Petland endorsing the sale of puppies under the AKC banner, with the Petland sales people encouraging people to register the puppies with AKC. Needless to say, all will be sold with no conditional breeding paperwork, as is done by breeders who sell directly to new owners.

You will see when you read the minutes on the website that the discussion went on for a couple of hours. I was in line to speak but everyone had covered my thoughts and I stepped out. Main concerns were the breeding of these puppies, the fact that we have always put AKC above “puppy mills and puppy sales at stores”, the fact that these puppies will be the rescue
dogs of the future, etc. A motion was made by the Golden Retriever club delegate that the delegates vote to let the board know we want them to rescend the contract. The AKC staff kept saying that it was a “non-binding, sense of the delegation vote”. It carried nearly unanimously.

The delegate body is stunned. Of course, by the vote earlier in the day, we are not “supporting the AKC object” but I, for one, think it is critical that if members of RCKC do not agree with this sudden and secret action taken by the AKC without any notification of the general population it supposedly supports, we must make our voices heard.

I suggest letters be sent to Dennis Sprung, to every member of the Board of Directors, and every single higher-level management person. Alternative ways to obtain additiional funds (which does have an $8M reserve) we might consider release of the expensive NYC property, a pay cut by AKC staff (often done in private industry to save a business), cutting
Board expenses, reviewing every expense line by line, etc.

If you so direct, and if I am elected your delegate to the AKC (a position I would like to hold in the upcoming year), I will vote against every single member of the Board of Directors on this issue alone, no matter how fabulously they may have served the fancy in the past. I will carry any message to the next meeting on this matter.

If this is not a concern, we can move on to other issues. If the anger expressed by delegates is representative of the anger of concerned breeders and members of RCKC, I urge everyone to act. The contract has been signed and none of the delegates is sure if any action can change anything but we can express our outrage and the new direction AKC has taken. It began with our new embrace and acceptance of “large volume breeders”–some might say puppy mills– and this seems to be the final nail in the coffin to separate legitimate, concerned breeders from pet shop suppliers.

Read More at this link.

Here’s an update! There is now a petition at The Petition Site if you want to show your displeasure with the AKC decision.

Follow this link to sign the petition.