Who will speak up for animals in opposing breed standards?

One of my many issues with breed inspections and breed standards has been the lack of people who have been willing to go public and say these practices are wrong. Beyond the BBC documentary “Pedigree Dogs Exposed” in 2008, there’s been almost nothing said about how detrimental breed standards are. Even the documentary itself produced limited results. Sure, the Crufts dog show now inspects winners and won’t award honors to dogs that fail a health inspection by veterinarians. But why did the documentary not lead to wholesale removal of breed standards around the world? It sure made the people perpetrating genetic defects in Rhodesian ridgebacks and German shepherds look like fools.

Proponents of breed standards will argue these standards preserve the breed.

I would respond: No, they force animals to look like something that didn’t exist naturally. The “look” was made up in the minds of the humans who wrote the breed standards in the first place. There’s plenty of evidence of that in the documentary. People have forced dogs to look like caricatures of the original breed.

These arbitrary breed characteristics were delineated by humans who have no scientific background and, thus, no idea of the genetic mistakes they are making by imposing their standards, leading to painful lives for many animals. Further, those making the rules have a personal interest in the breed looking like their animals and not like the animals of their biggest competitors.

There are so many problems with this model, it’s sort of mind-boggling that it continues.

And having disdain for breed standards is not really a fight over a particular breed standard or inspection process. It’s a social justice issue, much like the other one garnering all the attention worldwide right now — gay rights — as well as those issues that came before, such as women’s or racial rights.

I was watching CBS News the day before the Super Bowl, and major league athletes were being asked to weigh in on their opinions of gay players and same-sex marriage in light of incendiary anti-gay comments made by San Francisco cornerback Chris Culliver (who apparently played lousy in the game).

CBS News’ Jim Axelrod interviewed Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, whom Axelrod called the NFL’s most outspoken proponent of same-sex marriage.

Kluwe, who incidentally is not gay, equated the struggle for same-sex marriage with that of all the other civil rights struggles and said they’re all cases “where one group is trying to tell another group how to live their life.”

Former NBA player John Amaechi, who is gay, told Axelrod he thinks we’re seeing a new stridence in young athletes, who are saying: “It’s not enough to be neutral. At some point, as a person of great power and influence, as an athlete, you either stand for equality or you don’t.”

When Amaechi was asked if he thought athletes had become more vocal about social issues, he responded that the fact that Chris Kluwe stands out means that not enough athletes are speaking up: “Where are the rest of them? If you are interested in social justice, you can’t pick and choose which parts of social justice interest you.”

In watching that news piece, I realized that the problem for animals in general and Connemaras specifically as far as breed standards and inspections is these athletes can’t talk. They have no way of going on national TV or before a judge and saying, “Enough is enough. You can’t tell us how to live our lives. You can’t tell us what features we can and can’t have. You can’t tell us how tall we have to be or what color our hair must be. We demand social justice, too.”

If humans do not give voice to what needs to be said for animals, who will?

So far, those brave voices have been very few.