Post by Jefferson on Nov 27, 2013 23:32:33 GMT -5
My thoughts on why I think the traditional dog game is doomed in the USA
I decided to write this up after seeing more raids on dogmen in the past couple of weeks than Ive seen in quite a while. Something is going on and I’m not sure what, but it’s pretty hot out there.
If I had to pick one point when everything went downhill, it would be when Michael Vick got busted. That caused animal control and sheriffs departments to start looking under every rock for people that match dogs. But its not that simple. Things were going wrong before then.
I don’t remember if it was 2002 or 2003 but when Jay F and Jack Kelly were busted for putting out the original SDJ that pretty much ended the printing of match reports. A few magazines kept on doing it for a little while, but now days pretty much everyone has realized that’s a really bad idea. Not only can it get the people who submitted the match report in trouble, it can take down an entire magazine.
So no match reports get printed. Big deal right? Except that with no match reports printed there is no way for people to know whose dogs are doing well and whose are not. That leaves it to word of mouth and the honor system, neither of which is always reliable. That means a lot of crappy dogs are more easily passed off as world beaters and bred, bred and bred again.
Meanwhile, many of the old timers were driven out by law enforcement and the humane society who were obviously targeting anyone that was well known. That makes sense when you think about it. The big names are the ones that someone outside the game dog world are going to most easily identify and target.
A few of them still hang around, but a lot of flat out gone.
Add to that the laws have gotten damn tougher! It’s been a felony in most states as long as I remember, but it’s even worse now. People are starting to do long sentneces in prison for [] and sometimes even houses and trucks are getting seized and auctioned off by the government. It’s hard to stay in a game when you are worried about your wife and kid having a roof over their head.
When a beginner gets started in 2023, they aren’t going to have old magazines on Ebay that talk about the great dogs of this decade. Books won’t be printed about the Jeeps, Red Boys and Barracudas of the 2010 decade. Maybe they can get something from the Balkans, but that’s not very realistic. The days of knowing the famous dogs that show up several times in your pedigree will be gone for all but the guys at the core of the game.
I can’t help but think all of this will lead to a war of attrition where our numbers shrink until the game is about as muscular as the shadow of a crow that starved to death. It’s fast on that path now. But hey, the only thing that stays the same is that the world always changes. Onto weight pull, treadmill races, hog hunting and conformation shows. I guess that’s the future. Hats off to the guys that try and keep the breed true, but that wont be me. I’m not risking it anymore. Its not worth it to me.
I decided to write this up after seeing more raids on dogmen in the past couple of weeks than Ive seen in quite a while. Something is going on and I’m not sure what, but it’s pretty hot out there.
If I had to pick one point when everything went downhill, it would be when Michael Vick got busted. That caused animal control and sheriffs departments to start looking under every rock for people that match dogs. But its not that simple. Things were going wrong before then.
I don’t remember if it was 2002 or 2003 but when Jay F and Jack Kelly were busted for putting out the original SDJ that pretty much ended the printing of match reports. A few magazines kept on doing it for a little while, but now days pretty much everyone has realized that’s a really bad idea. Not only can it get the people who submitted the match report in trouble, it can take down an entire magazine.
So no match reports get printed. Big deal right? Except that with no match reports printed there is no way for people to know whose dogs are doing well and whose are not. That leaves it to word of mouth and the honor system, neither of which is always reliable. That means a lot of crappy dogs are more easily passed off as world beaters and bred, bred and bred again.
Meanwhile, many of the old timers were driven out by law enforcement and the humane society who were obviously targeting anyone that was well known. That makes sense when you think about it. The big names are the ones that someone outside the game dog world are going to most easily identify and target.
A few of them still hang around, but a lot of flat out gone.
Add to that the laws have gotten damn tougher! It’s been a felony in most states as long as I remember, but it’s even worse now. People are starting to do long sentneces in prison for [] and sometimes even houses and trucks are getting seized and auctioned off by the government. It’s hard to stay in a game when you are worried about your wife and kid having a roof over their head.
When a beginner gets started in 2023, they aren’t going to have old magazines on Ebay that talk about the great dogs of this decade. Books won’t be printed about the Jeeps, Red Boys and Barracudas of the 2010 decade. Maybe they can get something from the Balkans, but that’s not very realistic. The days of knowing the famous dogs that show up several times in your pedigree will be gone for all but the guys at the core of the game.
I can’t help but think all of this will lead to a war of attrition where our numbers shrink until the game is about as muscular as the shadow of a crow that starved to death. It’s fast on that path now. But hey, the only thing that stays the same is that the world always changes. Onto weight pull, treadmill races, hog hunting and conformation shows. I guess that’s the future. Hats off to the guys that try and keep the breed true, but that wont be me. I’m not risking it anymore. Its not worth it to me.