Philosophy for Choosing an Ethical Breeder

Moral choices are made every day, ethics is a history of moral choice outcomes. If you strive to make good moral choices, the accumulation of these will eventually become the premises for concluding that you are a good ethical person. 

First, let's decide whether breeding animals for sale can ever be a good moral choice. This is not so clear cut and the answer may surprise you. 

• From a purely human point of view any moral choice which leads to pursuit of personal interests, without interfering in any other human's interests, might be thought of as a good choice, or at least not  bad one. 
• If a society of human beings believes that, on balance, having more animals is a good thing then this would re-enforce the point of view that breeding, so long as it doesn't impede a majority outcome, is good. 
• One might decide the issue from the law, but this is merely legislating the  point of view that the more people who think it is good, or bad, can make a legal system which decides whether it is good or bad. 
• If you have no society telling you good or bad, only your own interests matter. This is a perfectly good point of view providing you have no society interfering in your choice.  

We cannot know for certain how a dog feels about being subjected to the business of selling its offspring. We can assume Nature's directive of requiring the provision of a next generation is what passes for a good moral choice in the natural world. But we cannot say this for dogs where humans interfere with their natural world. Dogs, in philosophical terms, are not moral agents (capable of making their own moral choices). Dogs are moral patients (subjects to the decisions of Humans). Each breeding choice made by a domestic dog is somehow made by the human, whether the offspring are considered accidental or not.

There are many types of moral patients, beings subjected to the moral choices of some human moral agent. The analog which best describes how pets are treated is that of slavery. A slave is an individual: which is bought and sold; which does fairly much what the Master commands; who might be punished,  given love, given food, or neglected, and who has no true recourse or means of gaining a redress of some grievance in their condition on their own accord. 

Pet dogs fit this description perfectly. So if a dog is a moral patient (wild or not) and subject to human moral decision making and, if the treatment of the dog is entirely out of its own control but also entirely within the control of the human Master, then the dog might be considered a slave. If slavery is morally wrong (and it is), then dog breeding cannot be a good moral choice and breeding is immoral every time it is engaged in.  As a moral issue, dog breeding can be thought of as wrongful.

But not all who engage in breeding are unethical since ethics is a balance of good and bad decisions made over time. I have bred Basset Hounds for many years and consider myself an ethical person because, on balance, my pups are given to happy lives as memebrs of families who love and care for them. 

In order to stem the bad that I am potentially doing I must, as a matter of ethics, rigorously decide the moral implications of every step of the process of breeding puppies: 

• I must decide how much breeding a female can be engaged in to do the least harm to the happiness and health of my moral patient (female). 
• I must decide how to treat my female, how much love and attention to give, what environment is suitable, and all other care and feeding decisions.
• I must decide carefully who the pups eventually will go to.
  
• I must insure (as much as practical) that potential families have no obvious potential for trouble. This is a very subjective decision and most families will be found suitable. (But we do turn people down when the signs of potential trouble are presented to us.
• I must, as much as possible, ensure the future care of our pups in their new lives and offer help for unforseen possibilities.
• I must guard against allowing our pups to go to a bad breeder. Puppy Mills exist and they are to be discouraged from doing business whenever possible (even if they are legally allowed). 
• To be thought of as an ethical breeder, I must treat my female dog as I would my own human child.

Knowing this you can make an informed moral choice about whether buying from a Breeder is within your own moral code, or decide which breeders you might wish to engage with (and whom to walk away from). I cannot presume to decide this for you. 

This is how you might decide whether a breeder is an ethical breeder, or not:

• Check references and walk away from those which cannot provide references.
• Visit the kennel and see for yourself
• Decide for yourself if the person you are considering ought to be in this morally challenged business. 
• An ethical breeder will have a female which is treated as family scaled to fit the owner's idea of what good treatment looks like. 
• An ethical breeder will have a good place to bring pups into the world and this only needs to be as good as any natural den the female might choose for herself:
• Reasonably clean
• Somewhat secure
• Safe
• An ethical breeder will have a good health care plan and use it as needed despite the costs.
• Cost to benefit analysis are valid in business, but whether a life is no longer worth living (putting a dog down) should not become a cost to benefit decision.
• An ethical breeder has a means of determining whether a person interested in taking a puppy will be able to care for it.
• An ethical breeder will require certain behaviors and treatments regarding their raising of the puppy into adulthood and ought to have a Contract that is openly available to all prior to any decisions being made. 
• An ethical breeder will control, where possible, the insertion of the puppy into a "bad" environment.
• We look unobtrusably at the environment our pups will be entering when they leave our care.
• A puppy mill is never a good outcome for any dog. These are often breeders who use cages to keep their dogs. A puppy mill often will not contend with AKC requirements, offer AKC registration availablility, and their price will often be unreasonably low. There is often more than one breed being sold by a puppy mill and the breed may change to accomodate the market demand for a temporarily more popular breed.

I, you, or anyone else, cannot say whether you, I, or anyone else, is a good person worthy of respect.  We can only look closely at what we are doing, make a guess at the outcome, and make choices for ourselves. This takes judgment and the desire to be a good person, one who encourages others to follow suit, one who will be a good parent for their own family members and pets.

Guidance:

• If you see something that makes you wonder if you are doing the right thing, do not encourage the "breeder" to continue in the business by buying a puppy. 
• If you see abuse, report it because it is the right choice for you to make. 
• If you see a person breeding dogs for money alone, disregarding the interests (health and happiness) of the animals, or the customers, and walk away. 

But if you see love, people who puts the female's interests ahead of the profit motive, no matter the circumstances (within reason), you might want to encourage it: