Why Is PETA Suing the Largest Breed Registry?
If a dog is gasping just to breathe, something is seriously wrong. French bulldogs, pugs, and other intentionally deformed breeds wheeze, snort, and struggle to breathe because the American Kennel Club (AKC) breed standards prioritize dogs’ appearance over their health. Now, PETA is suing the AKC for profiting from this suffering.
What’s Wrong With the American Kennel Club’s Breed Standards?
The American Kennel Club’s Official Breed Standards—which the AKC describes as “blueprints” for each breed—specifically require deformities that leave many dogs crippled, in almost constant pain, and, in some cases, suffering early death.
Breed standards, used to judge “purebred” dogs at Westminster and other dog shows, are designed to increase demand for dogs rather than promote healthy ones. Registration fees for purebred dogs are a main source of income for the American Kennel Club. The organization earned nearly $38 million from registration fees for dogs and litters of puppies in 2023.
5 Dogs Who Suffer Because of the American Kennel Club’s Breed Standards
1. French Bulldogs Suffer Due to Breed Standards
English bulldogs, French bulldogs, pugs, and other breathing-impaired breeds must have “extremely short” noses and “massive” heads in order to meet the AKC’s Breed Standards. Frenchies and other dogs bred to have unnaturally flattened faces are affected by brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome, which means their snouts are pushed so far back against their skulls that their crumpled, constricted airways make it hard just to breathe. It can be difficult or even impossible for breathing-impaired dogs—like Arnie—to run, play, or even take a single deep breath.
2. Pugs’ Tails Can Cause Chronic Pain
Pugs—also a breathing-impaired breed who are 54 times more likely to suffer from brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome than dogs with a normal snout—are required by the AKC breed standards to have flat faces and curly tails. The curly tail that many pugs are intentionally bred to have is often caused by a malformed, wedge-shaped vertebra called a hemivertebra, which can lead to chronic pain, wobbliness in their hind legs, and difficulty controlling their bowels. The AKC goes so far as to describe a double curl tail as “perfection,” completely disregarding that the curled tail is a result of a spinal deformity.
3. English Bulldogs Often Can’t Reproduce Without Human Intervention
In addition to their unnaturally large, smushed faces, bulldogs, including Frenchies, are also required to have narrow hips according to the American Kennel Club’s Breed Standards. Their features are so extreme that bulldogs often cannot mate with one another, and instead, breeders manually artificially inseminate female dogs to impregnate them. These breed standards mean that more than 80% of pregnant English bulldogs must undergo surgery to deliver puppies, as their hips are too narrow to accommodate their puppies’ unnaturally large skulls. The surgery means putting the mother dog under anesthesia, which is a risk even more dangerous for breathing-impaired breeds.
4. Dachshunds Suffer From Spinal Issues
According to the American Kennel Club, Dachshunds must be “low to ground, long in body and short of leg.” However, these purposefully dwarfed features can lead to painful intervertebral disc disease, paralysis, elbow dysplasia, and other severe health problems. The suffering of Dachshunds is so clearly caused by breeders intentionally breeding dogs to have elongated, injury-prone spines that Germany is now considering a nationwide ban on “torture breeding,” the intentional breeding of dogs with deformities that cause pain, suffering, or harm. Breeders and others in the dog-show industry strongly opposed the bill.
5. Chinese Shar-Peis’ Skin Causes Harm
The breed standards for Chinese Shar-Peis state that they must have a head that is “covered with profuse wrinkles” and “extremely small, rather thick” ears that “lie flat against the head”—all of which make them prone to chronic skin infections, and they suffer from ear infections at twice the rate of other dog breeds. Because of the excessively loose, wrinkly skin around their eyes, even blinking—which dogs do about 13 times per minute—is risky for Chinese Shar-Peis, as the eyelid can turn inside out. The genes responsible for wrinkly skin also cause Shar-Pei autoinflammatory disease, which can lead to pain, high fever, and kidney failure.
PETA Is Taking Action for Dogs—Here’s How You Can Help
It’s for these suffering dogs that PETA just filed a lawsuit against the AKC to require it to stop directing breeders to intentionally breed dogs with extreme, unnatural features that doom dogs to a lifetime of disease and disability.
The best way to help dogs is to never support the breeding industry. Buying a dog from a pet store, breeder, or anywhere else means an animal in a shelter loses a potential family. If you have the time, money, patience, and love to care for an animal for life (which could be more than 15 years), please adopt one from a shelter.
