Removing Breed Labels

I am not a first follower, I am a cautious follower.  I am the first to admit that I need time sometimes to jump on the bandwagon.  I am never the first to buy the latest technology – I am still a generation behind on my iPhone and iPad and just got Windows 10.  I wait and see, contemplate and then listen and learn from others.  

When it comes to new things in this field as an organization, we will jump in fast and hard and get the movement started, if it makes sense.  I ask a lot of questions and make sure I understand the “why.”  I don’t change things just to change them and even then after a change we track it and determine if it was the right decision. 

So here we are.  Jumping on the bandwagon to remove the breeds off our adoption postings for our dogs. 

This discussion has been going on for many years in this field. We didn’t do it at first because it didn’t make sense to me.  We didn’t have a problem with adopting out pit bull type dogs.  Our community has embraced them after a lot of positive education.  We just didn’t see a problem we needed to fix. 

A colleague said to me that, the public are smarter than that. Won’t they know what you are doing and resent not being told what the breed is?  Would they see that as being disingenuous? Cloak and dagger kind of thing?  Break down relationships and cause problems?

So we didn’t change. We kept guessing many times at what kind of dog breed each dog was and kept the status quo. 

Then, like so many other things that we have changed in this organization I learned of a study by a friend in the field.  After years of conversations and contemplation, these studies have opened our eyes to at the very least give it a try.  What we discovered is that we were not being honest with the general public about the breeds because we really didn’t know what the dogs were, we were guessing.  Our Director of Operations changed our policy overnight. 

Listing a dog’s breed actually hinders adoptions.  Even if you have a breed listed, staff, volunteers and guest always try and second guess your choice.  Also, let’s face it, 99.9% of the time, we are guessing based on what we think the dog is based on his or her looks. 

Recently we had a pure breed collie.  He was a Lassie dog.  100% sure of it and I was in a room with a very smart well educated dog person and they asked:

What kind of breed is he?

He is a Collie. 

Are you sure, he looks small to be a collie?

Even when a something quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, we will still wonder if it is a duck. 

Instead of guessing at what breed these dogs are we will allow the adopters to decide for themselves.

We will let them know that we don’t know, and that we would be guessing.  But it’s always fun to play that guessing game, so we ask them what they think it is?  And we then discuss.  But in the end, it doesn’t matter, what matters is, do they like the dog?  Do they like its personality?  Do they like his/her behavior?  It can even be fun to ask them what kind of dog do they want?  A good dog?  Well we have training classes for that. ;-)

We hope Lynchburg embraces this new idea.

 

Here is a link to the article and the research.  

http://www.maddiesfund.org/assets/documents/Institute/Breed_Labels_Ebook.pdf