When it comes to dog ownership in the United States, we’ve seen the writing on the wall – and it isn’t good: supplying the public with healthy, carefully-sourced dogs is becoming more and more difficult each year… and sooner than we think, it may be impossible for pet lovers to get the types of dogs they want.

If you aren’t a breed enthusiast or actively engaged in the pet marketplace, the idea of a “dog shortage” must sound counterintuitive, if not patently absurd. After all, for more than three decades, there has been a laser-hot focus on rescue and shelter dogs, and the importance of ending dog overpopulation. We’ve been told repeatedly that the United States has dogs of all shapes and sizes practically coming out of its ears. So, if you want a dog, you don’t have to worry. Even if you are interested in a very specific breed, you should be able to find it – after all, we have been reassured time and again that 25% of shelter dogs are purebreds. 

Of course, that’s not really the case. Our research, backed by a DNA survey of shelter dogs puts the number of purebred dogs in shelters at 5%, and if you want a specific breed from a reputable, in-home hobby breeder, be prepared for a long wait! If your search is more generalized – say, “40-80 pounds, under 10 years old, breed unimportant” – you still have options to choose from today, but the overall number of dogs from observable and regulated sources is dropping precipitously. Breeds that we grew up with are endangered.

In an open letter to the Pet Industry, Petland raises a major alarm for the industry. While NAIA has been focused primarily on the type and disposition of dogs available, and the destructive foolishness of using foreign dogs to import our way out of the supply gap, Petland, as a business, is focused on supply and demand, and their grim numbers raise a lot of questions.

The math doesn’t look good. According to the best sources there are 87.3 million dogs in the United States right now. Assuming a lifespan of 10-11 years, around 8 million of these dogs leave the world each year. This means that in order to replace our current dog population each year, we need nearly 8 million new dogs. Note that this is a conservative estimate: as a trend, dog ownership is growing in popularity, and our own surveys demonstrate that both dog owners and non-dog owners plan on getting more dogs in the not-so-distant future.

Currently, our “lost” dogs are being replaced each year through a variety of sources. Best estimates suggest that rescues and shelters provide about 2.2 million dogs; commercially regulated breeders and in-home hobby breeders combined provide about 2 million dogs; and an additional 1.5 million dogs enter the U.S. pet market each year through foreign importation. This adds up to 5.7 million dogs – leaving a shortfall of about 2 million dogs that is made up of dogs received from friends and family, oops litters, and dogs from various foreign and domestic rescue transport channels that weren’t recorded in the standard rescue/shelter numbers already referenced.

Thirty-five years ago, the dogs that passed on each year were naturally replaced by dogs that were produced in the US, often by local and/or regulated sources. They were bred by in-home hobby breeders, by pet breeders selling direct or through retail outlets to consumers, and by casual breeders. Regional animal shelters also supplied a large percent of dogs placed in their communities as well. 

Unfortunately, the number of dogs relinquished to shelters during that period severely outnumbered the available homes for them and the excess wound up being euthanized. Solving that problem became a nationwide, mainstream goal. Spay/neuter programs and legislative campaigns to mandate neutering and restrict breeding began flooding legislatures in the late 1980’s. Breeder regulations and bans also took aim at improving the care of breeding dogs. Together, thousands of federal, state, and local laws were passed to achieve these related goals.

Today, 35 years later, 85% of owned dogs are neutered, the number of local dogs entering shelters is a fraction of what it was, and the euthanasia of adoptable shelter dogs has ended in most parts of the country. Legislative restrictions and bans on breeding have greatly lowered all local sources, the number of dogs produced by casual breeders, by small in-home breed enthusiasts, and by large-scale regulated breeders selling through pet stores (the overwhelming majority of whom have dramatically improved the care and living conditions of their dogs in the interim); private shelters in many parts of the country receive only a tiny fraction of their dogs from local sources.

Simply put, the unintended consequence of our success in dealing with shelter dog euthanasia rates and improving animal care standards in breeding kennels comes with a price tag: a general reshaping and downgrading of the US dog marketplace, an unacceptable level of dog health and welfare problems, and consumer risks.

Unfortunately, the greatly reduced number of puppies being born in the US not only reduced shelter dog populations and euthanasia, it also reduced the number of healthy, properly bred and raised dogs available to American consumers. The result is that the dogs that die each year can no longer be replaced with dogs from local, reputable, observable, and/or regulated sources. Today, they are being replaced by dogs that are transported across state lines or from foreign countries – virtually unregulated – to meet the demand in areas where few desirable local dogs are available for sale or placement. In many cases they come from unregulated shelter and breeding operations that look like the ones we spent 35 years eliminating and they may even arrive carrying diseases and parasites (some transmittable to people) that the adopters or purchasers must deal with to live safely and humanely with the dog.

Currently, USDA regulates and oversees breeders with 5 or more breeding females whose puppies are sold indirectly (sight-unseen) rather than face-to-face. The goal is to assure that the welfare of animals in breeding operations and the housing they are kept in meet minimum standards. To assure this oversight, USDA regulates the entire chain of supply from breeders to transporters to pet stores.

Meanwhile, the mass movement of unregulated rescue dogs in commerce, which is operated through various rescue transport methods, has become today’s leading animal welfare challenge. Although data from pet industry sources (including animal shelters and rescues) is notoriously inaccurate, numerous surveys including ones conducted by NAIA report that rescues and shelters are now transferring more dogs in commerce than all traditional purpose-bred sources combined and yet retail-rescue and retail-sheltering remain virtually unregulated.

It’s time for the pet industry, businesses, veterinarians, dog breeders and owners, public health officials, and the appropriate federal, state, and local agencies to step up. If stakeholders in dog health, welfare, breed preservation and the canine-human bond don’t step up, the special relationship Americans of our generation have enjoyed with their dogs will not be available to the next generation. It’s time to make your voices heard on this issue.