Problems
The average pet owner knows less about the pet industries than what he knows about the electric industry. You probably know whether YOUR electricity comes from a dam, a nuclear reactor, coal, or from another source like wind or solar energy.
Actually, I believe the energy industries are simpler to understand than the pet industries. Power mills stay in the same spot - sometimes for over a hundred years.
Puppy mills pop up and die off with the health and monetary situation of their breeder. For example: I know of one dog breeder who wanted to quit having to raise and sell puppies, and I heard than she did quit as soon as she went on Social Security (retirement pay).
Power companies are listed, and usually above board. They are regulated. They are inspected. People know about them, and keep tabs on them.
Dog breeding often is more on the sly. There are more tricks to it than what the average pet owner ever knows.
Electricity is electricity. But a puppy from one breeder is not the same as a puppy from another breeder. Even 2 puppies from the same litter can have different temperament.
Puppies grow and change - not everything is in a puppy's DNA, some of it is how the puppy is raised.
Dogs are used in experiments - some of them very painful and cruel. Some pet dogs end up in a laboritory. Obviously this is not something companies want to talk about.
Because dogs die after about 7 - 16 years, the breeds and types of dogs change with each generation. In our current method of breeding dogs, some dogs, like the mother dogs in puppy mills, and the popular sires from dog shows, have many many litters, but the pet dogs are often spayed/neutered without ever having any offspring. What kind of dogs are we making for the future - the stupidity of our choices is forever. When genes from never-bred dogs become extinct, those genes are gone forever.
There are many different kinds of apples. What if Granny Smith Apples became popular, and for about 20 years that was the only kind of apple grown anywhere. Then people wanted something different. But now no old seeds could be found. We would be stuck with only Granny Smith apples.
That is what happens when a group of dogs are subjected to show standards. Like the dogs that actually herd sheep, ranchers bred whichever dogs worked sheep the best.
Some had upright ears, some had flopppy ears, some had shortish hair, some had longer hair, some were small, some were large, some looked somewhat like sled dogs, some looked somewhat like retrievers, some looked somewhat like coyotes - the sheepdogs had genetic varibility.
But dogs shows want uniformity. "Standards", a written description of the new breed, are written up, and the dogs that don't match that standard are not bred. So it ends up like just having Granny Smith Apples, because that was what was winning in the show ring, so that is what got bred.
As the years roll by, and only the winners are bred, what was a profession of dogs(like sheepherding dogs, becomes a breed, and then it becomes an inbred little family of dogs - like where the Imperial College found that of all the pugs in Britain, the genetic varibility was only what you would expect from 50 individuals.
With inbreeding come health problems, as well as the sameness of just one kind of apple.
You can NOT preserve breeds of dogs. It's not like stuffing old machines into a museum. Animals are meant to evolve into new roles. It is not possible to preserve breeds, and it would not be a good idea even IF it were possible.
