Pure Dog Talk

Dog Breeders Under Fire: the National Legislative Push Against Responsible Breeders
A sweeping mandatory sterilization bill in Hawaii refuses to die. It's part of a coordinated national campaign targeting responsible breeders and dog sports.Responsible dog owners and breeders across the country are facing a coordinated legislative push that threatens the future of purebred dogs, working dog sports and preservation breeding. Host Laura Reeves breaks down the landscape and brings in Lynn Muramaru, board member of the Pacific Pet Alliance, to detail the fight happening in Hawaii right now.
Hawaii's Mandatory Spay-Neuter Legislation
The Hawaiian Humane Society introduced legislation requiring mandatory spay and neuter of all dogs and cats imported into Hawaii, along with a declaration requirement for all intact animals already living in the state. After more than 200 people submitted testimony — forcing the joint committee to limit speakers to one minute each — the bill appeared to die when it failed to receive its third committee hearing by the March 6 deadline.
But it didn't stay dead. Within days, the Hawaiian Humane Society revived a prior-year bill, gutted it, and replaced its contents with the identical language. The renamed bill has now been referred to a new House committee. All the original concerns remain: mandatory sterilization language, intact animal registration requirements and penalties for non-compliance.
Residents and non-residents alike can submit written testimony through the Hawaii State Legislature website. Registration requires only a name and email address.
The Bigger Picture: A National Strategy
Hawaii is not an isolated case. Laura outlines a deliberate, incremental strategy being deployed by animal rights organizations across multiple fronts simultaneously:
Oregon — A ballot initiative effort is currently underway
The Federal Farm Bill — An amendment to the Greyhound Protection Act has been inserted into the Farm Bill's broadly supported legislation. As currently written, vague language could ban live lure training, open field coursing and controlled bird exposure used in training hunting and sporting breeds — affecting earth dog, barn hunt, lure coursing, Fast CAT, field trials and more

What You Can Do Right Now
Contact your member of Congress and ask them to oppose the Greyhound Protection Act language inserted into the Farm Bill
Submit testimony on Hawaii legislation at the Hawaii State Legislature website
Monitor legislative alerts at the AKC Government Relations page
Engage your representatives at every level — federal, state and local — every session, every bill. Locate your representatives HERE.

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AKC Purebred Preservation Bank: Saving Dog Breeds from Extinction

AKC Board member and PPB Chairman Dr. Charlie Garvin joins host Laura Reeves to explain how the AKC Purebred Preservation Bank is using frozen semen donations to protect low-entry breeds from genetic collapse and extinction.
More than half of AKC-recognized breeds are now considered low-entry, and the number of breeds registering 10 or fewer litters per year doubled between 2022 and 2024. Host Laura Reeves sits down with Dr. Charlie Garvin—AKC Board of Directors member and chairman of the AKC Purebred Preservation Bank (PPB)—to unpack what that means for the future of purebred dogs and what breeders can do about it today.
Dr. Garvin traces the PPB's origins to the Otterhound Club's pioneering reproductive bank, established in 2017, and explains how the AKC stepped in to create a scalable structure any parent club or breeder could use. Now a standalone 501(c)3 affiliate, the PPB is building a long-term safety net for breeds facing dwindling numbers and dangerously narrow genetic diversity.
The conversation gets real fast. Laura and Charlie tackle the elephant in the room—what happens to frozen semen when its owner passes away? Spoiler: in most cases, it gets thrown out. The PPB offers a solution, allowing breeders to donate stored semen now or via bequest, with the PPB assuming storage costs and ensuring the material is preserved under rigorous standards.
Dr. Garvin also addresses the "rival breeder" objection head-on: the PPB isn't competing with active breeders. Its mission is 25, 50, even 100 years out—when today's rivalries are ancient history and a breed may need to be reconstituted from whatever genetic material survives.
Parent clubs play a critical role too, and Charlie issues a direct call to action: submit your breed-specific parameters for both donor dogs and potential breeding bitches now, while your club is still active and your philosophy can guide future decisions—even if the club itself no longer exists.
To learn more or start the donation process, visit akcppb.org and connect with PPB Program Manager Susan Myers.
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Buddy the Beagle, Children's Books and Dog Show Life with Will Alexander

Will Alexander joins host Laura Reeves to talk about his charming new children's book series starring Buddy the Beagle, plus judging, podcasting and the timeless chaos of navigating dog shows without GPS.
Longtime dog show handler and judge Will Alexander returns to Pure Dog Talk with something unexpected in his portfolio: a children's book series. Inspired by his real-life beagle — a 1992 American National winner nicknamed "Bud Man" — Will wrote the first book, What Is My Name? at his kitchen table on a whim. What followed was a growing series including Buddy Finds a Family and Buddy's First Christmas, with Buddy the Beagle and the Easter Egg Hunt coming soon.

The books target the five-to-six-year-old crowd and feature a real child, Savannah Bernardin, Katie and Adam's daughter, as Buddy's companion. Will used AI illustration tools to bring Buddy to life after early attempts with family members proved less than reliable. He also touches on his earlier novel For the Love of Dogs, a coming-of-age story about a boy who discovers the dog show world.

Beyond the books, Will and Laura cover plenty of ground familiar to longtime fanciers. They discuss the state of crop and dock legislation in Canada, where Ontario remains the last province permitting the practices. They celebrate the new AKC-CKC title recognition agreement that will finally show Canadian championships properly on pedigrees. And they reflect on the shrinking but still vibrant Canadian show scene, noting that Western Canadian shows maintain strong entries partly because they draw from multiple provinces.

The conversation winds down with a laugh-out-loud exchange about pre-GPS dog show navigation — road atlases, wrong exits, and dads who somehow just knew how to get places.

Hypnosis for Dog Handlers: Calm Your Mind, Free Your Dog

In this fascinating episode, host Laura Reeves welcomes Radek Blažo, a dog show enthusiast and certified hypnotherapist from Slovakia, whose two passions — purebred dogs and cognitive behavioral hypnotherapy — have collided in a surprisingly powerful way.

Radek's dog journey began at age 15 in Slovakia, when his father took him to visit breeders and he fell in love with Lhasa Apsos. He eventually traveled to Italy to learn the craft of handling and later came to the United States, where mentors like Melissa Pepke and professional handler Barbara Beisel shaped his understanding of the sport. He now works with Tibetan Terriers alongside close friends while maintaining deep roots in the Lhasa community.

After a career pivot into journalism and then into cognitive behavioral hypnotherapy — which he studied through a college in the UK — Radek had a lightbulb moment at a dog show. Watching a clearly skilled handler fall apart in the breed ring, with her anxiety visibly transferring to her dog, he realized he could bridge his two worlds.

The science backs him up. Research from the University of Bristol confirms that dogs can detect human emotions through scent and actually change their behavior in response to stress, fear or sadness. As Radek puts it, you can fake a smile but you can't fake your hormones — dogs smell adrenaline, sweat, and the full cocktail of anxiety whether you want them to or not. The result is a feedback loop Laura aptly calls a "death spiral": the handler gets nervous, the dog reacts, the handler gets more nervous and so on.

Radek's online course addresses this from multiple angles. He begins by teaching the psychology behind show-day triggers — being judged, time pressure, negative self-talk — and walks students through breathing techniques and cognitive tools to interrupt anxious thought patterns. Hypnosis then provides a practice environment where handlers can mentally rehearse calm, focused performances far more often than real show weekends allow.

Laura shares her own story of showing Spinone Italiano Adele at Madison Square Garden, describing the intense mental focus required to hold her sensitive dog together in that overwhelming environment — and how it worked. Radek connects this directly to the tunnel-vision technique he teaches in his course.

His program is available online and accessible worldwide, making it a resource for owner-handlers everywhere who know what to do in the ring but struggle to do it when it counts.

Whether you're a nervous novice or a seasoned exhibitor who still gets the jitters, this episode offers a genuinely new lens on one of the sport's most common — and least-discussed — challenges.

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