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Review Paper | Veterinary Sciences | Volume 15 Issue 7, July 2026 | Pages: 1131 - 1145 | India
Bred to Suffer: Unregulated Dog Breeding in India and Its Consequences for Companion-Animal Health - A Review, with a Field Case Study of Canine Distemper
Abstract: India has become one of the fastest-growing companion-animal markets in the world, and this expansion has been accompanied by the rapid and largely unregulated growth of a commercial dog-breeding industry. This paper examines the commercial logic of that industry- the repeated breeding of unfit parents in order to preserve a ?pure? phenotype, the maintenance of breeding animals in insanitary conditions, and the sale of unvaccinated puppies separated from their dams prematurely- and argues that these practices generate predictable, and frequently fatal, disease in the animals that reach Indian homes. After outlining the economic and legal context, the paper focuses on the two viral diseases most closely associated with the trade, canine parvovirus (CPV2) and canine distemper virus (CDV), reviewing for each the causative agent, its transmission, its pathogenesis, the clinical presentation, and reported survival rates, drawing on both international veterinary literature and Indian epidemiological studies. It then considers the dermatological disease- most commonly demodicosis with secondary pyoderma- that characteristically accompanies the immunosuppressed puppy, and closes with a first-hand field case study of a single dog that died of canine distemper, in which much of the paper?s argument is realised in one animal. The central contention is that these deaths are not random misfortunes but the predictable outcome of a systemically flawed model of production. The paper concludes by considering prevention and policy in the light of the WSAVA vaccination guidelines and India?s existing, but largely unenforced, animal-welfare legislation.
Keywords: unregulated breeding, puppy mills, backyard breeding, canine distemper, canine parvovirus, demodicosis, maternally derived antibodies, vaccination, animal welfare
How to Cite?: Naisha Athavia, "Bred to Suffer: Unregulated Dog Breeding in India and Its Consequences for Companion-Animal Health - A Review, with a Field Case Study of Canine Distemper", Volume 15 Issue 7, July 2026, International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR), Pages: 1131-1145, https://www.ijsr.net/getabstract.php?paperid=SR26713192510, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21275/SR26713192510