The OBBA Responsible Breeder Pledge is a public commitment, not paperwork. Signing it is the easy part. Living it across decades and across hard decisions is what actually makes a breeder responsible. This page covers what the pledge looks like in practice, week to week and decade to decade.
Most of the pledge boils down to four behaviors: take care of your dogs, take care of your puppies, take care of your buyers, and tell the truth even when it costs you a sale. Anyone can do this for one litter. Doing it for ten litters across a decade is the test.
Honest framing.OBBA does not police the pledge. It is a public commitment. If a registered breeder violates it visibly, the buyers, the breed community, and (eventually) the registry's public record will reflect that. Reputation in OEB breeding is built one decision at a time. So is the loss of it.
Health screening on every breeding dog
OBBA does not require health testing for registration. A pledge-honoring breeder tests anyway. The minimum:
- OFA hips and elbows by 24 months on every dog before its first breeding
- Cardiac evaluation by a board-certified cardiologist or by a vet with reproductive certification
- BAER hearing test if there is white in the lineage
- Brucellosis testing before any breeding
- Whatever specific issues your line has shown (eye certifications, autoimmune panels, allergy testing)
Publish the results. OFA results are public; verify them at offa.org. Buyers ask; tell them. Other breeders ask; tell them. Cull dogs from breeding that test poorly.
A written contract on every sale
Every puppy or adult dog leaves your kennel with a signed contract. Contracts and guarantees covers what the contract should include. The pledge-honoring version of this is:
- The dog is identified specifically (registered name, OBBA number, sire, dam, color, sex)
- Health guarantee with defined terms (24 months on hereditary, 72 hours on pre-existing)
- Return clause: the dog comes back to you, at any age, no questions asked
- Spay/neuter terms if the dog is sold on limited registration
- Lifetime support: you commit to being available for buyer questions for the dog's life
Take dogs back, at any age, no questions asked
The single most important pledge commitment. Life happens to your buyers: divorce, illness, financial collapse, military deployment, death. When it happens, the dog you bred should not end up in a shelter or a Craigslist ad. It should come back to you.
In practice this means:
- Your contract explicitly says the buyer returns the dog to you rather than rehoming
- Your buyer knows they can call you, no judgment, when something goes wrong
- You take the dog back without recourse, even years later, even if the buyer cannot afford to refund you anything
- You either keep the dog yourself or rehome it carefully to a vetted home you have selected
Cull from breeding, keep from selling
Cull does not mean euthanasia in this context. It means removing a dog from your breeding program. Some of those dogs stay with you as pets; some go to placement homes on limited registration with spay/neuter terms.
What gets a dog culled from your line:
- Failing health screens (severe hip dysplasia, cardiac defect, fixed temperament issue)
- Producing puppies with the same heritable issue across multiple breedings
- Temperament that is not consistent with the breed standard (chronic reactivity, fearfulness, inability to recover from stress)
- Structural faults that you cannot ethically pass on
A pledge-honoring breeder culls more than a backyard breeder does. The math is simple: you pay the cost of removing a dog from breeding; the breed pays the cost of you not removing it.
Refuse the wrong buyers
Most of your inquiries should not lead to a sale. The pledge-honoring breeder vets buyers as carefully as buyers should vet the breeder.
- Refuse buyers who want a puppy as a gift for someone else
- Refuse buyers who lie about their living situation, fenced yards, or other dogs
- Refuse buyers whose work schedule cannot accommodate a young puppy
- Refuse buyers planning to breed without OBBA-registered kennel and a clear plan
- Refuse buyers who push for full registration when limited is more appropriate
- Refuse buyers who want to take a puppy younger than 8 weeks
- Refuse buyers whose contract concerns flag attempts to bypass standard protections
Most refused buyers find another breeder. That is fine. Your job is to place puppies where they will thrive, not to clear inventory.
Lifetime support for every buyer
Once a puppy goes home, the breeder relationship is just starting. The pledge commits to lifetime support, which in practice means:
- Answering questions promptly when buyers call or email
- Sharing information about issues that emerge in your line so other buyers can monitor
- Recommending vets, trainers, products that you have personally vetted
- Showing up when buyers visit (when reasonable) so the dog can see the breeder again
- Being honest about issues even when the issue reflects badly on your line
- Keeping records of every dog you produce, even decades later, for genetic reference
Be honest in the public record
The OBBA archive is permanent. Dogs you produce stay in the public record, with their pedigree, their photos, and (eventually) their health and structural data. Pledge-honoring breeders publish:
- Health results, even when results are poor
- The dog's actual cause of death when they pass
- Issues that emerged in lines you produced, with enough specificity to help future breeders
- Your role and the parents' roles in the dog's outcome (avoid blaming buyers for issues that were clearly genetic)
Hiding bad results does not protect your kennel; it just delays the cost of those results until they emerge in someone else's litter. A reputation built on honest records lasts decades. A reputation built on hidden records collapses the first time buyers compare notes.
Not a volume operation
Most pledge-honoring OEB breeders produce 1 to 4 litters a year. Some produce 6 in a high year. Anyone producing 8+ litters a year cannot reasonably honor the rest of the pledge: the time required for buyer vetting, lifetime support, and per-puppy socialization scales linearly with litter count.