But in Japan, the sales spikes are far more extreme. The kennel club says unethical breeders try to cash in on the booms, churning out puppies from a small number of parents. While many breeders have stuck to healthy mating practices, the lure of profits has attracted less scrupulous breeders and the proliferation of puppy mills.
Some veterinarians and other experts cite another, less obvious factor behind widespread risky inbreeding in Japan's dog industry — the nation's declining birth rate.
As the number of childless women and couples in Japan has increased, so has the number of dogs, which are being coddled and doted upon in place of kids, experts say. In the last decade, the number of pet dogs in Japan has doubled to 13 million last year — outnumbering children under 12 — according to Takashi Harada, president of Yaseisha, a publisher of pet magazines.
"Households with few or no children are turning to dogs to fill the void," he said. "For a dog to be part of the family, it has to be unique and have character, like a person."
Indeed, many of these buyers want dogs they can show off like proud parents. They are willing to pay top yen, with rarer dogs fetching higher prices. Coveted traits like a blue-tinged coat are often the result of recessive genes, which can determine appearance only when combined with another recessive gene.
Inbreeding is a quick way to bring out recessive traits, as dogs carrying the gene are repeatedly mated with their own offspring, enhancing the trait over successive generations.
When done carefully, some types of inbreeding are safe. But in Japan, too many breeders throw aside caution in search of a quick profit, experts say. In these cases, for every dog born with prized colors, many more appear with defects, also the product of recessive genes.
"The demand is intense, and so is the temptation," said Eiichi Kawanabe, one of the country's top Chihuahua breeders. "There are a lot of bad breeders out there who see dogs as nothing more than an industrial product to make quick money."
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