The days of single - family, three - bedroom, one - bathroom houses with
big backyards seem as obsolete as the TV shows they were featured in during the 1950s.
And when I contacted the auction's owner to ask for an interview, he was welcoming and spent an entire day with me, talking openly about his personal history, his current business practices and even taking me to meet the types of breeders he respects — breeders whose dogs, when I got to their commercial - scale farms, were running and playing in spaces as
big as many suburban
backyards and even ballfields, dogs who came up to me to say hello and, in most cases,
seemed just as happy and normal and healthy as my own two spoiled mutts at home.