Puppy Diary (Part 2) - Visiting a Breeder

A friend who has two beautiful Kelpies suggested one of the breeder she had bought a puppy from about two years back (Thanks Nikki). I rang up this lady and had a long conversation with her, asking her lots of questions (even ones I felt had obvious answers), assessing her as a potential breeder of my future puppy and it was great to hear quizzing me / vetting me as a potential parent of one of her much loved puppies. It was also fantastic to hear answers to my questions which I would given myself to owners asking me similar questions. She seemed ideal as she told me that she currently had 3 puppies left from a litter of 10 who were now around 11 weeks old. She invited me to meet them and so naturally off I went.

I usually suggest to owners to speak to at least 3 different breeders because this usually allows you to learn more about the dogs and the people who breed them. Why does this matter? Breeders are not all the same, there are some great one but there are also some very bad ones. You want your new family member to have been give the best chance from the word go. As we now understand that the development of a dogs health and behaviour is influenced from everything from the parents behaviour and health to how they are bought up in the first few weeks of life, these thing really do matter!!! This is one reason why I would say a HUGE NO to buying puppies from pet shops! Also if you are going to spend 100’s if not over a 1000 pounds "it doesn’t hurt to shop around" (I know that sounds ‘cold’ when thinking about a puppy but that the sad truth of the matter). There are people out there who primarily want to sell puppies, make money and the animals welfare is secondary, I would encourage you to avoid supporting them.

If you do walk into a pet shop which sells puppies my advice would be to walk back out, seriously if you do happen to walk in and have gone in to purchase some pet food or a kitten, rabbit and fall in love with a puppy (this happens more than you will believe) my advice is (as hard as you find it) walk out! Go home, get on the internet, search for a breed rescue club who rescue and rehome dogs of that breed and talk to them about what the puppy / breed will require. Then if you still feel you want a puppy ask them if they have any that need a new home (you probably find one just as cute as the one at the pet shop). I then suggest you give them a donation (half the money you would have spent in the pet shop) and use the other half to book yourselves into a training class, spoil your new dog... This will be a far better way to spend your hard earned money than buying from the pet shop and you are probably more likely to get lots of better quality advice and long term support. If your not fussed about particular breeds... then your local dog rescue / spca will have lots of puppies and dogs who would really appreciate a new forever home. They come in various shapes, sizes and colours with different characters & personalities. BTW they will probably have lots of rabbits, kittens... so don't buy them from the pet shop either!

While talking about money I should mention that I worked out estimates for buying a puppy (hugely depends on the type of dog you select) , vets bills for first year (vaccination, micro-chipping, neutering, flea and worm treatments…), insurance, Training, feeding, buying toys etc…  before I decided to buy my puppy. You might find this a very useful idea as I often speak to the owners who sometimes forget that there will be many expenses beyond buying the puppy.

Once I got to her house the breeder asked me if I first wanted to go and interact with the puppies by myself (I think she wanted to watch from a window how I was going to interact and behave with them before deciding if I would make a suitable owner of one of her puppies).

They were gorgeous, these 3 adorable puppies ran out and greeted me, I felt like taking them all! What at that moment seemed like an impossible task then dawned on me; I might have to "choose" one of them, if they and the breeder were suitable. I was good and did talk to myself before going to see these puppies. I told myself based on visits to previous breeders that none of these puppies may be suitable for me. You don't have to choose any of them, only go ahead if the breeder is really as good as she sounded on the phone and do the puppies actually look healthy (I have been to some places where the puppies are in a terrible condition and you just want to rescue them all, but that would only be supporting the irresponsible breeder and encourage them to breed more dogs badly), there are other ways for you to help those puppies but buying of them is not usually the answer. It's so easy to fall into the trap of "by the end of this visit I will be leaving with a puppy"... I think when we are in the moment being objective is extremely difficult but there are usually other breeders / puppies out there that might be more suitable.

As some time passed and I played with the puppies, I started to notice little difference between them. One of them had beautiful, the most adorable green eyes and slightly lighter coloured coat than the other two. A real people dog, he just wanted to be with you giving you kisses. He tried the hardest and preserved the longest to stay with me even when I ignored him. His bigger brother was slightly taller and darker and he seemed like a “cool” chilled out dog. He came over said hi, stayed with me while I stroked him but then when I stopped he casually walked away found a stick and chewed on that while the smallest of the three remaining puppies was a very sweet pup who took a little more time to warm to me.

After interacting and observing them as a group, I went back to the kitchen where I talked to the breeder a little more. She seemed happy for me to have a puppy and I was probably happy to have a puppy from her (after I had a chance to interact with the puppies again). After discussing a few things; asking about the parents (she had both the mum and dad), she let me spend some time with them. They were great dogs who had no reported medical problems and as far as I could gather the breed it self was mean't to have no reported health problems common to that breed. The breeder was  against "line breeding" and breeding closely related dogs which I was glad to hear as this potentially lead to problems. The big thing left to do now was to see these puppies individually.

Individually? Is that really necessary?

To be continued…