HERE’S THE THING
When a family negotiates the price, they are actually asking to negotiate the cost of acquiring parent dogs’, their health tests, the effort put into training and evaluating parent dogs, the costs needed to have a clean and healthy environment to raise pups, the sleepless nights of whelping a new litter, and the incredible amount of time and energy spent caring for the pups. A breeder is left to wonder which of these is worthy to skimp on. My answer, none. Producing a well-bred and quality puppy necessitates a higher fee for the responsible breeder to recoup their costs. Reputable breeders believe and stand by the quality of the pups they produce. What health guarantee would be offered if they didn’t? They have put their blood, sweat, and tears of joy (and sadness, because let’s face it Mother Nature answers to no one) into their furbabies and believe their fee reflects the quality.
How do you deal with a dog breeder?
These are broad and general, but hopefully will help anyone who is searching for a puppy.
>>To make a profit, a Commercial Kennel or Puppy Mill has to breed at high volume. Be suspect of a website that routinely lists many puppies and puppies with different birthdates available at the same time and has puppies available all through the year with extra large numbers for holidays such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Also be wary of a breeder with multiple breeds or puppies born at multiple locations, especially if other for-profit elements are present. Volume is only one factor and not always possible to identify with only one or two visits to a website. Numbers by themselves do not tell the buyer what is excessive. Look beyond volume for other characteristics to be sure.
>>The adults from a good breeder are beautiful versions of the breed in good health and condition. The Puppy Mill adults, if you see them at all, are of inferior quality. Puppy Mill Websites focus on puppies often with minimal or no reference to adult dogs at all. Responsible breeders concentrate on the accomplishments of adult dogs, often in multiple venues, such as the show ring, performance, and therapy.
>>Puppy Mills tend to cluster in states without much enforcement of legislated kennel standards and with economies with large agricultural components such as Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, the St Louis-area of Missouri and neighboring Illinois, Oklahoma, Arizona, the Carolinas and the upper Midwest, Wisconsin, Michigan, etc. Responsible breeders are spread out fairly evenly across the country. Families who live near canine commercial breeder centers find it even more difficult to tell a legitimate breeder from a puppy mill.
>> A responsible breeder’s motivations are passion and excellence. Commercial Breeders are running a business and are driven by profit. Commercial breeders can be professional and knowledgeable and/or they can take significant shortcuts to save on expenses while maximizing profit, which negatively impacts the quality of puppies provided to the public. To me, the number and degree of the shortcuts help identify the differences between a good breeder, a professional commercial breeder and a puppy mill. The shortcuts to most watch for are the quality of the adult breeding stock; the breeding practices; the appropriate health screenings for both adults and puppies; puppy rearing environments; how puppy buyers are pre-screened and the breeder’s ethics particularly after the sale. The squalor often associated with the term “puppy mill” is not on my list here, because it is not going to show up on a website. A puppy worth a couple of thousand dollars is presented online by a puppy mill sparkly clean and cute to enhance its value.
>>Puppy Mill breeders will offer show puppies at a greater price. Responsible breeders will not offer show puppies to the general public on a website at all, because they know how rare a true show puppy is and the considerable resources it takes to raise one. They will only make show dogs available to proven people privately and then only with complex detailed show contracts specifying buyer’s responsibilities to dog. Dog Showing is a complex sport. New people need a great deal of help to get started in it. Responsible breeders know this and plan to stay closely involved with any show dog that they place.