Purchasing Your Pooch

Puppies. Cute, cuddly, adorable and loving. Or, expensive, heartbreaking, sickly, frustrating and home-wrecking. Which do you want?

You may not realize it, but a lot of it is up to you.

You have a basic choice to start out with: should you go with a shelter/rescue or a breeder?

There are rescue organizations for every recognized breed. Simply search the net for “poodle rescue” or whatever you are interested in. Shelters and no-kill facilities are often overflowing, especially now, with so many people losing their homes.

If you decide to save a life by purchasing a shelter or rescue dog, before you take the puppy home, before you get attached, take her to a reputable veterinarian. Have the vet do a complete physical, checking stool for parasites, and heart, eyes, hips and knees for genetic defects or disease. Ask your vet how old the puppy is, and how big your vet thinks the puppy will get. In this area (boy are we lucky) this will cost somewhere from $40 to $100, and could save you thousands of dollars and a broken heart later on.

If you decide to buy from a breeder, please be aware that breeders fall into categories, and wow does that have an impact on what kind of puppy you get.

By now everyone has heard of the horrors of puppy mills.

But those puppy millers are motivated by greed, and that’s a powerful motivator. Everyone knows not to buy a puppy from a pet store, but what about the Internet? Oh, here’s the puppy millers’ new best marketing ploy: a dazzling Web site that says all the right things. So, how do you tell?

Easy! Here are some quick questions that will determine what you’re dealing with:

Do they offer multiple breeds? If it’s more than two, beware!

Are they all eager to make it easy on you by meeting you somewhere with your puppy? NO WAY. Never, ever, ever purchase a puppy without seeing where that puppy was born and raised. Is it far away? Ask the breed’s rescue rep for that area to check them out. Do NOT trust the cozy kitchen photos on the breeder’s Web site. Chances are they came from Google images.

Is the breeder a member of the parent club? (For instance, I belong to the American Whippet Club. Every breed has a parent club.) You can contact the parent club for references.

Is the breeder willing to sell a puppy younger than eight weeks? RUN, RUN, RUN AWAY.

Ask what genetic testing was done on the parents, and ask to see the certificates of such.

Does the puppy have AKC papers? If the “breeder” offers any other type (CKC, APBR) run away. The puppy millers made up their own breed “registries” when they lost AKC privileges due to convictions of cruelty or neglect. The only thing those papers are good for is as a house-training aid.

In addition to puppy mills, a lot of puppies come from “Back Yard Breeders.” Joe and Sally next door have a wonderful dog. They want to give their children a close up and personal lesson about reproduction. Or they just didn’t get little Fifi spayed in time and let her out to make whoopee with the neighbor’s Bassett Hound.

Ask the same questions. Have the parents had genetic testing? Mixed breeds don’t have hybrid vigor, they have the genetics of both parents. Do the good, but dangerously uneducated folks want to sell/give this puppy to you at less than eight weeks? NO WAY! Mother dogs and puppy siblings teach valuable lessons from six to eight weeks — bite inhibition, for one thing.

The pups’ immune systems are too immature to be thrust into the real world. And their little bladders and poopers can’t hold for… well, shoot. In many states, it is against the law to sell puppies less than eight weeks of age. Against. The. Law. (I’m shouting a little bit here. Heck, I’d run naked right down Broadway if I thought it would make people listen!)

And just a word on the designer breeds. You know, the doodles and puggles and peekipoos. Ask all of the same questions. Most of these mixed breeds are created by folks looking to make a buck, not looking to make a great dog for life. If you want a designer dog, please, please, please, go the shelter/rescue route.

Reputable breeders, those who truly care about the animals they are creating, will make you sign a contract. If at any time you cannot keep the dog, you must return the dog to its breeder. Period. No reputable breeder wants one of their dogs to end up in a shelter, or God forbid, a puppy mill.

You don’t want to fall in love with a puppy only to be faced with the choice of a crippling vet bill or a crippled dog, or a dog with a compromised immune system or behavior problems. There are lots of wonderful puppies out there. You just need to do a little homework.

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