I have to start this post by mentioning how blessed Meenal and I were a few years ago when we found Russ and Linda at Lokasteinn and ultimately brought Ari into our family. We’ve sung their praises a few times on our blog, and today was a great reminder of how great they are as responsible breeders; to be perfectly honest, they are the hands down the best breeders I’ve ever known. If, or rather when, we decide to get our next Icie, we won’t have to do any searching.  For those of you who haven’t met Ari, here’s a photo of him snuggling with me while I was programming all afternoon.

Ari and Travis' bonding time

That being said, most recently Meenal has been talking about getting another dog.  We’ve talked about several breeds including Tibetan Mastiff, Siberian Husky, Cardigan Welsh Corgi, and Basset Hound.  Mostly due to a limited amount of space, we don’t think it would be best to get a mastiff just yet; as much as I’d love to get one with a big ol’ mane and call it Mufasa.  Similarly, a husky wouldn’t be a great idea.  We have plenty of space and parks around to run Ari or a husky, but in my experience they wouldn’t do as well with our chaotic schedule unless we had a fenced in area just for them.  Well bred Icies like Ari have amazing temperaments and are very forgiving as to when we get to spend time with him.  This leaves us with a short, loveable, floppy skinned basset or a similarly statured corgi.  So we put our ears to the ground to find a breeder so we could start looking at litters.

Today, Meenal found someone selling both German Shepherds and Basset Hounds close to Columbus.  They’re about 8 weeks old and they live about a half hour away so we decided we should go today to see them in case this was a winner.  Let me start with the good, these pups were adorable as most puppies are.  We loved being smothered with all the kisses and even the occasional nip (“Yelp!”).  Ari also got along quite well with all of the dogs, but then again, Ari gets along with eveyone.  I’ve included lots of photos at the end of this post of Ari and me with the pups.

Now onto our experience with the “breeder”.  I put this in quotes because in reality, she is selling these dogs on behalf of others.  To respect her anonymity as best as I can, I’ll call her Jane.  After arriving, Jane basically took us out back and let us loose with the pups telling us to find the one we like and bring him/her inside.  I thought, “OK, this was rather last minute, maybe she’s just really busy at the moment and will be back to chat.”  Sure enough, she did come join us eventually.  Our conversation went something like this, paraphrased for brevity:

Meenal: How did you come by these puppies?
Jane: Well, I wanted to sell puppies both to give people the opportunity to find good, affordable AKC puppies and to lure people away from puppy mills or stores that support mills. Which of the puppies do you like? Or maybe you want to take one of each (basset and German Shepherd) home?
Me: Where are the puppies from?
Jane: We know people who had unexpected litters from the purebreds they have on their farm. They aren’t really setup to find homes for these dogs, so I help them out.
Meenal: What are the puppies’ parents like?
Jane: My husband went to go pick these litters up so we never met them.

At this point, I had really already heard enough.  I left the little sitting room where we had one puppy that Meenal had picked out.  I wanted to let Ari hang out with the other puppies to see if any of the others were more active and that he liked. All of the shepherd dogs followed Ari around, he started to even herd them at one point which was rather amusing. There were two bassets that finally warmed up to him and were following him and wagging their tails as happy as can be. So I grabbed those two guys and brought them back in the sitting room. One was much larger and you could tell would be a big pooch one day, he was also quite active and quiet; so basically my kind of dog. The other was a bit of a whiner, but was much more petite which Meenal liked. Now, while I was gone this lady asked Meenal the only question she asked about us at all, and that was what do you two do. The answer to which she showed no concern to how we’d have time for raise a dog while training as doctors.  She then started to ask again which dog we liked and I finally just told her the larger dog was definitely my favorite, but that we did not feel comfortable taking him home just yet; I hope it’s pretty obvious why I wasn’t comfortable, believe me it had nothing to do with us feeling we could care for the dog.  In fact, for the same reason I want to take every dog I see in a pet store, I wanted to take all of these pups to ensure that they ended up in caring homes.  At this point, she pretty much rushed us out as fast as possible.

If you’ve read this, and you’re completely confused as to why I would be so turned off by this experience let me give you some key tips when searching for a pet.

1. An unexpected litter, means the breeders took no care to make sure they had two appropriate mates that were old enough, healthy enough, and compatible for producing healthy offspring.  Taking those precautions, means it’s safe for the mom to carry and whelp the pups, they don’t have genes that pass on disease or predisposition for high morbidity/mortality, and that they aren’t inbreeding which again predispose their pups to illness.
2. If at all possible, you should most definitely meet the dogs that will be bred for your puppy.  They are the window into the future that will tell you what you should expect from your dog.  Yes, all dogs are unique and they won’t be exactly like their parents, but typically if the parents are wild and unruly, the pup may be difficult to break from that.  Or in Ari’s case, since his mom, Anaegja, is an intelligent, obedient, and compassionate dog, there really hasn’t been much we’ve wanted to “break” him from.
3. You really should never show up, pick your favorite, buy it and leave.  This isn’t like buying groceries or a new t-shirt and hopefully that’s why you’ve chosen to look for a breeder instead of going to a petstore in the first place.  The other piece to this is you’re adopting a life into your family, money shouldn’t be that important especially when it will be expensive no matter what to properly raise and care for that life.  Once we decided that Russ and Linda were the ideal breeders for our Icie and that both Kiska and Anaegja would both make excellent moms, we waited over a year to make sure we got the perfect addition to our family.
4. Finally, and really what drove me crazy more than anything, was that this woman had no concern for who Meenal and I were.  As much as you may not like being questioned about your ability to raise a dog, the fact that a breeder shows concern is probably the #1 thing to look for to know they are a responsible breeder.  They want their dogs to go to the best family that they can find in order to give them a joyful and happy life.  In fact, in the case of Russ and Linda, we still share photos and videos of Ari with them the same way they shared them with us in his first 8 weeks.

Oh well, it was still a good experience for Meenal to have so she knows why we were so lucky with Ari and what we’re ultimately looking for in a breeder!  Also, please do not misunderstand me, all these dogs deserve a loving home that will cherish them! I’m just disappointed in the lack of care that has been put into ensuring that that happens.  Likewise, I’m all for adopting rescued dogs, but ultimately puppy mills and irresponsible breeding in general as well as owners who haven’t done their homework are the reason so many dogs are improperly homed and ultimately need rescuing.

Contrast this experience with our first impressions at Lokasteinn.