To think the price of animals have gone up massive??

[Mummypig2020]

Yes I know, people should adopt, Don’t fund back yard breeders etc. And I’m no way buying a pet, but sometimes I like to have a mooch on pets4homes like I do on right move.

I can’t find one dog under 1k!! Labradors for £1.5k. Mixed breeds for a ridiculous amount.

Wtf? Do people really pay that much?

The cheapest dog in my area is a cocker spaniel for £1600.

Yes, tbh the likelihood of dogs coming back up for sale will be increased now as people don't realise the work that goes into having a puppy or dog.

Lucy's law states that any puppy under six months must be returned to the breeder but people aren't adhering to this even though it's the law now. This should theoretically protect puppies from being sold on.

The problem for breeders I was told is that unless they match the current market price then they run the risk of having their pup sold on for a profit. I heard of a case where someone offered to buy a whole litter for 1.5k per pup to flip the pup and resell for 3k, it's very sad.

Who remembers the good old days early 2000s and late 90s as a teen going to the pet shop. And seeing the hamsters for about 3 quid, goldfish 50p each and a rabbit for a tenner. My dad was a collector of birds and we had massive aviaries in the garden, chocker block with zebra finches, cockatiels and budgies. We even had a bird named scruffy git. Nowadays i wouldn't be surprised if a hamster is 20 quid and rabbits 50 quid. And sont get me started on the cages. Small things double the price of the animal. I'd only get a pet if I could keep a huge run for it in the garden.

After 20 years of having rescue dogs, we bought our first puppy in September, he cost £850, good pedigree, breeders had both parents, lots of pictures sent, pups were wormed, chipped vaccinated. We were very happy with the dog and the breeders.

We were looking for a sister for him, prices are now £2000 - £2500. Crazy prices.

One of dh's staff has just paid £1800 for a cockerpoo.

We paid £600 last year for a 5th generation pedigree springer and they've forked out 3x the price for a mixed breed.

I met a woman last week while dog walking who had what she claimed was a pedigree cocker but actually was a quarter lab. She had absolutely no clue what she was doing.
No idea about the breed (didn't think it would need much exercise) or dog ownership in general.
She actually believes that she can train the dog to not sniff other dogs bums!

I wanted to give her my number so she can let me know when she doesn't want the dog anymore and I'll take it in.

Too many people have got dogs on a whim during lockdown and I've increased my monthly donation to a local rescue centre because I think they'll be needing it soon.

@PileofToss

I’ve never understood why anyone would buy a puppy, there are hundreds of thousands of dogs that need homes.

It’s horribly sad that they sit there for often years with no loving home, and people go out every day spending thousands on puppies (often “cross breeds” which are actually mongrels 😂)

Because shelters have massive lists of rules that prevent adoption - you can't have kids, or cats, or a job, or another dog, or a lack of experience, or a lack of experience with that breed, or your garden's the wrong size or you're not rural enough, or be near a road, nope doesn't count if someone else walks the dog, blah blah...

I'd love to rescue. But I have kids so rescues won't even respond.

We've been discussing getting a dog for the last year as our old boy passed 2 yrs ago. We cannot adopt due to not meeting the criteria but there's no way I'm going to line the greedy pockets of breeders right now.
I envisage rehoming centres being so over run and feel desperately sad that we don't meet the required criteria.

The rules and regulations that come with adopting a dog in the UK make it almost impossible if you want a family dog.

We currently do have a dog, but if we were to get a rescue, we’d try a Greek adoption centre. The rules aren’t as stringent and they usually charge a flat fee of between £300 - £500 for checkups and passage to England.

We’ve visited rescue centres on our holidays to do volunteer work and I could honestly take all the dogs home. One day...

@SurreyHillsGirl a mongrel is any result of crossing different breeds or types. "Crossbreeds" are a fashionable way of labelling mongrels, that's all. They're the exact same thing, but people who are snobby about dog breeding like to use crossbreeds to describe certain specific mixes instead of mongrels. It's all just marketing.

If the demand is there, the price will go up, end of. The reality is that there are many people whose life has changed in the last 4 months and many are now in a situation they can offer an animal a good home when couldn't before, mainly those who had it confirm they can work from home on-goingly.

I don't think it's inevitable that many more dogs will end up in shelters. This will always happen because there are idiots who don't think forward, but it might actually go the other way.

a mongrel is any result of crossing different breeds or types. "Crossbreeds" are a fashionable way of labelling mongrels, that's all. They're the exact same thing, but people who are snobby about dog breeding like to use crossbreeds to describe certain specific mixes instead of mongrels. It's all just marketing.

Exactly. Don't know why people care to be honest, two different purebreeds together make a mutt essentially, but it's probably healthier than any pure puppy the dogs would have bred otherwise. Less vet bills, what's the complaint? Oh right, because it doesn't have a fancy name, of course! Hang on then let's call it a schnoopzeedoodle and add on 2 more zeros to the price tag, happier? Yep!

Jesus Christ. Just looked, we bought a small pedigree dog a couple of years ago after being on the breeders waiting list for ages. £900, which was top whack but the breeder was well known and highly recommended. Just looked on pets 4homes (which I would never buy off anyway) £3k for the same breed! Wtf???

We were discussing another one, will wait til next year when rescue centres will be bulging at the seams. Do people think lock down is going to last 15 years?

Makes me glad I keep invertebrates as pets instead. The prices for puppies are insane! I just received a juvenile tarantula this morning - which will live up to 30 years as a female - for £35. Inverts are the way to go, people.

Iv been looking for a Cavapoo, just to look and every breeder on their website says they are booked up until next year because of demand!

We spent around eighteen months looking for a rescue dog ( there was always something wrong with them or they needed large gardens/fields etc... ) and finally found one, only to get a follow up phone call from the charity’s dog behaviourist informing us that the poor dog had some severe behaviours ( which weren’t evident during our visits) which meant he needed to be rehomed with an expert!
Most of the dogs at these shelters were wholly unsuitable for most people and so very many were aggressive.
I agree with a PP who said that some staff at these places seemed very snooty and looked down on us.
One rescue place interviewed us on the phone for a very long time and then sent someone to do a home check, which was fine, but the home checker did another interview and told us that unless we fed a potential dog with a specific type of food then we wouldn’t be allowed to have one of their dogs.
We ended up buying a puppy from a breeder.

@RincewindsHat
*@SurreyHillsGirl a mongrel is any result of crossing different breeds or types "Crossbreeds" are a fashionable way of labelling mongrels, that's all They're the exact same thing, but people who are snobby about dog breeding like to use crossbreeds to describe certain specific mixes instead of mongrels. It's all just marketing

No dear. The term ‘crossbred’ is not a marketing label don’t be daft. A crossbreed comes from two purebred parents of two different dog breeds. A mongrel dog or mutt is made up of a mix of breeds – three or more.

Not sure where your aversion of crossbreeds stems from but at least try and be correct when spouting ‘facts’

@Mummypig2020
@amusedtodeath1
Greyhounds are great dogs to rehome great with kids don’t need a big garden or crazy amounts of exercise most come from good trainers and have been treated well, branches of the Greyhound Trust all over the U.K.

This is excellent news - a) it may make people think seriously about the huge commitment a dog entails and b) may put scummy breeders out of business.

The dictionary definition of a mongrel is: "a dog whose parents are of different breeds" hence crossbreeds are mongrels.

@SurreyHillsGirl Trying to be patronising only works if you're actually right.

It's cute that you copied & pasted from a Wikipedia article that was probably written by a breeder with a vested interest in distinguishing between mongrels and crossbreeds (aka, not reliably "facts"), but why don't you take your Google skills to the next level and search "define: mongrel".

You'll see the dictionary definitions of a mongrel, which is taken as fact. Guess what? Crossbreed and mongrel are the same thing. Crossbreed is a marketing term made up by people flogging overpriced mongrels to people probably like you who think their precious hypoallergenic cross is somehow superior to 'mongrels', even though what you have is an overpriced mongrel. HTH.

You know what? If I wanted to spend 4K on a mongrel, I would. Why is it anybody else’s business, precisely?

Rescues will be full once everyone's back at work properly and realises they can't cope with a stressed dog who chews the sofa while they're out

This. There will be plenty of young dogs to be had when people go back to work, many of them still young and from loving families, just ones that were thoughtless and shamefully ignorant naive about the long term requirements of a pet.

If a rescue won’t let you adopt that’s a pretty good indication that you shouldn’t have that type of pet. Animals shouldn’t be cheap consumables. Unfortunately the penalties for people who neglect pets aren’t severe enough so you end up with a lot of entitled arseholes who think they should be able to buy a lab puppy for £20 and keep it in a tiny flat with few walks and limited training, socialisation, stimulation etc. until they get bored of it and give it to a shelter. Dogs in particular tend to be neglected this way because their needs are so high and their image so desirable. Of all the people that I know with dogs only two treat them decently, it’s deplorable.

Wrong ATale

Plenty of you wouldn’t be allowed to adopt your own children either.

People are stupid enough to pay it, so people will charge it. The lab rescue that one of my dogs came from says they’re expecting a big influx in dogs soon.☹️

“I’ve never understood why anyone would buy a puppy, there are hundreds of thousands of dogs that need homes.”

I can’t find one, I’ve been looking for about a year, so I’m now on a breeders waiting list as well.

It’s my cat that’s the issue, it’s really rare to find a dog that’s active enough for me and is ok to live with a cat.