To wonder why on earth people still buy from puppy farms?

[hennaoj]

Why oh why do people buy puppies from the likes of Kelly's Kennels and Douglas Hall Kennels?

This is where the poor puppies come from. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-32308177
Surely people know that you need to see the puppies mother before buying? Never mind the fact that these puppies won't be dna health tested.

Well I don’t have a dog, but if I decided to get one I would have the following issues:

rescue:
*don’t know the background and wouldn’t want to risk them around kids.

breeder:

• don’t want a pure bred dog because I believe they suffer more health issues, and I fancy a crossbreed in terms of size, temperament, coat and exercise needs. I know dog purists don’t agree with ‘designer dogs’ but let’s face it they are popular for a reason.

So then I would struggle to know where to buy a dog from because crossbreeds aren’t in the kennel club are they and they aren't working ot show dogs, so it’s very difficult to know where is legit.

It is ignorance more than being dreadful people.

If puppy farmers are keeping their dogs in dreadful conditions, they tend not to advertise this fact! Family homes are often used as ‘fronts’ to trick people into thinking they are getting a dog from a loving home, I doubt many people literally go into a stinky dark warehouse and pick out a puppy from a wire cage to take home. They go to great lengths to make it look like they aren’t like this. Hence people get fooled. Plus places like Kelly’s kennels are legal and look legit, which is enough for lots of people.

The onus needs to be on greedy breeders to charging £3,000 for mongrels. They’re pricing good people out the market.

Yes, to all intents and purposes, it is all fine. Puppy farming, factory farmed meat, sweatshop labour in fashion, none of these are illegal, none of it is immoral (in a materialistic world greed is moral). People want, need (again under materialism there is no difference between these) cheap meat, cheap clothes, cheap dogs, and don’t care in any meaningful way how they’re produced.

Does the government need to tell us that keeping hundreds of breeding dogs locked up to breed throughout their productive years is wrong. That tying a bitch in a breeding stand to effectively be raped repeatedly is wrong?

Of course you wouldn't imagine the things puppy farmers do to hide the real breeding conditions of the dogs they sell, none of us do but you said you would research like mad so you would be as prepared as you can be to look out for the signs of dogs for sale from puppy farms. I only know a little a puppy farming because of the research I did when thinking about getting a dog.

There are some very obvious red flags with puppy farmers, things to look out for include multiple breds of puppy from the same place, the same phone number appearing on multiple puppies for sale ads, the same breeder ALWAYS having puppies for sale, willingness to hand over the dog in a layby or service station, inadequate knowledge of the breed, no offer of follow up advice if needed or willingness to take the dog back if the new owner can't keep it. It's not fool proof but it certainly helps you avoid the most obvious unscrupulous breeders.

One of the new challenges for reputable breeders and ethical buyers is the risk of dog theft. Breeders will sometimes keep the puppies in a different place to where they sell them from and they may be very careful about sharing location information to reduce the risk of dog thieves finding the dogs. Unfortunately this replicates the behaviour of puppy farmers but the motivations are very different.

@Winterscomingagain the government is clearly comfortable with puppy farms and does not see any reason to change it, rightly or wrongly. As long as puppy farms are legal, people will continue to buy puppies from them, on the basis that it can't be that bad or the government wouldn't allow them. If you really feel this strongly about the subject you should lobby your MP to raise the standards.

People that are into dogs don’t dislike cross breeds because they’re purists, they dislike them because most of them are badly bred... and because there’s rarely any point to having them over one of the original breeds.

Cross breeding doesn’t get rid of many health issues and careless breeding can cause more. Things like size, coat, temperament, coat and exercise needs are less predictable with a cross - what you’re doing is basically playing roulette with every trait from both breeds.

and... they’re a puppy farmers wet dream, get a load of bitches of any breed you fancy and a make poodle and voila hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of puppies that you can tell people any old rubbish about, like that they’re hypo allergenic and have hybrid vigour.

I think it’s all the reasons posted but also due to manipulation by the sellers who will say anything to put the buyers mind at rest.

I think unless you have specifically looked up the red flags on buying from bad breeders, the ‘blarney’ from the sellers will keep them hooked.

The sellers will have a convincing story of why they can’t meet the mother, or need to meet in a car park. Some people find it very hard to say things like, “no, I won’t meet in a car park, or why do I need to pay by cash?”

The sellers will understand all the psychological tricks and foibles to fool people wanting to make such an emotional purchase.

Yes, my first thought might be to say they are thick. But people who aren’t cynical old gits like me, get fooled and taken advantage of by others all the time.

@Winterscomingagain

Does the government need to tell us that keeping hundreds of breeding dogs locked up to breed throughout their productive years is wrong. That tying a bitch in a breeding stand to effectively be raped repeatedly is wrong?

No, but it's not unreasonable to expect Government to enact laws and regulations to stop abuses, and to properly police it.

It’s definitely fed by a culture of convenience and wanting something immediately. I’m sure this time of year adds more problems to the mix and would be wary of any ‘breeder’ putting in their advert any mention of being ready for Christmas (which I have seen before).

I volunteer for a rescue and see so many times various things which probably fuel this awful practice such as people expecting a rescue dog for free or next to nothing, wanting it immediately or expecting it to be completely trained. People have complained about having to make the effort to fill out adoption questionnaires before to check their lifestyle matches the dog. When you advise there isn’t a dog that fits their criteria yet and go back to them when there is, you often get the response that they just quickly bought a puppy.
People are quick to complain about rescues but there are lots of amazing ones who will consider children and other circumstances, it’s again, just being prepared to do your research and being bothered to make some
effort. These type of people are the same ones who want to give up a dog soon after because it’s hard work to train, they’re moving house or having a baby now and ‘we don’t have time to meet their needs’.

Rescues have saved dogs from awful cruelty and need to be sure they’re going to be loved and cared for, than to risk that again.

I always gauge a good starting point as a breeder almost interviewing you about your life and what you can offer the dog. They don’t come across too keen straight away.
Knowing what a mum dog should look like after birth and how the puppies interact with her, rather than just a clean and perfectly healthy dog they don’t know and have no interest in. A willingness to put a contract in place and aftercare like wanting to see photos of the dogs growing up and evidence that they have kept a puppy before or plan to (some of this only apparent after the sale admittedly).

I hope anyone (rightly) outraged about puppy farms shows the same compassion towards other farmed animals whose only end to their suffering is a brutal slaughter.

VegMam

Already discussed, read the thread.

Thank you Henna - wow, that's awful.

A colleague got a puppy from what she believed was a legit place - it was hundreds of miles away, when she got there she had suspicions, but took the puppy anyway.
"If it was a puppy farm, I was rescuing it anyway".

Which obviously isn't the point. I see the worn out breeding females that end up in rescues.

Yes, one of those sites often has in the crossbreeds' descriptions "so the puppy has the best characteristics of both breeds!"
How can they know? They could just as easily have the worst characteristics of both parent breeds.

I accidentally bought from a puppy farmer. We had correspondence for weeks beforehand including video calls, met at a "naice" family home with kids present, our puppies "mum" and siblings were there, we saw paperwork and healthchecks etc. We were given a contract, blanket smelling of "mum" and puppy food and milk that she said puppy was settled on.
Imagine my horror a year later when I see this woman "exposed" on Facebook as being a puppy farmer and that it was all a front, it was someone else's house that was used and paperwork was faked!
I had never bought a dog before and maybe I was naive but I honestly thought I'd done due diligence. The only red flag I had at the time was that when I went to bank transfer the money, my banking app said the name on the account didn't match. She explained this as she'd just got married and not changed it yet. As I was cautious, she said to first just transfer 1p so she could check it was the right details. She then showed me her phone to confirm it was the right account before I transferred the rest.
Luckily, our dog is now 3 and is physically and psychologically healthy but I realise most aren't.

All of the above, but also...

"It's just a dog."

...usually from parents who've bought their kids a dog after promising it to get some kind of cooperation from the children in question.

Otherwise known as "wilful and deliberate ignorance".

As for the breed question...we only have rescue dogs, but specifically Chihuahuas and Akitas, because we have lots of experience with them and they generally have very breed-specific needs (both in terms of health and socially). And there are tons of them in rescues, because people get them as cute puppies and have absolutely no idea what they're doing, so they end up abandoned when they're out-of-control adolescents/adults.

You left with working dog breeders, a few do cross breeds such as sprockers. I know a lady who is crossing Rough collies with welsh sheepdogs and hers will be very good but definately need a proper job!

Pure breds can be very healthy, especially if health tested via dna. You know what you are getting with a purebred, with a cross breed it could take more after one parent than the other. The coats on doodles can be an absolute nightmare to groom.
Temperament wise I wouldn't touch a farmed puppy with a barge pole, you'd have absolutely no idea on the father or mothers temperament.

You don't buy a pig and bring it into your home, you are buying the meat. There is also a choice of better produced meat that is free range/higher welfare.
You run a risk buying a farmed puppy temperament wise, a huge risk if you have small children. There's also the very big vet bill risk. The risk of a dog that is going to be hard to live with. You minimise those risks greatly by buying from a reputable breeder or going to a good rescue.

@tabulahrasa that is utter, unadulterated horse shit. Purists my eye. A cross breed (or mongrel) is so often FAR healthier than an over bred “pedigree”. Almost 50% of pedigree daschunds have to have spinal surgery and have you LOOKED at a “pedigree” GSD, Pug, French Bull Dog, Bull Dog (add the names of so many different “breeds”) So many just cannot live normal lives, with normal walks or changes in temperature without significant surgical intervention. Do your research, because those are FACTS!!!

I agree with buildingthefuture.

My friend has a rescue who spent her life in a cage being forced to breed on a puppy farm before being rescued. It's horrible.

But you don’t automatically get rid of the health issues by cross breeding.

Cross a pug or frenchie or anything else like that and it might be healthier, but it might not - because those issues are not a single gene that you can breed out by crossing with an unaffected dog.

Some of the most common crosses are between dogs that share the same health issues, so they’ve just as much chance of getting them as if they were pedigrees.

The way to improve health is to carefully breed healthy functional dogs that have passed health tests, something that is very very rare with people breeding crosses.

The fact that some breeds are in a terrible state and shouldn’t be being bred from if you’ve any ethics doesn’t automatically make a labradoodle, cockapoo, jug or whatever cross is currently popular any healthier than it would have been if the breeder had bred 2 random untested pedigree dogs, in fact that what they are doing, they’re breeding 2 random untested pedigree dogs together, just not of the same breed.

There are some breeds that could benefit from outcrossing, but they’re not the ones people are commonly crossing.

I live quite locally To KK. I can spot one of their puppies a mile away. They are always scared of the world. It's horrific.
I've spoken to people and told them to avoid places like that but often they don't care. They've decided they want a puppy and will not wait. I hate people.