In Defense of Buying a Dog

I grew up in a rural neighborhood in eastern Montana. No one’s yard had a fence (except for the horse pastures);there were no leash laws, and the dogs tended to follow the kids where ever they went. Sound like this should have been a mecca for mutts, but it wasn’t.

We had a German Shepherd. Next door, my best friend had a Vizsla. Across the street was a Husky. Behind them was a St Bernard. The house at the dead end had two Labs (of which I was deathly afraid), and the house at the start of the street had two Cocker Spaniels. The house across the street from the house behind ours had a Rough Collie and a standard Schnauzer. There was even a Xoloitzcuintli (we called them Mexican Hairless dogs at the time).

Trust me, I didn’t think about the fact that everyone in the neighborhood had a purebred. They were all dogs, all members of the family, and most of them had been around longer than us kids, so I never thought about where they came from.

 

As an adult, I have shared my life with 4 dogs now, two of them purebreds, but all from shelters. I have a very hard time imagining a scenario where I get any dog from somewhere other than a shelter, or if someone I know needs to re-home a pet.

At the same time, and maybe it’s because of the dogs I grew up with, I have no issues with people getting their dogs from professional breeders or even back yard breeders. Terrible of me, I know.

(In all cases, I am talking about private individuals who choose to breed dogs. I am not, nor will I ever be, in support of puppy mills. They do not provide any of the benefits a professional breeder brings to the table, and while they may have some similarities to backyard breeders, the adult dogs of backyard breeders are usually beloved pets, not animals kept solely to be bred.)

 

Professional Breeders

Disclosure: C’s grandmother bred Scotties back in the 70s and 80s. She had a small kennel, and probably would have been called a hobby breeder. I include hobby breeders in my definition of professional breeders.

I not only don’t have a problem with people going to professional breeders, in some cases, I might even recommend it.

For people who are looking for a puppy, who want a specific breed of dog, and who might need help, professional breeders are wonderful resources. You get to meet the parents (or at least the mother). You can ask to see the health certificates and get solid information on the ailments your new dog is going to be most prone to.

Especially for people who have never owned a dog before, a professional breeder can walk them through the process, help them understand what their dog will need and when. They may recommend a good training class, or even provide boarding services at a reduced rate. The really good breeders will take any of their dogs back at any time, for any reason.

And since a lot of breeders do a screening process that’s even more rigorous than that of private rescue organizations, the likelihood of any of their dogs ever ending up in a shelter is low.

Some breeders won’t even breed their dog until they have enough “orders” to make sure that every dog in the litter has a home (barring the litter being much larger than expected).

Some people use that information to claim that a policy like that directly robs shelter dogs of a home. But let’s be honest. Someone who puts in an order for a breed specific puppy, not even knowing when the parents will be bred, let alone when the puppy will be born, isn’t someone who was going to adopt from a shelter, or even from a breed specific rescue, anyway.

And as for the newbies, who are learning their way around the dog. Yes, they might have been willing to adopt, but puppies are scarce, and difficult. The likelihood of the dog going back to the a shelter or rescue, because the new owner can’t handle it, is much higher than if the dog came from a good professional breeder.

 

Backyard Breeders

For whatever reason, these people think that maybe they can make some money breeding their dog. Or they have a great dog that they think will just make the cutest, sweetest puppies. These people are going to breed their dogs regardless. And in some cases, puppies that aren’t bought end up in the shelter, anyway.

I actually prefer that experienced dog people adopt these dogs. My brother’s little Black and Tan Coonhound mix (with think with Golden Retriever, but don’t know for certain) was an oops puppy. A guy had a great, papered hunting dog, and he thought he’d breed her and sell her pups for some money. But he left her out in the backyard unsupervised a little too long, and boom, she was knocked up by some random dog in the neighborhood instead of the Coonhound he’d handpicked.

This guy wasn’t happy about getting these puppies and decided that since they could be weaned at 6 weeks, they could go to new homes at 6 weeks. (I can feel all of you cringing with me.) Copper, my brother’s dog, got lucky. She was bought by someone who knew dogs and was brought in to a house with another dog, so she still got socialized. She’s grown in to a lovely and loving girl.

If she hadn’t been purchased by an experienced dog person, given her destructive tendencies (all puppies like to chew), who knows what fate might have befallen her. She easily could have ended up in the shelter.

And again, you’re all yelling at me- that’s exactly why these dogs shouldn’t be bred to begin with. They end up in shelters.

I repeat, the people who are breeding these dogs are going to do it anyway. In their mind, there is always going to be a demand for their dog’s puppies. So the option is some of the dogs ending up in shelters, or all of the puppies ending up in shelters.

And I’m pretty certain that puppies in shelters do, in fact, rob other dogs in shelters of getting new homes.

 

In the end

Every dog deserves a home where it will be wanted and loved. Your dog should never be something you “settled” on. And guess what, every family/individual deserves to have the right dog for them. That pairing, the wanted dog that is the right dog for the family, is the pairing that keeps dogs out of shelters.

There will always be a need for rescues and shelters. There will be people who get ill or pass away and their family can’t take the dogs. Or there will be those whose circumstances change unexpectedly in other ways that prevent them from keeping a beloved pet. There will be dogs that dig or jump fences and escape.

It’s plain and simple fact- we will never be able to create a world where we don’t need animal shelters and rescue organizations. But if we can stop judging people based on their dog- whether it’s purebred or not, where they got it –and instead concentrate on making sure that every dog person match is a good one, then we will come to need shelters and rescues less and less.