Why My Puppies Are Free . . .

Why My Puppies Are Free (Also Known as “What Puppy Buyers Should Be Able to Expect from Breeders”)

This post is com­ing from the fact that I WANTA PUPPY LIKE MERDE AND WHOA AND HECK, as well as the ongo­ing men­tal dis­cus­sion I’m hav­ing with myself about health issues. I have the two elements–prospective buyer and breeder–all swirling around in my head.

And this is a bit of the pat­tern that is get­ting splashed up against the wall of my brain.

One ques­tion that is always a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to tap-dance around, when you’re a breeder or when you’re a buyer, is the price of the puppy in ques­tion. It’s con­sid­ered bad form to pub­licly price pup­pies, because that implies that this is a straight­for­ward trans­ac­tion: You give me a pile of Benjamin’s and I hand you this puppy, end of story. We instead try to com­mu­ni­cate that it’s hard to get a puppy from us and we want you to seek out and develop a rela­tion­ship with us before we start talk­ing busi­ness. It’s also sup­posed to imply that you as a buyer shouldn’t go shop around for the low­est price, because this is not a dish­washer and one does not equal another.

Unfor­tu­nately, this can some­times lead breed­ers to adopt the “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it” scheme; this was a pretty big prob­lem in Danes. There were some breed­ers who decided that their show pup­pies were worth $5000 plus two pup­pies back, even though other breed­ers using sim­i­lar pedi­grees and sim­i­lar win records were pric­ing at a quar­ter of that amount. It can also lead own­ers into a kind of ridicu­lous secret-handshake rou­tine where they are still try­ing to shop around but have cal­cu­lated exactly how long a phone con­ver­sa­tion they have to have with a breeder before they can del­i­cately men­tion prices.

That’s prob­lem one.

Here’s the other back­ground prob­lem: Every sin­gle prospec­tive puppy buyer, with­out excep­tion, is sort of pre-traumatized when they come into the rela­tion­ship with you. Since the peo­ple who end up with good breed­ers are the ones who have taken time to research a lot about dogs, most of them already feel some­what defen­sive about buy­ing a puppy rather than adopt­ing one. They’ve read a great deal about how the only good way to get a dog is to go to a shel­ter, pound, or res­cue, and they intel­lec­tu­ally dis­agree (or they wouldn’t be call­ing you) but they feel either a lit­tle or a lot guilty about it.

Com­pound­ing this prob­lem is that, again with­out excep­tion, they know some­one who has been “ripped off” by a breeder or they them­selves have had a bad expe­ri­ence with a breeder. They want a puppy, often quite des­per­ately, but they are not quite sure whether they need to set them­selves up as our friends or our adversaries.

Here’s the absolute worst thing you can do: After the long phone con­ver­sa­tion tap-dance, name the big num­ber and then jus­tify the price of your pup­pies by com­par­ing what you have or what you’ve done to what your peer breed­ers (i.e., other Cardi­gan exhibitor/breeders) have and what they’ve done, mak­ing sure the buy­ers under­stand that your pup­pies are bet­ter than those breed­ers’ dogs and DEFINITELY bet­ter than adopted/homeless dogs because of XYZ(I’ve even heard peo­ple use spe­cific names, or crit­i­cize spe­cific shel­ters, which is really uncool). Tell them that your dogs are expen­sive because they’ll live longer and are health­ier and bet­ter tem­pered, and they’re pret­tier too.

Why is that a ter­ri­ble idea? Because there is NO WAY ON EARTH you can guar­an­tee that. You are giv­ing them a live ani­mal in its infancy, and 99.5% of what is going to hap­pen to that ani­mal has noth­ing to do with the good breed­ing deci­sions you may or may not have made (and, all too often, we don’t find out until the pup­pies are five years old or even older that in fact it was NOTa good thing that we bred those two dogs because the now-grown pup­pies are metaphor­i­cally or lit­er­ally drop­ping like flies).

DO NOT FOOL YOURSELF. Even in the best lit­ter you’ve ever bred or will breed, there will be pup­pies that are less than stel­lar in appear­ance or health. I don’t care what health tests you do–you WILLmake pup­pies that are genetic dis­as­ters and die young, some­times hor­ri­bly young and hor­ri­bly trau­mat­i­cally. And there are WITHOUT A DOUBT going to be tem­pera­ment prob­lems in some pup­pies or grown dogs. Some­times it’s because you con­vinced your­self that your bitch who tried to bite a judge, attacks all other dogs, and who vio­lently shies away from any­thing red, round, less than two feet above the ground, or wear­ing a hat is that way because the neigh­bor from next door looked at her funny when she was three months old, instead of admit­ting that her loose screw is being very pre­dictably passed along to her kids. Far more often it’s because the owner made a series of very bad deci­sions, as own­ers often do, and cre­ated a problem.

If you’ve pinned a dol­lar amount to health, longevity, or tem­pera­ment, the new owner has every right to be furi­ous and every right to call this a rip­ping off. You sold some­thing that you did not deliver.

And these are the own­ers that will try to con­vince every­one they know that breed­ers are bad news, and the expen­sive ones are not only dis­hon­est but greedy. No breed­ers can be trusted, so buy­ing from the clas­si­fied ads is just the same as buy­ing from the breeder of the big win­ners and so you should just go save your­self some money.

And that’s the GOOD sce­nario. In the bad sce­nario, you get sued for breach of con­tract and you never breed again.

So let me sug­gest an approach that I did not come up with–this is what my very wise and won­der­ful Dane men­tor told me.

BE HONEST. That’s all puppy buy­ers want. Aside from the very few gen­uinely bad ones, who are not going to be happy no mat­ter what, buy­ers want to know the real sit­u­a­tion. They want to feel respected and they want to know that you’re not going to cheat them.

And the HONEST truth is that we can­not in any way guar­an­tee that our pup­pies will meet or exceed the health, per­son­al­ity, tem­pera­ment, or behav­ior of any other dog. We can say that we’ve done our absolute best to weigh things in that puppy’s favor, and we can explain exactly how we’ve planned the breed­ing and how we’ve raised the lit­ter and why we think those prac­tices give this puppy a bet­ter chance than the peo­ple down the road with the “Yelo Lab Pupps: $650″sign on their tree, but this is a liv­ing organ­ism and all we’ve done is observed it until it’s eight weeks old.

And so, again fol­low­ing the advice of a far wiser breeder than I, when peo­ple ask me how much my pup­pies are, I tell them “They’re free. Or, if it makes you feel more com­fort­able, they’re what­ever the price of an aver­age shel­ter adop­tion is in your neigh­bor­hood. When and if we decide that this is a good match and you decide to get a puppy from me, you’ll be writ­ing me a check for [what­ever it is], but that check is actu­ally buy­ing ME.You are pay­ing for the right to call me, any time of the day or night, for the life of this dog. You’re pay­ing for me to be your train­ing assis­tant, your ded­i­cated board­ing ken­nel, your vet advo­cate, and your nutri­tional con­sul­tant. You are pay­ing me a research fee for mak­ing an edu­cated and smart deci­sion about which dog to breed to which dog. And you’re pay­ing me a retainer so that at any time in your dog’s life I will take back that dog, no ques­tions asked, no mat­ter the sit­u­a­tion, and you’re pay­ing me to take some very dif­fi­cult deci­sions off your hands.”

I then advise them to con­sider the pur­chase price of ANY puppy in those terms. The only thing they can be sure of get­ting for their big wad of cash is a rela­tion­ship with a breeder. If they are not absolutely com­fort­able with me, absolutely sure that they will get their money’s worth of me, they should go else­where even if I have a puppy avail­able. If they are not com­pletely sure that what­ever breeder they’re talk­ing to is a safe place to deposit that “wage,” they need to run away even if the most adorable puppy on earth is star­ing at them.

It took me until my third lit­ter to have been burned enough to add this, usu­ally dur­ing the last big inter­view and contract-signing before they actu­ally take the dog home:

“Look at this puppy. What I am giv­ing you is what I have cre­ated. Don’t take it home unless you are totally com­fort­able with every­thing you see, because once it leaves my house YOU are cre­at­ing it. From here on out, you’re the one shap­ing tem­pera­ment and behav­ior, and aside from wholly genetic dis­or­ders you’re on the hook for health too.

You’re pay­ing for my advice. That means you have to come to me IMMEDIATELY if there’s a prob­lem. You can’t see a behav­ior you don’t like, or a health issue you’re not sure of, and wait around for five months until it’s a real cri­sis and then show up and ask me to fix it. I won’t be able to. You need to come to me, even if it takes fif­teen phone calls and a trip back here, when it’s still some­thing I can solve or can advise you on how to solve. If you make that effort, I will bend over back­wards and devote every bit of time and energy I have to solv­ing your prob­lem and get­ting you back on the right path to hap­pi­ness with your dog. If you do not come to me–and that’s the first thing I’m going to ask you when you call: when did you first see this issue–there’s a very good chance that it will be too late. And if it is too late, I’ll still take the dog back because that’s my com­mit­ment to you and to this dog, but I’ll be send­ing the dog to heaven.”

Being hon­est also means defin­ing very sim­ply and with­out ambi­gu­ity when a health or tem­pera­ment prob­lem is your fault and when it’s their fault. If you screwed up and so the dog died young, replace it. Don’t argue. If the dog has some­thing very wrong with it and it can­not do its job, if the own­ers are good ones send them a new puppy. Be very clear with them BEFORE they take the dog home (and say it to their faces and make sure they’re listening–when new own­ers were com­ing to sign the con­tract and take the dog home I used to put the pup­pies in another room so I was absolutely sure they were pay­ing atten­tion to me and not their new puppy) exactly what you do and do not cover, what actions will ren­der your con­tract with them void, and give them the chance to back out if they’re not comfortable.

And then, although this has noth­ing to do with your legal or eth­i­cal duty, maybe every once in a while replace a puppy that you didn’t really need to, or that wasn’t your fault, if you think the own­ers are worth it.

When we lost-and-then-found Clue, I called Betty Ann to let her know that Clue was lost. I was sob­bing through most of the phone call, which I am sure she found at least some­what off-putting, but she lis­tened and gave me some good advice and then said “If she’s really gone, we’ll get some­thing to you right away.”

It blew me away. I PHYSICALLY MISPLACED MY DOG. If there was ever a sit­u­a­tion that was not her fault, it was this one. For her to take any respon­si­bil­ity for mak­ing sure I still had a dog at the end of it was rather mindboggling.

Now I’m cer­tainly not say­ing that we’re like LLBean for dogs (end­less return pol­icy, even if you lose it), but act­ing with that kind of com­mit­ment sub­stan­tially raised the bar for me when it came to my own expec­ta­tions of my rela­tion­ships with puppy buyers.

Written by Joanna Kimball on January 24, 2009 • https://rufflyspeaking.wordpress.com