Puppy Farms are getting sneeky!

Today I saw a puppy that was clearly bred on a puppy farm, but had been shipped out to a private home to hide that fact and I wanted to let you all know about this very worrying consult.

Sadly, every so often I see a puppy who has been bred on a puppy farm. There are a lot of puppy farms based in Wales and being in the West MIdlands, not too far away, a lot of them end up here. These puppies are advertised in the local newspapers, often in an advert that lists several different breeds available from the same place. They will always give a mobile as the contact number, never a land line, and when you ring may not know an awful lot about the pups when you ask questions. The one thing that make it clear that they are puppy farms, it that they will always offer to deliver the pups, often making it sound as if they are doing you a favour. This is because they don´t want you to see the squalid conditions these dogs are bred in.

I always ask my clients ´Did you go far to get this pup?´, and if they tell me that is was delivered, I always make it clear it was likely bred at a puppy farm. These dogs are generally delivered out of the back of a van, by a man who cares far more about the money than the dog. They often have been given no access to water or food on their journeys and the people who deliver them know nothing about their diet or how best to care for them.

However, today I saw a pup which came from a private home but was clearly bred on a puppy farm. The man wo brought it to me was told that the owner of the litter had died and they had been moved to this house in order to be sold. Neither of the parents were with the pups, who were supposed too be around 12 weeks old, although this one looked smaller to me. The pup came with paperwork that had been produced in Wales, which confirmed it for me that this pup was indeed puppy farm bred.

This could be a very concerning development from the puppy farms, if they are moving the litters to private homes to be sold as normal pups. Most people are now aware they should see the pups in the home environment and maybe this is why there is this change. You should ALWAYS see a litter of pups with the mother, regardless of how old they are and if this is not possible you should be very susipicous.

Puppy farms are awful places, where puppies are bred in terrible conditions. The bitches will have several litters within a short space of time, often never seeing the light of day while with their babies. At least the pups get out of the farms, the bitches are stuck until they are no longer useful. Also, the people who breed these dogs pay very little attention to their pedigrees, meaning these pups can be more at risk from disease and probems in later life.

Always, ALWAYS, buy a dog from a registered breeder, or at least from a home environment where you can see both the pups and mum. If you are at all suspicious or unsure about the puppies upbringing then WALK AWAY, you may think you are ´saving´ this pup, but in the long term you will condem more to these terrible circumstances.