Puppy Buyer Beware

No information on this site will be more important than this page, to help you with the decisions of buying a dog or puppy of ANY KIND, especially over the internet.

Your experiences with the breeder you choose has the potential to affect your life. The puppy you bring into your home will become a part of your family. The cautionary statements made on this page, when ignored, can result in real emotional and financial costs, costs that you and your family may or may not be willing or able to bear. We want you to have the best possible chance for a positive experience with your dog, an experience that will make you happy to have the dog as a part of your life.

Please read on. We are giving you this information to help you avoid heartache and to prevent the unnecessary suffering of dogs of all breeds.

We want you to have the best possible chance for a positive experience with your dog, an experience that will make you happy to have the dog as a part of your life.

Puppy Buyer Beware

Buy directly from a breeder, never a broker or pet store. You should never buy a dog when you have no ongoing contact with the breeder! A reputable breeder will offer support before and after the adoption of the new pup and ALWAYS offers to take back the dog if you can no longer care for it! A responsible breeder will also provide actual copies (not just promises of copies) of the American Kennel Club registration certificates of the parents. Further, you should expect to receive information on any inherited characteristics of the breed, before any money exchanges hands.

The reason that some dogs are designated unsuitable for breeding is that there is too great a likely hood that unsuitable characteristics will be passed on. Even if a dog may look good, it may be shy or snappish, and dangerous among children when anxious. All of our dogs have wonderful temperaments, and are serious magnets for attention because of their good looks, but you wouldn't not want your toddler approaching a dog to give it a hug if you had even the slightest doubt of the dog's reaction.

I'm also a firm believer in laying blame where it should be, and in my opinion, a large percentage of homeless dogs that end up dying in shelters are not homeless because they were bred at a puppy mill but they were brought on impulse by well meaning people who just didn't think out the responsibilities of dog ownership or how to correctly buy a purebred dog. Many people don't realize until after they purchase that having a puppy wasn't like they thought it was going to be like. Unable to return the puppy to a back yard breeder or pet store (a responsible breeder will take back the puppy for any time for any reason) the person tried to re-home the puppy on their own and that's how the cycle of passing a dog from one home to the next begins, until the day it ends up in a shelter; or the luckier ones, in rescue.

There aren't a lot of good breeders out there, but there are a lot of special people looking for that special puppy, so my goal is to only place my blue water boston terrier puppies in the very best home possible. If you already have one of our dogs in your home, then you should feel honored because that means I think you are the best of the best and thank you for giving one of my blue water boaton terrier puppies such a great home!

BEWARE

of ridiculously high prices and check out such breeders carefully to make sure you're getting more for your money than just a dog. You can expect high prices when the pup is coming from a breeder who has a consistent verifiable record of producing quality dogs and offering buyers exceptional support and service. Don't get ripped off by an exploiter who knows nothing about their dogs' backgrounds or someone who is price gouging. Make sure the breeder you choose is charging top prices because they are committed to producing and does offer quality dogs and service, not just because the demand for their breed of pups makes charging top dollar possible.

BEWARE

of anyone willing to sell you a breeding stock animal without first making sure you will be committed to becoming a responsible breeder and you are prepared to assume a lifetime involvement with and responsibility for offspring produced by your dog.

BEWARE

of breeders asking you to send money without you seeing the information on the puppy's parents including some sort of documentation that their dogs are AKC registered. DO NOT send money before developing an understanding of who is selling the pups and what priorities and value system the breeder of the pup ascribes to.

When buying a pup over the internet, you should ALWAYS sign the purchase agreement or sales contract with your breeder

BEFORE

you send them a penny for your dog!! Remember that is doesn't cost a thing to sign a piece of paper. If your breeder doesn't offer some sort of contract, make one up, sign it yourself and demand that they sign it!! Something so simple as the following:

Also remember to never to buy from a breeder over the internet that cannot provide you with an ample amount of pictures of the parents and of the puppies. Many scammers have been stealing others' pictures and claiming the dogs in the photos are theirs and taking people's money for dogs and puppies that aren't even theirs! One thing that I feel many should ask for, if the breeder has the resources to do it, is send videos of the puppies as they grow every week or so. That way it is like you are actually with your puppy until he/she gets to come home with you! Many newer digital cameras have the ability to take short video clips, so try asking for one if you are buying a puppy over the internet!

I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH: AS FOR REFERENCES!!!!! Get MORE THAN TWO personal references, MORE THAN TWO new puppy owner references and a VETERINARY REFERENCES and CHECK THEM!! You may find out some interesting things about the person you buy from! Also, when you contact these references, be sure to ask them for their telephone numbers so that you can talk with them on the phone, not just over the internet. It's very easy to get an email address and the scammer your dealing with can very well have a few of them to be able to write false references!

Also, as a basic rule of thumb, if the "deal" sounds too good to be true, it probably is. We have heard of people getting emails from scammers out of the country, who will give them free dogs, all they have to do is pay for shipping! They ask you to send them the money to ship the dog then they will send you the dog. Well, guess what?! Most of the time, if not always, someone will send these people $500++ to ship these "free" dogs to them and they never receive any dogs!! If at all possible, you should always buy a pup from someone within driving distance from you, so that you are able to visit the breeders home before you put money down for a dog!!

Be careful if you are having any dog shipped to you! Please make sure that you have spoken to the breeder on the phone, make sure to ask lots of questions about the parents, the pup you are buying as well as the whole litter itself. AND MOST OF ALL, please make sure to ask questions about the breeder's history with the breed, other dogs they may haveLastly, never agree to drive and meet a breeder somewhere, other than their home, where they will meet you with the puppy. You won't get to see the parents, litter mates or environment in which your puppy was being kept in. Many times if a breeder asks you to do that, they are trying to hide the environment in which the puppy was raised and are probably a puppy mill, broker or some other dishonest person.

Recently, purebred dogs have found their way into the hands of exploiters. They are now being offered at public auctions, whose patrons are usually puppy farmers. We also see an increase in owners breeding bitches that were sold with limited registrations (unsuitable breeding stock) and selling the pups as unregistered. Even if you never intend to show or breed a dog, there are still significant risks in buying unregistered dogs!

The puppy mill industry has set up several registries to confuse and combat the challenges made by the AKC: these are unreliable registries: