Puppy Love: How to tell if it’s the real thing

You want me:

“Walking vet bill”? Say what? What’s that supposed to mean? Have you taken leave of your senses?

Indeed. You don’t want me. You want two of me!

LOL! Yes, I’m afraid these little furballs are the objects of M’hijito’s affection. Well, not these specific furballs, but their soon-to-be future siblings, expected to appear on the scene in two litters along about mid-June.

For some time, my son has been taken by a variant of the golden retriever known as an “English” golden. Basically, it’s the same breed, only the English type has a preternaturally light coat. They’re white or white with a pale, pale blond top coat. The head, especially on the male, is blockier than the golden we all know and love, and breeders claim (without, it appears, much justification) that the animal is more sound than dogs from the American line. Whatever. You have to admit that it’s a very beautiful dog. Here’s a candid of Dad, a.k.a. Cabot, surveying his domain:

Here’s a more formal portrait of the other future dad (we hope): the breeder recently imported semen from Karvin, a Finnish megachampion. Check out the “don’t you wish you could look like this” pose…

Then we have the “drop dead, you!” pose of one future mom, Tesse:

The other, Daisy, is just as elegant:

The breeder we’ve settled on, Golden Reflection, has two sets of pups due in mid-June, one by Daisy and Cabot and the other by Tesse and Karvin. We’re leaning toward the Daisy-Cabot litter, mostly because the cost will be significantly less (don’t even ask what it costs to import frozen dog sperm from Scandinavia).

Sunday evening we hired a sherpa and trekked to outer Mongoli Mesa, where this outfit resides. We wanted to meet the proprietors, inspect the premises, and see the dogs before deciding on this breeder or another, located on the far side of the Apache Trail. That Cabot character is absolutely spectacular, every bit as gorgeous as he appears in the photo. Their females are very beautiful, too, and all the dogs have calm and friendly temperaments.

But far more important than the handsome dogs is what’s behind the handsome dogs. Big dogs like this certainly can be (and often are) walking vet bills, largely because of the hereditary health issues that come with years of careless breeding: hip dysplasia, elbow dysplasia, eye problems, heart failure—those are just the big ones. Treatment for hip dysplasia, for example, entails lifelong pain medication plus, depending on how inclined you are to impoverish yourself, surgery that can go all the way up to complete hip replacements, to the tune of $2,400 to $4,500 per hip, plus the follow-up evaluations at $200 to $300 a hit. Some breeders will tell you that elbow dysplasia is even more crippling and debilitating than the hip disorder.

So. Before  you fall in love with a cute little pup, you’re well advised to look into the background of the sire, the dam, the doggy aunts and uncles and grandparents going back as far as you can find them. Thanks to the Internet, this is no longer an impossible task.

The Orthopedic Foundation of America (OFA), an organization that tracks orthopedic and genetic problems among dogs, maintains databases showing the results for dogs that have been tested for a number of major hereditary ailments. Reputable breeders have their dogs tested, usually more than once, and they should take great care in selecting a sire or dame for their planned litters.

Many breeders, however, are not reputable. Never take a breeder’s word for it that a bitch or dog has no health problems in its background. Look it up for yourself.

Case in point: during our puppy search, we encountered the other breeder I mentioned, whose pups will be ready to go in a few weeks and who is anxious to get us to buy one. Nothing will do but what we must hurry to put down a $500 deposit, “before all the males are gone.” (What will it take to get you to drive this puppy off our lot today?)

Not in any rush to jump off that cliff, I entered the person’s sire and dam into the OFA database search function. And I entered the names of the ten other breeding females this breeder showed on its web page. The simplest way to mine the database is to enter the full name of the dog in a search box. If this doesn’t bring up any data, go to the dog’s pedigree, get the OFA or registration number, and enter that.

First warning bell: many of the dogs’ ancestors had never been tested for hips, elbows, eyes, and heart at all. The most recent testing I saw was dated 2008.

That, in the lifetime of a dog, is a long time ago. Breeding dogs need to be tested more often than that.

Looking further, I noted that one of the dam’s siblings had severe hip dysplasia. Neither of these are good signs.

Enough with that!

Returning to the Golden Reflections site, I copied and pasted Tesse’s long, involved official name into the database and discovered she’d been tested in 2009, 2010, and 2011. Her hips tested good, her cardiac condition was normal, and she passed an eye test. One of her offspring, still owned by Golden Reflections, showed similar test results. Her sire had a minor eye issue that is not thought to be heritable and probably has no effect on the dog’s vision. Cabot has been tested twice in 2009 and twice in 2010. Heart is normal; hips are normal; elbows are normal; eyes show a different condition whose heritability is not known, described as “common in goldens” and “not a concern.” Daisy was tested in 2006, 2007, and 2011: heart normal, hips good, elbows normal, eyes free of problems. Among Daisy’s half-siblings and forebears, I could find only one dog with an abnormal hip test: “preliminary borderline,” which means only that the test results were ambiguous and the dog needs to be tested again later—”most dogs with this grade (over 50%),” say the OFA guidelines, “show no change in hip conformation over time and receive a normal hip rating; usually a fair hip phenotype.” A half-sibling to Daisy’s sire, born in 2000, had degenerative joint disease in one elbow. Otherwise, none of the dogs that show in these records tested positive for the classic hereditary problems.

There’s a big difference between someone who’s breeding dogs that haven’t been tested in four years—or have never been tested at all—and a breeder whose dogs’ health records are complete and recent. And there’s an even bigger difference between one whose vague testing reveals a case of “severe” hip dysplasia (that is very bad) and one whose dogs show almost no ancestral background of hip, elbow, eye, or cardiac disorders.

In the purebred puppy biz, it’s caveat emptor from the git-go. The dog breeding business is infested by clueless amateurs, careless breeders, and downright shady operators. If you want to buy a dog with a fancy pedigree, it’s up to you to educate yourself not only about the breed’s nature and temperament, but also about the individual breeder’s stock.

Here are a few resources that can help:

• Dog Breed Info Center
• Wikipedia: Look up your desired breed
• The ABC’s of Buying a Purebred Puppy
• British Columbia Golden Retriever Club on whether you really want a puppy at all
• American Kennel Club index of breeds
• AKC Breeder Referral
• AKC Breed Rescue Contacts
• Pedigree Database
• The specific pedigree database for your desired breed (Google the breed name + “pedigree database”)
• Local breed clubs (Google them or ask your veterinarian)
• Local breed rescue groups (Google, again)
• Any discussion of a breeder on a breeders’ forum for your desired breed (Google the breeder’s name or the breeder’s name + the desired breed)

A reputable breeder should guarantee the puppy’s health and be willing to take the animal back if its health fails (note that many will say they’ll do this, but few actually will do it). The breeder should show a keen interest in your reasons for wanting the dog, your experience with the type of dog in question, where the dog will live, what you intend to feed it, and even who your veterinarian is. He or she also should ask you to return the dog if you find you can’t care for it.

Be careful out there!

😉

This post was featured in the 33rd Canadian Finance Carnival at Tom Drake’s Canadian Finance Blog and in the 16th Totally Money Carnival at StupidCents.