she should send him back to the mill and demand her money back. It sounds horrible, yes, but every time someone buys a puppy from those places it causes more dogs to suffer. You arenāt ārescuingā one puppy, youāre dooming hundreds of other puppies to be born and suffer because you supported the place with your money and actions. Most of the puppies born in that place will probably end up being PTS before reaching maturity, since puppy mill purchases tend to be acquired on a whim as pups and then dumped into the shelter system around age 6 to 8 months.
I had never been to the breeders farm. When I got there, I was not impressed with the facilities, but all the dogs were in good weight with fresh water and clean kennels. Iāve literally never been to a breeders before, but his place was cleaner than the SPCAs Iāve gotten all my dogs from. I wish it had been indoors, but I canāt change that now.
well, the real problem isnāt the cleanliness or the outdoorness- itās the size of the place.
A puppy mill, by definition, is a commercial breeding facility that produces large quantities of puppies to sell for a profit. This kind of āfarmā, if well-run, is a fine way to produce, say, meat pigs, but not dogs. By the nature of dogs, each puppy requires rather extensive individual attention from humans during the early formative weeks. If this attention is not provided, itās difficult to impossible for the puppy to mature into a well-adjusted adult. Therefore any large dog breeding facility, no matter how clean or well-fed the dogs are, is by its very nature, abusive. Some puppy mills are incredibly poorly run and heap abuse after abuse on the dogs; from your description, yours doesnāt appear to do so, but regardless, the mere size of the facility results in unavoidable abuse.
Note the ticks on your puppy- if the puppy had gotten any individual attention at all, someone would have noticed them.
If you go to a REAL breederās facility, generally youāll notice it looks just like any household- there arenāt excessive numbers of dogs, there usually arenāt kennels, the dogs are all part of the household, the pups are raised with plenty of individual attention, and you canāt just walk in and select a pup from an assortment that are available. One really good way to screen out bad breeders is to simply ask how many litters they have per year- anyone who breeds more than three litters per year is generally not someone you want to get a dog from. Iād be quite suspicious of anyone who breeds more than one litter per year; most of the better breeders only breed one litter every two or three years. Iād also be suspicious of anyone who actually keeps more than ten dogs on the property.
Another serious problem with people who breed lots of litters is there is no way they can ātrackā the offspring to make sure their breeding stock has excellent genetics. If you breed one litter every three years, you can check up on the pups and make sure they all matured into lovely, mentally and physically healthy specimens (or not), and thus choose wisely for the parents for the next litter; but if you breed ten litters a year, how can you possibly do that? And, if your breeding stock lives in kennels all the time rather than in the house with the family, you canāt test their temperaments to be sure they would make fine family dogs.
even assuming this place is producing working bird dogs who would be expected to never be pets and to live life-long in kennels, thereās no way they can be tracking all of their pups to see which are hunting well and which are not, to cull the breeding stock; and english setters are prone to various genetic disorders like hip dysplasia and deafness and some eye diseases that theyād need to track the pups and see if they are healthy or not, again in order to cull the breeding stock. So bottom line you are really taking a gamble on physical health, and are almost assured of poor mental health, when you buy a puppy mill puppy.
But of course the real problem is you supported the place when you bought the pup. The only way to stop these poor breeding practices that generate so much misery (human and canine) is to stop buying from them.
ask anyone who has had to PTS their pup after it displayed poor temperament/socialization and bit some children- utter misery, totally avoidable. Ask anyone who has suffered through treating a dog for a genetic illness- utter misery, totally avoidable.
Heās already starting to recognize his name, and is coming out of his shell.
Iām thrilled we got him out of the kennel, and that he has his own couch now. We will be taking him to the vet in 2 weeks for a check up and his next shots. And of course iāll keep a close eye on him until then. Iām known for being a bit paranoid and heading to the vet just for my peace of mind. Thank you for your thoughts.