Hi all - Yesterday we had an interesting call come in on the boarding kennel line. The caller had a 6 month old intact male Blenheim puppy. She worked full time and her daughter, who had spent a great deal of time with the puppy over the summer was now back in school, competitive sports and "lots" of other activities. She felt that it was unfair to the puppy to be home alone all day and wished to "place" it. It was her hope that I would know of someone that might be interested in the puppy.
Naturally I had quite a few questions for her. The puppy came from the "Puppy Shop" in Venice, just south of Sarasota. It was registered with the United Breeders Registry (new one on me - anybody heard of it?), sired by Royal Major. She had paid $1500 for it. As we talked I learned that the puppy was healthy, "just about" completely housebroken, had a darling little protruding lower jaw which just gave him the cutest expression. She also told me that she had a bunch of people...well, err, one or maybe two....intersted in buying the puppy for $800. So, I asked her what it was she wished me to help her with (her initial reason for calling me having been to see if I knew someone who might buy the puppy). This more or less brought things to a halt. As I had already told her several times during the conversation, I did reiterate our willingness to take the puppy into Rescue, strongly urged her to neuter the dog (background and Reg. never mind the jaw making it NON breeding), told her we would help her however we could other than buying the dog from her or helping her to sell it without full disclosure. This morning our groomer called to say that there was a 6 month old male in the paper....same phone number as the woman I spoke with yesterday..... Sadly, it looks as though the cycle will continue - another unknowing buyer will pay for a cute puppy that may well be a walking time bomb of problems....or worse yet, someone will buy him for "breeding stock". It continues to amaze and confuse me that people are paying as much or more for these puppies as they would pay from a reputable breeder that health test and give guarantees that actually mean something...... Since yesterday we have had 4 e-mails and 2 phone calls from folks in Florida seeking puppies - only one seemed to have a clue about the breed, or about the smart way to go about buying a puppy.... There has simply got to be a way to reach people before they head to the local puppy store to buy a pet....whether they are looking for a Cavalier, a lhasa or a cat.... Hilarie & Mel Hilarie Gibbs-Sykes Mel Sykes Hob Nob Cavaliers Sarasota, FL http://www.geocities.com/locustlee ========================================================= "Magic Commands": to stop receiving mail for awhile, click here and send the email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=SET%20CKCS-L%20NOMAIL to start it up gain click here: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=SET%20CKCS-L%20MAIL E-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] for assistance. Search the Archives... http://apple.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ckcs-l.html All e-mail sent through CKCS-L is Copyright 1999 by its original author.
