Picking a puppy

Two years ago, my Fiance Dave and I decided that we wanted to get a dog.  We were living in Italy at the time, as that's where his work was based and I was in desperate need of something to occupy me during the days.  Not speaking the language, combined with a truly extraordinary lack of motivation to learn (hangs head in shame) and the wrong skill-set to find regular work (Classical Musician), meant that I had a LOT of free time.  So we figured this would be the perfect opportunity to raise a puppy.

Then we began our research...

First we discussed different breeds.  I've always had a soft spot for Beagles, while Dave had his heart set on a Field Spaniel or a Labrador.  We knew that we didn't want a big dog, something that I was particularly vocal about, so the first two seemed like sensible options and in the end the thought of a little Beagle was too much for Dave to resist.

So, on a trip to visit my family in London I started to phone around breeders.  They were all very helpful, especially when it came to giving advice of how to get the puppy across to Italy, but none of them seemed particularly interested in finding anything out about us.  They were very concerned with letting us know what brilliant pedigree their (ridiculously over-priced) puppies had, but none even asked whether we had a garden, or if we lived in an apartment.  In my mind I didn't want to buy a dog from someone who didn't care where it went.  If they were that unconcerned about the rest of it's life then how careful would they have been for the first 8 weeks while the puppy was still in their care?

Then I came across our saviour, a wonderful lady who not only asked all the right questions, but point blank told me NOT to buy a Beagle, instantly winning my eternal respect and gratitude!  She asked whether either of us had owned a dog before...erm....no.  Had we had much experience of Beagles?.....um.....actually.....no.  Had either of us spent any great length of time living with a moody teenager?.....erm.....really?....no.....(wondering where this was going...).  She asked how we would feel about owning a dog with selective hearing and a serious stubborn streak, reassuring me at the same time that Beagles really were truly wonderful dogs, just not for everyone!  She then said that more often than not, you give a Beagle a command and they'll look at you with one raised eyebrow as if to say "really?  Now?  Aaah no, maybe later if you're lucky".....

So that settled it, time for a re-think.

During all the Beagle research I made a rather disappointing discovery concerning Pet Passports.  You need one of these if you plan to take your pet across the border of any country within Europe and they're not the easiest thing to get hold of if you're in a hurry.  The most difficult thing to get accurate information on was the Rabies vaccination, with some breeders telling us that we would be able to take our little puppy straight across to Italy on it's 8 week birthday.  Wrong!  The vaccination can be given once the pup is 8 weeks old BUT you then have to wait a further 30 days before having a blood-test to ensure that the antibodies have taken.  This wouldn't have been the end of the world, as sometimes breeders are willing to keep a puppy for a few weeks (for a fee) until you're ready to collect them.  The unfortunate bit for us was the discovery that once out of the country, the puppy can't then reenter the UK until 6 months after that first blood-test.  Ideally we really didn't want to give up time with a puppy during that vital 8-12week developmental stage, so we decided we had better start looking in Italy.

Now it was time for a LOT more research, looking much more closely at the behavioural differences between breeds.  We weren't going to make the Beagle mistake again, having both now decided that for a first dog we really needed to pick a breed that was typically easy to train!  Time and time again Labrador Retriever came up as one of the most good-natured breeds.  I was particularly struck by all of the different articles saying that all they ever want to do is please their owner.  Dave had always had a soft spot for Labs anyway, so decision made, this was definitely the dog for us!

The next question to ask was what colour.  Dave had always had his heart set on a chocolate lab and since I wasn't particularly fussed, having never thought to read up on the difference that colour makes to a dog (silly us), we started to contact Italian breeders.  And that put an immediate end to our hopes of getting a puppy.

In the UK puppies are not cheap.  At least they really shouldn't be, otherwise there's something really very suspicious going on.  For a Labrador you should expect to pay somewhere between £500 and £750, depending on pedigree.  In Italy there either seems to be something funny happing with the Labrador breeders, or dogs are simply one more thing that costs far more than you would expect over there.  The cheapest I was quoted was €1,200!  When I questioned the price I was told quite huffily, well they do come with a micro-chip and all of their certificates...oh gosh well silly me for asking...  When you buy a pedigree dog it's now very common that the micro-chip is part of the price and you should ALWAYS get a copy of the certificates.  The breeders that I contacted were all surprisingly prickly and unhelpful.  Some were suspicious of me for asking questions, others demanded that I pay a deposit before seeing their dogs.  Either way we weren't interested, so reluctantly we had to concede that until we moved to another country, we wouldn't be getting a dog.

Over the next year we talked about it now and then, reaffirming our Labrador decision and doing more random research whenever we got a bit broody again.  During this research we stumbled across information about the different colours of Lab....and oh what we found was unexpected!  Apparently the gene that makes the Chocolate colour is recessive, meaning that it's the weakest and therefore rarest.  This explained why sometimes Chocolate Labs are more expensive.  Unfortunately, due to this recessive gene, little Chocolates are not the brightest of sparks.  Loveable and affectionate, even more so than Black or Yellows, but not so easy to train because bless them, they can be a teensy bit dim.  They can also be more prone to hip dysplasia (an unfortunately common problem with Labs).  With all this in mind, we had a re-think and came to the mutual decision that when the time came our colour choice would be Black, which was always a very close second anyway.

Then, in March Dave had a job offer back in the UK!  Suddenly puppies were back on the agenda and we were finally able to seriously consider when and where and how many...!  We made the decision to start looking again while on the drive over from Milan and unsurprisingly the search began in earnest the very next day.

Dear lord there were a lot of litters to chose from!  Fortunately I had a very handy checklist of questions that we found at: www.labradorforums.co.uk

We knew that we were looking for a puppy from 'working lines'*, whose parents had low hip scores, 0 elbow scores, clear eyes and a lovely nature.

* Working Lines - These are dogs that are bred specifically for hunting and retrieval.  They are smaller than the more popular 'chunky' Labs, since they're designed to squeeze through bushes and fences in order to fetch game.  They are generally a bit shorter in the legs and leaner in the face and body, allowing for more agility in order to leap over any obstacles in their path.

The most sensible thing to do seemed to be to search through the Kennel Club Breeder's Scheme.  Through them you can search for pedigree pups that are already KC registered.  At the top of each list there are 'Accredited Breeders'.  These are breeders who are regularly checked up on and have to run all of the health checks that we were interested in.  They are also people who actually breed dogs for a living as opposed to families that have an accidental (or planned) litter.

Armed with several phone numbers I started to make calls.  That same day we had two appointments....exciting!!  The first was all the way in Swindon Wiltshire to see an Accredited Breeder, where there was a litter of 7 dogs (all boys) and they were just 4 weeks old.  Of course it was absolutely impossible to choose between the squirmy little bundles of fluff that we saw, but we got to cuddle them all and meet both the mum and dad, which is a rare treat.  All of their paper-work was to our liking and the dad in particular was an exceptional dog with a very impressive lineage of Field Trial Winners, himself also being a Champion ex-member of the Scottish team.  Lance, the breeder was very friendly and helpful, assuring me that buying a puppy from them wouldn't mean simply taking it home with us, but having life-long advice and support.  Fully blown-away and not quite believing this was all happening we got back in the car and zoomed off to North London to see the next litter.

This time there were 9 (9!) puppies, 5 of which were boys.  Their mum was there to give us a very enthusiastic greeting (bounce bounce!) and we spent a very enjoyable half hour being utterly enchanted as the nearly-8week old pups charged around the garden.  We would have been able to take one of these puppies away in just a few days, which was really very tempting....right up until I went to look over the paperwork.  The breeder was a truly lovely gentleman, who had wanted nothing more than ".....to give my little girl the chance to be a mum...".  He was so very proud of her, showing me her 'most improved puppy' certificate, which unfortunately given the hyper-active greeting that she gave us made me wonder how bad she must have been before!  I was shown the puppy's lineage, which contained an impressive smattering of Field Trial winners, but certainly didn't compare with the previous breeder.Then he showed me her hip scores, a very impressive 1,4 (anything totalling under 20 is considered good, but obviously the lower the better).  But then he proudly showed me her elbow scores.....these should be 0,0 or 0,1 at the absolute most.  She was a 1,3 and I didn't really know what to say.  He was absolutely beaming with pride, clearly under the impression that the elbows could add up to 20 as well.  I then had to spend a further 10 minutes hearing about how beautiful she was (true) and how perfect her puppies were (gorgeous!) before I was able to extract Dave from the sea of puppies so that I could let him know what I had found out.

10 minutes later I was frantically phoning Broadleaf Gundogs, the first breeder, absolutely convinced that in the last hour he would have sold every one of his (now blaringly obviously) very desirable puppies.  Thankfully I was being a bit of an idiot and worrying needlessly.  Only three dogs were spoken for, one by a couple who had already been and the other two by games keepers who wouldn't even bother coming to see them first, such was the reputation of the breeder.  Deposit paid, we arranged to come back in two weeks to pick our puppy, when they would have a bit more of personality to choose between them.

Puppy choosing day was very exciting!  We were both so nervous of picking the wrong one, having done exhaustive research (probably too much) into what to look for.  We knew that we wanted one that was bright and aware, but not overly-energetic.  So we ignored the first little pup that came up to say hello and instead focused on a few that noticed our arrival, but didn't seem too fussed about it.  There were two in particular that we were keen on.  Both slightly smaller than their brothers, one looking like their mum and the other more like their dad.  In the end the mummy's boy won out, as we were both so impressed by her features when we first met them.  Little Murphy was presented with a light blue paper collar, photographed more than a young celebrity and the reluctantly returned to his litter-mates so that they could tease him about his new accessory and pull him about by it.

Suddenly it was all very real.....