Dog ownership

Was the mother with the pups FC?

 

It doesn't sound like mum was there :( but it does sound like they're well socialised

 

My Meg does some early hours stealth activity, mostly based around ensuring I haven't abandoned her in the night and the chance of getting an early morning cuddle.

The reason I ask is out of concern for the mum as much as the pup. The trade in pups from the Eastern block is becoming a problem, and the regulations with regard to Rabies vaccination etc are constantly being flouted.

I have to confess to be completely anti-dog breeding, I think there are enough pets filling rescue centres throughout the world to bring more of them into the world, but I don't judge if you are a loving responsible owner.

Ironically, after my exchange on here with Red about doing everything I can, I found an English bull terrier standing in the middle of the road, on a blind bend outside Crosby Coast Guard station. He looked totally lost, had no collar and not a soul in sight as it was pouring with rain.I pulled the car over, took the lead off my dog (just been walking her on the beach) and gently approached him to get him out the road. He let me approach him without problem but resisted when i put the lead around his neck. Keen to get out of the road, I used lots of high pitched excitable encouragement which worked like a treat, he trotted over to the car.
I managed to then pursue him into the front of my car and took him the the local rescue, who called the dog warden for me and scanned him. The number came up with a strange code beginning with a 3. The staff suspected this was a foreign registration and it turned out they were right, a call to Pet log confirmed he was registered in Hungary ?! Anyway, I left him with them and checked in this morning to see if he had been claimed. It turns out that the loving owners had been frantically looking for him all day after he escaped out of the back garden...Phew!!! I like to think he had been rescued as a stray abroad and this lovely couple had brought him home, that's the story I'm going with

 

I am sorry FC. you sound like a sweet person and Smudge is so grateful to have you pick him.

But over here, any puppies in PET STORES are from Puppy mills. Where female dogs are viewed as money making machines to crank out the puppies to sell, the mothers are given very little room to move in their CAGES, never touched or loved, tied up to breed, and over breed. The pet stores bank on the "cute" hormone we human carry to buy the puppy. The puppy who may or not have a congential illness or some disease caught in the kennel not given proper shots that later will surface costing the now owner tons of money. And yes, the PET STORE owners probably have a paragraph ready to recite to the buyer regarding the "breeder" and the "parents" (part of a sales technique) . No "real" good breeder" who cares about bettering the breed would ever put their puppies in a PET STORE. My heart hurts when I see those puppies in those stores, but I know if I were to buy one I would only be supporting a Puppy Mill (a horrid place). But that is yes, caught between a rock and a hard place.