Barnum never saw a mutt he couldn’t improve with a designer label

Is this a great country, or what? Times change, but ”caveat emptor” remains the same — let the buyer beware. In my realm, this involves the sale of dogs and cats, and I am amazed on a regular basis how naive and gullible people are. For many years I have warned people about the puppy mill/pet store connection, where in stores buy puppies for $25 to $50 from puppy mill brokers, then sell them the next day for $800 to thousands of dollars. Great profit, what? A fair profit for a quality-bred animal is one thing, but these are not quality-bred; they’re mass-bred and often in-bred.

Any store that regularly has puppies for sale, and a variety at that, is buying those puppies from a broker or directly from the mass breeders. There is no other source for puppies on demand — regardless of how often the store owner and sales staff swear that they do not buy from puppy mills. Now, with the internet, we have thousands of people out there doing the same thing, often never even seeing or touching the puppies they sell.

Online puppy sellers order puppies for delivery anywhere in the USA. Delivery fees are on top of the puppy’s cost, and they are usually shipped directly from the broker. These are all puppy mill puppies, regardless of the song and dance or beauty of the Web site. They’ve been doing this for years, and people keep flocking to buy online with the ease of never leaving home.

Pet store chains once prided themselves on offering purebred puppies for sale. Then someone came up with the wonderful concept of “designer dogs.” These are “carefully selected” crosses of two purebred dogs, cleverly named “goldendoodles,” “puggles,” and “cavachon,” for example. Before these new monikers, they were simply called “mutts.” But now it is all the rage to have one of these “exclusive” crossbreeds that were once common at the pound. As P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

The other day a lady brought her cat to me for removal of a small lump. She bought her “cashmere Ragdoll cat” from a breeder in Florida for $1,500. The cat is beautiful, but is simply just another Ragdoll (an American “breed” — see Wikipedia for a good story). They look like a Himalayan/Burmese with white feet. I said I would never pay more than $100 for a cat, even if the seller tacked on the word “cashmere.” But, hey, that’s just me. She suggested, by the way, that I write this article.

This is the time of year that puppy sellers of all kinds hope to make big bucks. Please don’t fall for their sales pitches. Wait until after the holidays to bring a puppy or dog (kitten or cat) into the family. If you want a puppy, insist upon seeing the mother. If you can’t, that’s a puppy mill red flag, and you should move on.

Instead of grossly overpaying for a puppy, check with the dog pound, Angels for Animals, and breed rescue organizations to find the puppy or dog you want. Beware of the word “rescue,” too. Some who sell puppy mill puppies say they were “rescued from a puppy mill.” That could mean they bought them at an auction or directly from the breeder and are reselling them to you. If you have any doubts, you are probably right.

Donald K. Allen DVM, Youngstown