How to tell the difference between a good breeder website and a bad one

As requested, I am putting this blog post here for those looking for new puppies and retired adults:

Most puppy buyers use the Web to look for puppies. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you realize that bad breeders are not sticking to the penny saver or ads on the supermarket wall anymore. They know where their buyers are and they know how to pull them in. It’s up to you as a buyer to do your research, but I know it can be very confusing because bad breeders will claim all the same things that good ones do. Here are some things that help me tell the difference.

1) Good breeders use websites to showcase their dogs and their accomplishments; careless breeders use websites to showcase/sell puppies.

- Good breeders picture their dogs doing whatever it is their dogs do better than anyone else. Show breeders have stacked win pictures; field breeders have dogs on point or holding a duck; flyball breeders have professional pictures of their dogs jumping or coming off the box. There may also be candid pictures or pictures with the family, but it’s clear that the focus of the breeder’s efforts is on something besides pets. Careless breeders just have pictures of the dogs sitting down someplace; in my experience the very worst only picture the bitches pregnant or hanging low obviously nursing.

- It’s a major red flag if the pictures of the dogs show them behind wire, especially if that’s the only way you see them. I’ll take a picture through the fence if I see my dogs doing something crazy, but their formal portraits are win pictures and their casual portraits show them at their best, washed and blown out and stacked nicely. If the breeder is giving you lots of pictures of dirty dogs behind chain link, beware.

- Good breeders never have headings called “Mommies” or “Daddies” or “Dams” or “Sires.” They may have “Males” and “Females,” but the dogs are highlighted in and of themselves (and will, as above, be shown doing whatever it is they’re accomplished at doing), not as producers of puppies.

- Good breeders brag about ABILITY; careless breeders brag about PERSONALITY. Don't get me wrong; I think my dogs are hilarious and have wonderful personalities, but they ALL do. Including the rescues who should never have been produced and will never be bred. ALL dogs are wonderful. ALL puppies are adorable. ALL dogs love kids. ALL dogs wag their tails. That's no reason to breed them. You need to look for what makes this dog different from all other dogs, and that means ability, conformation, temperament, health. Not just being friendly and loving, which is part and parcel of being a dog, not being breeding quality.

This cannot be overemphasized – the website of a good breeder highlights their life with their dogs, and the accomplishments of that life, whether in the show ring or the stock pen or the field or the agility ring. Puppies are an (important) byproduct, not the focus of the site. It's vitally important that dogs have a reason for being produced beyond being pets. Remember that pet puppies are the "failures" of dogs being bred for other reasons. If your breeder is involved in the activities that require sound, healthy bodies and minds, their "failures" will still be great, healthy, happy dogs. If your breeder is not involved in anything beyond letting dogs put Tab A into Slot B, they will not have any reason to keep quality, health, and breed distinctives high.

2) Good breeders use the correct vocabulary for their breed and discipline. Careless breeders will try to appropriate the same type of language but they always do it wrong. Good breeders will describe a bitch as “square and typey, this chocolate bitch has lovely open sidegait and is true down and back.” Careless breeders will say “She has a nice stride” or “He’s big and burly.” Good words = typey, sidegait, down and back, sweep (in Cardigans; refers to a dog who is long, balanced, and put together beautifully), balanced, front, rear, socialized, conformation. Careless breeder words = thick, burly, stride, front legs, back legs, acclimated, confirmation. They’ll use nonsense phrases like “relationship stature” or “domestic breeding” or “trained in socialization.” I recently saw one advertise that they breed from “the largest bloodlines available.” My guess is that they mean that their dogs are oversized, but it made me laugh – “My 64-dog pedigree actually has SIXTY-FIVE, so beat THAT!”

3) Good breeders do not highlight the superficial. They don’t go on and on about how pretty a color is, or talk about how the markings on a puppy are so even and nice and that’s what makes the puppy worth buying. They do NOT breed oversized or undersized dogs; if anything they go out of their way to avoid extremes in size. Many, many health problems in dogs are associated with bizarrely large or small size; if you are looking at a dog under six pounds or over 90 lb. (unless it’s a giant breed and supposed to be that big) you should consider very hard and carefully.

- Good breeders do not brag about unusual colors, coat lengths, eye colors, ear shape, or use the adjective “rare” in association with anything but a steak. Good breeders have a hard enough time keeping quality going in the standard colors; they find very little attraction to the virtually always lower-quality dogs in the unaccepted colors. This conviction has been so strong in the past that historically puppies of odd colors were euthanized. Thankfully, that era has mostly passed, but if good breeders do get an odd color or coat type or eye color or is born with curly hair or you name it, the puppy is sold as a pet, not advertised like a sideshow.

4) Good breeders very, very rarely sell individual puppies before eight weeks. They very often have the entire litter sold, but they do not match puppies with owners before the puppies are old enough to grade for show/pet and to temperament-test. Breeders who match puppies with owners before the puppies are old enough to be evaluated are selling puppies based only on color, because that’s the only thing you can tell before the age of seven or eight weeks. Do not buy from a breeder who can only see color.

5) Good breeders do not use the phrase “pick of the litter” or “runt.” Those are phrases used exclusively by careless breeders. We may talk about a puppy being “one of the show picks” or “small at birth,” but those particular phrases are never used. It’s a myth that every litter has a runt. Small puppies who grow normally and catch up with the others in the litter are perfectly healthy and may go on to be our top show picks. Puppies who are unhealthy and cannot grow normally should never be sold as pets. As for “pick of the litter,” it’s meaningless if you’re a pet buyer. Breeders who use it are trying to sell you a puppy by telling you that it was the very best puppy in the litter. If someone uses it, ask what they mean. Most will say something about markings, or color, or some other superficial trait. Those things have absolutely nothing to do with what makes a puppy a top show pick. Another red-flag word is “throwback.” Bad breeders will use this to try to excuse an incredibly ugly puppy who looks nothing like a purebred. You got a Basset with foot-long legs? Throwback. A Lab with a collie head? Throwback. Seventy-pound Dane? Throwback. It’s nonsense.

6) Good breeders virtually never list the weights of their dogs except incidentally. Bad breeders put it in bold type under the dog’s name. This is a ploy to impress you with how big or impressively small their dogs are. Good breeders do not need to list their dogs’ weights because they’re breeding to a standard. You already know that their dogs are going to be in a certain range. Bad breeders often try to go appreciably above or below the standard, producing 100-lb Labradors or 2-lb Yorkies, so they concentrate on a certain weight as being evidence of desirability. This is one more way in which they’re selling the superficial and not fundamental soundness.

Imagine buying a puppy with your eyes closed. Do you get the feeling that you have an adequate amount of information to make that decision from this website? Or has the breeder only told you about coat color, eye color, ears, or other superficial qualities? Have they talked about the things that are common to all puppies - how adorable and friendly they are?

7) Good breeders do not reduce the price on older puppies. If anything, the price goes up. Irresponsible breeders have a market that ends when the puppies are no longer cute, because their puppies were never anything but cute; they didn't have the fundamental quality that gives them value. Good breeders are selling a dog whose value increases with more maturity, training, and exposure to things. Good breeders often retire adult dogs for very little money, but you should never see the price on a three-month-old puppy go down in order to get the puppy out the door.

8) Good breeders have a sense of where their dogs fit in an entire breed and group. The dogs in the pedigree are discussed with knowledge, even if they never owned them or saw them. As above, they will not talk about dogs in the pedigree as being nice pets, or pretty colors. You should hear about how great-grandsire so-and-so is a top producer of herding dogs, or how this one or that one has multiple titles and a wonderful work ethic. They’ll have a grasp of health issues in the entire breed, of how their breed relates to other breeds in the same group, and the unique challenges of owning and training the breed.

You should be thrilled with your dog for its entire life, and you should have knowledgeable support from your breeder if anything goes wrong. You should have a sense of value that has nothing to do with cuteness, and you should walk away with the feeling that your puppy represents the best its breed has to offer. If a breeder cannot offer you those things, please go elsewhere. If you don’t care about breed distinctives, please RESCUE and do not buy at all.

One last note: Careless breeders want to sell you a puppy. They'll encourage you to put down a deposit. They'll post prices with each puppy. They'll photograph the puppies in cute poses against satin backgrounds, wearing hats. They'll say things like "If you want to get in on this gorgeous litter, let me know quickly!"

Good breeders do NOT want to sell you a puppy. Good-breeders' websites are very reticent to ever advertise puppies for individual sale. Their puppy pages show the puppies, once they are eight weeks old, STACKED just like the adult dogs. Good breeders give you the distinct impression that you're going to have to work hard to get a puppy from them. The typical wording is "Contact us for an application to be placed on our waiting list," or "We may be accepting exceptional companion applications for this litter," not "Buy! Now! Deposits accepted by PayPal!"

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Replies to This Discussion

John, I don't think so - word of mouth only goes so far, especially in the rarer breeds. In the current economy I'm hearing about a LOT of wonderful breeders sitting with three or four five-month-old puppies, when in prior years the litter would be gone before it was born.

Sometimes the breed club allows or encourages advertisement on its own site; other times it provides breed referral services (but in lean years those only go so far); in some breeds there's nothing. And it's really hard on puppies to not be in their own homes at the appropriate age; it's almost impossible for breeders to properly socialize a bunch of puppies and the ones sold at older ages end up handicapped because of that.

There's nothing wrong with advertising. Most good breeders avoid the places where very, very few responsible kennels advertise (Dog Fancy is one of those), but just this week I saw a puppy for sale ad up at the local horse feed store, for a breeder (not of corgis) I know is decent. I was a little surprised but then realized hey, that's one of the smarter places to put up an ad. She's going to get local buyers (always a plus) who will have her dogs on working farms and at horse barns, where they'll thrive, and the people inquiring will understand the value of pedigrees and working ability and health. That's the kind of pet home we really want. I thought I might just steal her idea if I have another litter.
When we were searching for a breeder I also looked on puppyfind.com. I wasn't comfortable using the site as I could never find proof that these were legit breeders. I came close to getting a blue Cardi from a breeder on their when it didn't look like Finn's litter would leave us a puppy after all but luckily we did end up with Finn. I've heard so many mixed things about sites like this. I've read stories of people being shipped a totally different puppy than what they were promised or receiving sick or mixed breed dogs. Later on after talking to people on this site I found that the breeder I almost purchased from on puppyfind is a reputable breeder. I was always under the impression that good breeders would not advertise on websites such as puppyfind.com.
Um. Well, you've hit on a very good question. The answer is that many breeders feel very uncomfortable posting on something like puppyfind because they do not like to give the impression that their dogs are available to anyone, and they don't like the caliber of people who inquire through those kinds of sites. Others are fine with it. Some feel that it's kind of skeevy but they use it because they have trouble finding buyers otherwise. Cardigans do not have a large built-in market because most people don't even know they exist, and while some breeders have the entire litter sold before it's born other, equally good, breeders have three five-month-old puppies in the living room because the pet homes never showed up. For a breed that has a lot of demand, any breeder on those sites is almost certainly going to be icky. In other breeds there's more acceptance of it.

Another thing to realize is that there's a group of breeders who pass the basic tests to be called reputable but are not people you'd ever want to be friends with or emulate. You'd have to subject a breeder on puppyfind to the same scrutiny as you would any other, and you'd want to be especially diligent about getting to know them personally to make sure their personal ethics or code of behavior was something you'd be comfortable with.
Thanks Joanna, that makes sense. It seemed that this breeder constantly had puppies on puppyfind which made me question their breeding ethics. The people on here who have purchased from that breeder are extremely happy and speak very highly of them. Knowing what I know now I would feel comfortable getting a puppy from this breeder even though they advertise on puppyfind. Besides just talking to the breeder, I think talking to other buyers and breeders to do a bit of a background check is also important in helping you make an informed decision.
There needs to be a "favorite" or "save" button on posts like this. This is amazingly wonderful information that I am certainly going to put into a Word Doc and save on my computer.

One of the things I have noticed greatly over the last year is that everyone wants "Oversized, huge, burly blah blah blah" or the other end of the spectrum in "tiny, teacup, tinsy etc." Its utter crock to me. I want a good dog when I get one, not "cute and fuzzy all over... All puppies are cute and fuzzy all over.

Especially in the SeattleTimes.com you will find dozens upon dozens of "designer breeds."... which I like to commonly refer to as mutts. These mixed breeds of "wonder" quite honestly make me WONDER if the "breeders" have any brains at all. They look for the oddest combination that they can come up with in order to sell 5 lbs of problems and disease, unstable, dogs for 1000's of dollars. The mere notion makes me sick. Granted I have always given mutts a chance because more often than not, other than a rare genetic fluke due to something that was in their past, Mutts can be rather healthy creatures. Especially considering that they have never been line bred back to family, or any other such nonsense.

Either way I appreciate the information greatly. I prefer in a newspaper add at least, minimal information, and then LONG EXTENSIVE talks with the breeder. I also enjoy going out, meeting the breeder as well as the "parents" ((<--what is your choice of words when speaking in informal conversation?)) of the dog that I am interested in. If it doesn't feel right, and it feels too pushy, then its NOT right and I won't even look twice.
Great info! Only one thing missing - good breeders do extensive genetic and physical health checks of their breeding stock as far back in the pedigree as possible. Bad breeders hardly ever mention any kind of genetic or physical health checks done on stock and they only offer a limited return policy on sick puppies.
You're right that many good breeders do specific health tests. However, I don't like to make broad "health tests" statements because it varies so much between breeds, and I also don't like to make statements about return policies. Some absolutely fantastic breeders stick very closely to their state's lemon law policies because they feel that is the right thing to do; others offer a longer or different policy. Some offer to buy dogs back; others offer a replacement puppy; still others do neither. Some form of a "puppy back" clause (if for any reason you cannot keep the puppy I will take it back) is pretty much standard, but everything else varies.

What's important is not what their policy is; it's that YOU know it and YOU are comfortable with it, and that it's provided in writing. However, many good breeders don't have their contract on their site, so I didn't include it in the "how to tell a good website" list.

Owners should also not assume that because a health test was done, their puppy is "safe." VERY few of the health checks say a lot about what's going to happen to the puppies. PRA is an exception; a negative PRA on parents means a negative puppy. vWD is similar; clearing the parents clears the puppy. But hips, heart, elbows, thyroid - we test the parents to try to skew the results in the correct way, to give a better chance for the puppies, but all we can do is give a push in the right direction. A good result on those tests does NOT mean that your puppy won't be a dysplastic hypothyroid corgi with a heart condition. No breeder can promise that, and if they do they don't understand how those health conditions work. Again, what you have to be comfortable with is their policy of support or replacement or whatever it might be, and make sure they're clearly understood between you.
I know different breeds require different tests but I still feel it is important that a breeder disclose it on their website in some manner and try to be specific as to the type of testing they do on their stock.

Few breeders disclose how they socialize the puppies from birth and that is something I always end up asking about in great detail prior to getting into a contract with a breeder. One seminar with Dr. Dunbar and you'll be scared straight.
Now that so many breeders are blogging it's easier to follow a puppy's socialization life, which is very convenient. In my experience having it on a site is kind of hit or miss; a lot of breeders take it for granted and don't mention it, and others don't do it at all and so (obviously) don't mention it. It's something you have to ask the breeder if it's not clearly visible, and even if it is you should ask them about this particular litter because sometimes things change.
You can also go on OFA's website and search their database for dogs that have been listed with them. I was curious and looked up the breeder we used and found dogs in her kennel name going back as far as 1984. The site has a wealth of info.
Yes! This is so handy. The website can be finicky but you can usually get stuff to show up after a few tries.

I'm bringing this older discussion back to the top of the list.  When my Fiance and I move in together, he wants a puppy.   Scout makes a very good case for us getting another corgi.  (Corgis are 2nd on Jeremy's list behind beagles).  I'm doing preliminary work and looking at all my options.  I will not purchase from puppyfind unless I can visit the breeder before I put my name on any list (one I found does have a waiting list, will let me visit, and it seems like they only have 1-2 litters a year with 4 females), but am still getting my puppy fix looking on the site. 

Right now, the timeline for a new corgi puppy is mid-late 2012 into 2013.  By then we will be married, moved in together and know where we are financially.

Wish me luck and patience (that I don't jump to any quick decisions) in my search!

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