The Not-So-Discount Pup

July 26, 2008 by Bob.

I originally wrote about the following topic on the post ‘Buy Now, Pay Later,’, but I thought some more clarification was in order, being that this is an important issue, so here we go.

We all know that, in the human world, babies who are well cared for and most always grow up to be healthy adolescents and adults. I don’t have hard statistics for you, but as I said, we all know that this is true. We also know that an infant raised on crappy sugar based formula, tons of carbohydrates soon graduates to Pepsi and by the time he is twenty, may develop diabetes, or worse.  

The same is true for canines. A pup comes out of the womb and if it is healthy at birth, should thrive, given the fact that the mom has adequate milk, the milk is good, meaning not infected or infiltrated with some harmful bacteria. Okay, given that, the pup should get off to a good start.

Here are some examples of getting a pup off to a bad start:

1. If the breeder fails to keep the whelping box clean, the pups are liable to develop coccidiosis, a very contagious and very deadly intestinal infection, if not treated immediately.

2. If the breeder fails to worm the pups early on and doesn’t continue to worm the pups as a preventative until eight weeks, the worms grow to adulthood and the pups develop enteritis and could possibly die if not treated. If they survive, they may have health issues later in life, I assure you. By the way, all pups are born with worm larvae. The mom passes them on, always. Go and ask your vet if you don’t believe me.

3. Feeding a cheap, low protein food when weaning will also be a cause of problems, just like the human baby formula example I mentioned earlier. Purina Puppy Chow is not what you feed a pup who is undergoing the stress of growth, weaning, socialization etc.

4. Weaning too fast may also cause issues, both physically and mentally for the pup. They need a nice, slow weaning runway so they can be done with mom and have their gastrointestinal tract fully adjusted to solid food.

Okay, so everyone nowadays is a breeder. A person with a male and a female canine is somehow qualified to call themselves a breeder, just because they have AKC papers on both dogs. I think some folks think this is some kind of cash cow that automatically makes money hand over fist and because they don’t really care about the breed they are dealing with, they do stupid, careless things and soon they are out of the breeding game. Successfully reproducing livestock is hard work, requires a thorough knowledge of the breed or species and several years of experience learning animal husbandry skills. 

If you buy a discount pup from someone who knows nothing of this stuff and has done nothing to prepare the pup for the outside world, will you care? Even if you pay for double the difference in vet visits over the next few years?

 Okay, this was ‘I told you so’, Part Two…

Best,

Bob

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