They have nothing to do with mastiffs, except that they were used to create the modern bulldog and the French bulldog.

They aren’t African.

All hairless dogs with that particular gene come from Latin America.

http://retrieverman.wordpress......al-origin/

If you think Chinese cresteds actually were kept on the junks for killing rats, then you’ll probably be happy to know that golden retrievers descend from the Caucasian Ovtcharka, which were brought to England as circus dogs. Lord Tweedmouth was so smitten with them that he took a few back with him to Scotland and bred them to bloodhounds to create the golden retriever.

As a dog owner, I have hard enough time keeping up with one breed’s bloodlines and health issues.

That’s probably because it’s next impossible for anyone but a puppy mill operator. If you’re one of those, the bloodlines don’t matter. And health issue? Aren’t all puppies born a little sick?

I can’t believe that a puppy mill operator tried to free advertise in the comments of this blog.

Saying that I “guarantee” sound hips is cheap. All it means is that you get your purchase price back if the dog fails to meet a certain threshold of soundness at a certain age.

What puts meat into my contract is being able to demonstrate what is known about the pup’s pedigree, justifying the decisions I’ve made about selecting parents based on their ancestors, siblings, and previous offspring. And the time spent educating buyers about the reality of risks.

As for a “five-day health guarantee” — in many states, that is legally mandated. It’s right up there with chicken labeled “hormone-free.” It’s illegal to feed hormones to chickens. May as well label it kryptonite-free.

And if you have a USDA license as a breeder, you are a puppymill. Period.

This is what I mean about puppymillers, empowered by the high prices to be gotten at retail and the power of the web to obscure reality, learning to ape the forms of good breeders. There’s a lot of concealment that they practice that can fool Jane Q. Pet Buyer, but is usually quickly apparent to someone who spends a lot of time looking for these things.

Also wanted to just add that I’m always explaining to people that a guarantee on a puppy isn’t about saying a puppy “won’t be defective”. Rather, it’s ALL about what the breeder promises to do if problems do turn up.

A subtle clarification, but an essential one.

As to guarantees - of course you can’t actually “guarantee” a living thing. To me, a “guarantee” on a puppy is as much for a (caring) breeder’s benefit as it is for the buyer’s. Because when a buyer comes back to report on health problems (something it may not occur to people to do when there is no guarantee in place), that is VALUABLE information for a breeder who wants to maintain an ongoing breeding program that is as robust and free of problems as possible. The occasional defect can occur in even the best of programs. But the same thing over and over (obvious example - hip dysplasia) means there is *something* going on, and if the breeder cares, they will not only work on helping that owner and their dog, but they will also re-examine their ongoing breeding decisions to try and track down why this problem is occurring and what they can do to try and reduce or eliminate it.

And THAT is where the true value of a well-written and honestly upheld puppy guarantee can really be appreciated.

Guaranteeing a puppy by saying you will replace the dog under certain circumstances is sadistic, and nothing but a ploy to pretend you’re guaranteeing the puppy but really not. Dogs are not washing machines, and you can’t replace one with another and call it good. It’s complete crap.

But I can come up with a THOUSAND things that are complete crap, and a thousand that are good. What my point is, is that we can get away from all this micro-managing and confusing and subjective stuff about the guarantee and whether the breeder shows or tests for this or that, or how often, or how many dogs they have or how often they breed or whether they belong to a dog club or whatever, and pretty much rely on just those two things: If you cannot keep the puppy in the future for whatever reason, the breeder will take him back, no questions asked, no hesitation, and puppies born and raised in a family home.

I personally don’t care too much about the terms of a guarantee. Sure, in a perfect world the breeder will give you back your money if there’s something wrong with the puppy, and leave it up to you to decide if you want to keep the puppy. Some breeders even pay something towards vet bills, depending on what the problem is. But bottom line, puppies aren’t machines and can’t really be guaranteed. They are living creatures and they may well have problems. You can minimize your chances of those problems by dealing with a good breeder, but you can never eliminate them. It’s unrealistic and IMO somewhat contradictory to the message that puppies aren’t commodities or things when we act as if a good breeder can actually GUARANTEE the puppy wont’ be defective. No breeder can do that.

So what I’m suggesting is that you get your puppy from the best possible breeder, and after that, well, it’s your dog and you may have some vet bills. That’s part of what happens you bring a living creature into your home. And my advice is simply a surrogate marker for the often confusing and usually extremely detailed, complex list of qualities we’re told to look for in a breeder.

Are the puppies from a home situation and does the breeder offer to give or find the puppy a home any time in his life if you can no longer keep him? Then I’d say there’s a 90 percent certainty at that point that you’re dealing with a good breeder.

Details can be found here:

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/anim.....A-0973.pdf

Saying that a sick puppy can be returned within 5 days of purchase is not a “take back” if the new owner already loves the puppy and doesn’t want to give him/her up, but is also now faced with cost of vet care which can be pretty high, depending upon what the problem is.

There are many things that go into making a good breeder, and that tell you someone’s a bad breeder, but I think that there are two standards that can be used that will get you 90 percent or more of the way there — with the caveat that this is how you find a dog as a companion and family pet, not a working dog:

Raised in the home, not a kennel or other non-home situation; and the breeder will take the puppy back at any time during his or her life, no questions asked, if that becomes necessary.

Sure, there will be a few bad apples even so, but those two things in combination are a net that catches almost all of them.