Sorry guys ...

I never read the "getting started" section to see that I should not be posting that link to the breeder. I apologize.

Thank you for your concern with my breeder, rest assured she will be getting an earful from me. :x My heart just sank when I read your posts. I am so very disappointed with how this all happened but I could not be more in love with my little Ella so there was certainly some good that came of this. I just hope she will be a healthy, happy puppy.

It makes me very sad to think that this can happen so easily. I consider myself intelligent and have put a lot of time into picking the right breed for me and the right puppy. I picked my breeder on a recommendation from someone I know and it turned out to be a bad recommendation.

What can I do other than pitch a fit to this woman? What would you do? Thanks for the time you put looking into this breeder for me. :flwr:

There's no need for you to apologise! You have an adorable puppy and you should cherish her.

I am the one that is sorry because no one wants to find they have been dealing with someone like this; especially when they did some research and felt they had found the right person. The only reason I went into such detail on what she is doing is 1) it makes me so mad; 2) it is a good way for people to understand the kinds of thing unscrupulous breeders will do and how to check on some of these points yourself.

The breeder is deceitful in how she is presenting her lines and what she is doing for health and she should be ashamed at the implications for the puppies she is breeding. If anyone has spent any time at all researching the breed, as she claims to have done, and which she must have done if she is hadning out packets of information, she MUST surely know the heart protocols and understand she must wait til these dogs are much older befaore even considering breeding them. What is annoying is that the average person looking for someone who health tests can easily be taken in by the minimal information she is supplying. Also most people wouldn;t check the pedigress to see each has a different breeder who then transferred ownership to the broker in Waterford -- who also does some breeding. I think the breeder is also very naive in even putting up the pedigrees for her dogs, as they clearly indicate 'her' breeder in Waterford didn't breed the dogs (maybe she thinks she did?) and they came from different lines; and that none of these dogs has any familiar kennel name in several generations which means someone has just been backyard breeding them or they are coming from a puppy farm.

An IKC registration makes it easy to get a dual AKC registration even when the dog comes from such dubious backgrounds.

That's how a lot of commercial breeders in the US get into the business with AKC registration, which helps them look legitimate.

You could confront her with concerns over the exact age at which your pup's mother was bred, and if the parents of the sam and dire were heart cleared -- as if not, she shouldn't be breeding her til she is 5. You can note that her MVD clause in her contract will mean nothing. That she apparently has bred at least one of her dogs even before she was given a heart clearance, which doesn't indicate a very responsible attitude. And always ask for a refund of some of the cost for the puppy because you believe she was priced in accordance with a dog that was responsibly bred with proper heart clearances, the key concern with the breed. You may have laws on deceptive advertising that would apply in your state. Certainly her way of listing the health clearances gives the implication that she follows recommended breeding practices which she does not.

You could try talking to the local ACKCSC club to both inform them of what she is doing and to ask if you have any recourse. She will probably counter that she won't refund money except in full for the return of your puppy which you don't want to do.

If she is pressured in a certain way she may give in and refund some money.

What really annoys me/makes me laugh in a bitter kind of way is the Irish breeder/broker she gets these dogs from has a (literally) holier than thou page attached to their website about how you need to find Jesus. I wish they showed a little Christian charity and responsibility to the dogs they breed and sell and worshipped Mammon a bit less themselves.

It is so horrible how evil and misleading people can be, its like cutting corners and cheating........ strong words coming so submitting text now.

I think this is a mix of the breeder not really knowing much herself, so she has believed what the breeder/broker in the US has said about these dogs. But she should be well aware of the health protocols -- most of us know it is one of the first things that come up when we start to research the breed as buyers, and it would be hard not to have stumbled across the heart protocol in particular. If someone is going to the bother of cardiac testing I am sure they will have read the heart protocol and know it doesn't make any difference if you heart test an 18 month old dog then breed her, especially when you don't know the heart history of the dog's parents and grandparents. You might as well not heart test at all.

So that raises the issue of why make a big deal of the fact that you've heart tested if you know it doesn't signify anything for the dog in question or for her puppies? One tends to conclude a person would do this to make it look as if a breeding programme is in place, which actually isn't in place.

It took me months and months of researching Irish puppy farmers for Irish Times stories, and also learning much from US and Canadian and UK breeders, to get better at picking apart claims on websites and to know how to do some of the basic searches.

What we tend to do here is hand over information on breeders of questionable background to the tax service, who are usually interested to find they are selling animals in bulk and not reporting the income.

You are brilliant - what a good and funny idea.

I think you are right when you say that she doesn't really know any better. She is in Ireland right now to look at more puppies. I will let her know that she is making some major mistakes. It is unfortunate that she did not put in the due diligence (or me for that matter in looking into her) or that she is ignoring basic standards for breeding. If my intuition with this woman is correct at all - she just doesn't know any better. I am working on a letter to send her - not an email - a real letter (I don't know why but that seems more serious) to let her know that she is not breeding properly. I will let you all know the kind of response I get from her - I just hope she takes it to heart and improves her practices. Thanks again for you help. :flwr:

Kdemars,

I read your post last night after a very long evening, Your puppy is BEAUTIFUL~ My heart broke for you, becouse I know from personally being snowed by a back yard breeder and now having 2 year old maxwell with Lux Pat, how heart wrenching it is to find out that you were mislead.

I also gave a referral to Maxwells breeder to a friend who also purchased from Maxwells breeder and has medical problems with her dog~ I felt horrible and still do that while I thought I was halfway intelligent , and thought I was referring a good breeder to my friend, Ive caused the breeder to profit from being irrisponsible (sp? ) and the breeder is still breeding litter after litter....and surprise, surprise...Maxwells Father is also from Ireland.

It really makes my eyes well up at the scope of the problem, and how easilly these people are STEALING money from people with their deception....a well bred dog is worth its weight in gold...so Posing as a good breeder when your not and charging the same prices as RESPONSIBLE breeders in my view ~ just really Sucks.

Edited to add: Not that she really should be breeding in the first place, she also gave me the whole song and dance about how she just loves her puppys so much...Blah... Blah...If she really did care about her dogs, and her puppys.... when I pointed out several issues, she would have changed everything, not just continued down the same road, with blinders on.

So many of these people say they love their dogs so much that they live inside with the family. Yet what difference does that make to a dog with a severe heart murmur by age 4? I will say some very experienced, long time breeders (eg those breeding for *decades* not simply a few years, with generations of dogs behind them) will know the longevity and heart health of their lines and they can breed with good success in that way. But not cardiac testing still is a sign that they wish to spend as little as possible on the dog's overall health and to know a dog's heart health you must really cardiac test and also follow the correct ages for breeding.

A lot of us made poor decisions initially as buyers, but we do acquire knowledge and can spread that knowledge as well.

There are also many, many reputable Irish breeders and Irish dogs are in the lineages of many US and Canadian champions (for example a great great grandfather of Jaspar was a very famous sire and produced so many champions in the UK and US that he was given special dispension to remain at stud past the point IKC dogs are retired (which I imagine he enjoyed, the dirty old man). The reason Irish cavaliers in particular have a bad name is that this is a breed primarily bred in the UK and Ireland. The UK enacted more restrictive breeding laws on puppy farms and most mass breeding of cavaliers is now done in Wales and Ireland. Ireland in particular has few laws (which many of us have been fighting, with some success, to change) and the airlines will bulk ship dogs very cheaply. I am told one well known New York broker for Irish dogs whose son works for an airline and thus he probably ships loads of puppies for free for her.

Dogs from good Irish breeders won't come through brokers. And you should be able to easily find their dogs listed on the internet or the online pediigree databases and see their connections to other well known UK and Irish show kennel names. There is though a naivete amongst Irish breeders who are duped by some US wannabe breeders as well as puppy farmers into thinking they are selling to a family. I know of several cases where dogs have then ended up in puppy farms in Ireland.

If anyone hasn't read this, this was a story I did in 2004 on the Irish puppy farm situation:

http://www.cavaliertalk.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=366

I know how you feel about being duped. I really do hope that you are right in that this breeder is just poorly informed, though I admit to being skeptical. I'm sure you arent the first buyer to learn the hard way and then confront her.

I was duped as well and I confronted Cedar's breeder after the fact. (Thank goodness we didnt pay that much, though!). She immediately threatened legal action if I did not return the dog and basically took an aggressive offensive position. We had family issues at the time and we certainly didnt have money to go the legal route, so we basically told her to forget it, which is what she was wanting us to do. (If we had gone to court, she would have had a run for her money, for sure!) Shortly thereafter, however, the breeder sold off her cavalier breeding stock (saw it on her website--she sold them in breeding pairs, listing the litter sizes the pairs had produced).

While she is still breeding a different breed, I hope she had a lot of cavalier buyers who came back with negative responses--enough at least that she didnt feel it was worth the effort. Eventually, someone might call her bluff.

So even if you dont get anywhere personally with your own contract, perhaps you'll add your voice to others who were duped like you and make an impact.