There’s nothing as cute as a puppy.  I’ve always thought Noel, our yellow lab, was the most beautiful puppy we have ever seen.  It only makes sense that when we chose Honey, she looks very similar to Noel.  The biggest difference is that poor Honey has had health problems since we got her.  I saw an ad in the paper for AKC English Retrievers and called to ask them to email us photos of the puppies plus mom and dad.  The woman on the telephone said they were raising puppies to help pay for their daughter’s medical expenses from cancer.  I was a little surprised that they talked about it like I really needed to know in order to make a decision about buying a dog from them.  They did send  the photos and we immediately knew which dog we wanted.  They were about an hour from us and the weather was not good, but there was a break in the snow and we called them and went to see the puppy.  When we were on their driveway, there were golden retrievers in dog houses on chains almost everywhere you looked.  There were probably seven or eight in front of their home alone.  They told us that we need to go to a small building that looked like a small bus shelter with a door on it.  We went in and they had these poor freezing puppies in hay and they were all shaking like crazy.  Rich and I both pointed to Honey and then I looked up. There was a window that looked into their backyard where they had Newfoundland dogs, Black Labrador retrievers, Coonhounds and other dogs that they apparently were breeding.  They just had a litter of Newfoundlands she said.  I told her I wasn’t happy how cold the puppies were and she said they didn’t keep them there, but wherever they did keep them, it wasn’t warm.  Honey smelled like rotten hay.  We wrapped her in a big blanket and I went to the car while Rich handled the finances.  We realized we had bought a dog from a puppy mill.  We were sick about the conditions as well as the fact that they advertised the dogs as AKC, but when we got there, they wanted more money for their papers.  When we got home, we immediately bathed Honey and she was covered in fleas.  She loved the bath though.  She was terrified of people and that was another indicator that she had very little human interaction.  When we took her to the vet a day later, the vet said she had mites which was uncommon in dogs, and she felt that she had been in a very unclean environment.  I called the breeder who said they never had heard from another buyer about anything like fleas or mites and their vet checked the puppies thoroughly.  Sure. I started fretting about the situation and contacted AKC about the false advertising. I felt if they said the dogs were AKC, that’s what you should get. AKC didn’t care.  I guess there isn’t anyone looking out for these poor dogs.  Anyway, a few days later, we couldn’t understand why Honey would pee in the house, we’d take her outside and she would pee and then she’d come back in and pee again.  Back to the vet.  She has a UTI.  I’ve never had a dog with a UTI before.  Geez.  Oh, and she has a heart murmur that should be ok by sixteen weeks and if not, we need to go to a cardiologist.  Crap!  The antibiotics have given her horrible diarrhea that is everywhere and the poor things is miserable.  She’s now on a diet of chicken and rice to help with that.

I guess the reason I’m writing this is because we feel bad that we fell for the “paying for our daughter’s medical expenses” story.  They definitely are just breeding dogs for profit under terrible conditions for the dogs.  We are happy that we took Honey out of that environment, but hate that we put more money into their pockets so they will continue breeding dogs.  We pray that Honey’s health concerns will be behind her soon and that she lives a very long and happy life like our other dogs. If fretting was an Olympic event, I would definitely be a gold medalist.

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