I will apologise in advance for a very long post and quite understand if you don't make it to the end, but I really do need to get this off my chest and just want to feel I've been able to say how I feel to someone even if I end up talking to myself..... most of my friends would not understand how I feel as they don't 'get' my obsession with cockers.
First of all I will say that the breeder I am talking about I've never seen on COL and have no reason to think she ever comes on here and obviously I would not post this if I thought she did. Secondly although I have mentioned on other threads I was going to look at a pup I have not said where in the county or which breeder so there is no way of identifying who I am talking about as I am very aware there are
always two sides to every story and I don't think its fair to say things when someone else hasn't got the opportunity to put their side of the story.
Only really making those points as I have no wish to cause offense or be unfair in anyway - but I am truly truly unhappy and upset which is why I need to share. I have admitted before that I made mistakes when buying my Ben. I didn't understand about the importance of health checks and basically bought him from a chaotic BYB.
I always wanted 2 dogs, but because of some behavioural issues thought it was not possible. However he is 6 in March, we have worked hard with a behaviourist, Ben has grown up and matured into a great boy who is much more settled than I ever thought would be possible and last summer we started thinking it was possible to get another dog. We thought about an older dog, but for one reason or another decided it might not be the best for Ben. So last autumn I started looking into pups. Reading up on all the health checks and looking at different breeders websites, this time I wanted to do things right. We decided that we would start looking after Christmas and don't care how long it takes to find the right pup.
A week ago we saw on one of the breeders websites that we had been looking at regularly a 12 week girl and she sounded ideal. I talked to the breeder and we agreed to visit yesterday. My only reservation was her age and I did ask a question on the puppy board about whether that mattered and after reading responses decided it probably didn't.
We visited and the pups were stunning. Lively, beautiful shiney healthy coats, very friendly and obviously well socialised. My OH fell in love at once.
However for me there were two issues, firstly the pups were bigger than I thought. This is the first litter of pups I have seen since we bought Ben 6 years ago, and I wasn't prepared for how big they are at 12 weeks and I felt a bit sad to miss out on the tiny stage from 8 weeks. But I didn't know I would feel that until I saw them.
The
main issue though for me is that the pups were not innoculated. Now I take all the responsibility for not asking the question on the phone before we went. I just assumed that becuase of the age they would be done so they were ready to meet the outside world.
I don't know if this is normal for breeders not to innoculate if they are this age - and thats not really the issue. The thing is I would be worried bringing an uninnoculated puppy home here as I know the immunity from mums milk will have gone and it would be a couple of weeks before the innoculation kicks in and about a month before she would be safe to go out - so she would be 4 months old by then. Ben mixes with a lot of dogs, he goes all over the place and I would be worried sick for a couple of weeks that she would be at risk of picking something up from him or his doggy friends at agility.
If we didn't already have Ben I might have felt different, but I am worried about stuff like parvo etc which we do get round here until she is fully innoculated. I might be being paranoid I don't know
but thats how I feel and I don't want to spend what should be a happy time being scared that she might catch something so we decided to say no after a long discussion last night. Some people might disagree and thats fine and I don't blame the breeder its my fault for not asking the question.
Now this is the bit I'm struggling with - when I got home at lunch today to ring the breeder to tell her our decisian, there was already a message on my answerphone asking if we had made our mind up as she had never had anyone leave without making a desician before and she wanted to know what we were going to do - although she did say she wasn't putting any pressure on us, but it did feel like that.
I rang staight back to tell her and she wasn't very nice. She said after all the years of being a breeder she could tell when people were wasting her time and she thought we were. I was stunned. We were not - we were prepared to buy a pup if it was right, but it wasn't for us. We were not 'messing about' we took time off work and had a 5 hour round trip to look at the pup, which is not a problem I know we have to travel to find the right one. But believe me if i just wanted to look at a cute pup I would have chosen a breeder just down the road! This is the first pup we had looked at, and we wanted it to be right but it just wasn't.
She said she had never had anyone want to think about it overnight. I said we thought her pups were beautiful and we were sorry but it just wasn't right for us and she hung up on me.
I am just gutted. I'm not normally over sensitive but I feel awful. I have spent all afternoon wondering what we did wrong. I feel like my confidence is completly shaken and am totally scared now to look at any other pups. I thought we were doing everything right, I thought we had been careful, responsible and we making a decisian that is right for us.
Why then was she so unkind? My OH has told me that I shouldn't worry so much, but I can't shake this awful flat feeling. Looking for a pup was exciting a few days ago and the thought of it now fills me with dread. I really can not go through that again. We chose what I thought after research a 'good' breeder and I'm sure she is an excellent breeder but why could't she have just said 'ok, thank you for telling me' and been pleasant and leave it at that, why be unkind?
Does everyone that goes to look at a pup always say yes?
What happens if its not right for you are you not allowed to say no - or to think about it?
Ok thats it, really really sorry to ramble on and write an essay, but its rare I feel so upset about stuff, I am normally pretty chilled out, but I don't think how I can explain how I feel. I was looking forward to this, we have waited so long and now its spoilt and my confidence is low and just not sure at all where to go from here.
Bens mum
