Totally agree.
If they dont have the space and time to give to the one which they have made money from, [ the indicator being no more pups = no more money = get rid due to no longer earning her keep ], then they certainly cant fulfill the cardinal rule of taking back any or all [ it could happen ! ] offspring they have bred and sold.

It is also a dreadful example to buyers if a breeder values their own dogs so little as to cast them off, it perpetuates the belief too many already have that dogs are just disposable items :smt021 :smt021 :smt021

This whole thread is baffling me

I dont see what your point is about us having a list of people wanting her pups???? People contact us daily for puppies, we have a list of people wanting Gracie's puppies although all will have already been allocated, however people want us to take their numbers and contact them if, by some miracle she was to have 15 puppies

We bought her with the intention of breeding her with the hope of having a line of tollers in the UK incorporating bloodlines from Europe and USA/Canada. So yes, she was our first, yes we were going to breed her, yes many people wanted them, yes we rehomed her at 10 months.

We have known the breed for 20 years and took about 18 months researching breeders in this country to ensure we got a puppy with at least one imported parent. Sorry for rushing into it so fast though, i'll be sure to spend 30 years getting to know the breed next time

Oh 30 years is a bit much.. BUT having one of each sex with you into adulthood might be a good start at least that way you are in a great position to give advice

I wasn't aware i was giving advice Im not advising anyone about anything, just giving my point of view

So if you bred your Toller you wouldn't be giving the new owner's advice????

We rehomed the toller so wont be breeding from her I think i covered that.

If we HAD have bred her, it certainly wouldnt have been at ten months, we would have waited until she was an adult. It is very very rare for "hobby breeders" to have a male and a female of the breed which they are breeding though, just so you know

There are some things I find confusing so bear with me...

Could she not have had all that by going along with the others as NFC ? The only difference being she would`nt have had a few minutes in the ring...
Same as, [ for instance ], my non-agility dogs go to shows as NFC and do everything my agility dogs does except go in the ring for a total of a few minutes throughout the day.


Why pointless ? Did she get no stimulation and socialisation there ? Or why not switch to Obedience instead
If she`s so worky, that would have been a breeze for her as well as being mentally stimulating - maybe you could have got rosettes with her that way instead of the show ring...?

This is what I`m most confused about. Without the preparation of Showing her taking up your time, surely that would have given you more time to spend on other activities ?
I dont understand why you would have had time to Show, do Ringcraft, and Agility, but without the Showing side meant you did`nt have the time for other activities ?
I`m really baffled there, my time management skills must be having trouble computing :smt017


I will be blunt, [ and will probably be severely knuckle rapped for it ] : That, to me, is fundamentally, ethically and morally as wrong as it can be when buying a dog [ imo ].

If anyone anywhere went to a breeder and said that openly while choosing a pup, any breeder not showing that buyer the door along with basic information on the ethics of dog ownership, [ and few choice words to boot ], is utterly unethical if going ahead and selling under such a circumstance.

Breeders who do sell regardless are what I would consider personally to be the sort to avoid at all costs because they clearly do not have their pups best interests as priority in wanting to secure good homes for life.
If only all breeders were as selective as their pups deserve


Which goes back to where I got confused. Unless Star Trek watching has befuddled my understanding of time and space, without Showing her you would surely of had more concentrated time available to give her for other activities, not less....

She won you some rosettes then didnt make the grade for your needs later on so you passed her on. I think its quite relevent but thats just me :smt102
You could give her what she needed as well as the rigmarole of Showing, but had less time physically avilable without Showing...

Can you see why I`m having trouble understanding the logic ?

Confused again I`m afraid. You chose to buy a pup of a Working breed - did you not know before you bought her that many dogs of working breeds need a lot of activity and stimulation ?
Did the breeder let you down so badly by not making you aware of this ? I can only assume so as it clearly could not have been discussed while the breeder was deciding if you were right for a pup she bred - along with not discussing the wrongs of the future of a pup as a potential commodity just for the showring

Breeders should not be selling to anyone not intending making a lifetime commitment regardless of a pup not making the grade in some activity or other, imo.

To all potential puppy buyers who may be reading, if the breeder you go to does`nt put the pups future as a priority, I would advise walking away and finding another breeder - or head for a rescue which is where not all but most `not up to it` juvenile pups of all breeds end up

I would expect, when buying a pup from a breeder, for them to know their breed extremely well and to have experience of either working/showing or keeping the breed as pets for a few YEARS before breeding from them. I would expect them to know the breed exceptionally well, so they could give me good, solid advice. Not to just have bought one dog with the intention of breeding??? Sorry I am, like Patch (and it isn't from watching star Trek in my case) totally baffled by this. Sorry.

Ok, im really starting to get confused myself so i'll say it as bluntly as i can. This is entirely offtopic and i apologise to the mods for this, but i do feel the need to reply even if it will just be deleted soon lol

Firstly, we show seriously. It is something i very much enjoy and i look forward to showing my dogs seriously for many years. We are lucky enough to have bred some very nice labradors who do well in the ring and we have an outstanding pug who we are very very fortunate to have been given. We show these at a high level, that is my hobby, i spend most weekends doing it and every free hour outside of working preparing myself, the dogs and everything else for showing. I love my dogs, they are all treated as part of the family, they live mostly in the house (Bacchus the one here for training is in the kennels as he's never been in a house, and the labs go out there to dry if they get wet on a walk) and are all treated well and looked after as well as any of your pets or showdogs or working dogs.

Amber was bought to show. The breeder was told we wanted a SHOW puppy. He said he would be able to provide us with that and until about 6 months Amber looked a very nice puppy. She came into season and things went wrong. No one could have known and its a shame and i was very disappointed not just because she couldnt be shown, but also because we had some difficult decisions to be made.

The breed is going downhill (in my opinion) so rather than just get another toller we decided to get out of the breed entirely. We could have kept her, dragged her along to the shows and stuck her on the benches or in the crate while we were running around showing the other dogs. She could have come along to ringcraft, but i am only one person and at the moment we have 3 dogs that attend ringcraft properly, so Amber would have been sat doing nothing the whole night. Not very stimulating.

The home she is in now, she is out all day everyday. She is a working gundog which her owner will use on shoots and displays and he even hopes to do trials overseas with her as she has a passport. This life lets her do what she was bred to do as a gundog, not what we wanted her to do which was to be a showdog, which im sure everybody on here will admit, the life of a showdog is nowhere near as exciting as the life of a gundog!!!

As i have said, i am only one person, my time can only be divided so many ways!!! I have Riley who i do a tiny bit of obedience with and my pugs who take up much of my time at home. Amber deserved a better life than being dragged around to the shows with no real purpose and if anyone can honestly say that this is a better life for her than one where she is working and getting lots of one on one attention then im sorry but you are either being dumb or a liar!!

And the original post was asking about BREEDING dogs being rehomed. We have never done that and i certainly dont plan to, but a young healthy dog with all her life ahead of her... She deserves more and i would do the same again regardless of what anyone says as i KNOW it was the right thing for my dog

I will not be looking at this thread again as for one thing its gone so far off topic it is incredibly rude for the original poster. If anyone still wants to have their say then PM me but dont expect a reply on here. Im happy to listen to peoples points of view, but bear in mind that you probably dont know much about Amber as i did

You mentioned it in your first post on this thread :

HTH