Okay, so today was the day I was going to go see the breeder and her puppies. I was so happy and excited and couldn't wait for 4:30 to come around (that's the time we were leaving to go see them). My friend and I took a cab to the breeder's house and right away I got a bad feeling. The area we went to, wasn't the best part of town, but I let that one go. When the breeder's son opened a tiny window on the door to see who was there, I immediately got a wiff of a super strong doggie smell. I guess having a doggie smell in the house is normal, but this was concentrated. I also heard a lot of barking in the background. We went into the house and behind a closed door I could hear more barking. The breeder led us into this room where she had the puppies and their dad in a kennel (or cage...looked more like a cage to me). The first thing I noticed was all of the kibble on the floor under the cage and the newspaper it was falling on was all wet. It looked like it had been that way for a while. There was a lot of food thrown on the bottom. It didn't look like the puppies had just eaten and thrown their food all over...it looked like they had been doing that for a while. The little girl the breeder brought out was shaking like crazy when they put her down on the floor. It seemed like she had never been let out of the cage.
They brought out one of her brothers and he was super playful, but she wasn't. So I started asking the breeder some questions. She showed me the parent's pedigrees on what looked like official papers. I asked to see the dame and she told me that she had passed away during the C-section they had to do. I asked her how they had raised the puppies and she said she and her kids took turns feeding them. I then asked her what kind of health issues Yorkies had and she told me none! Haha, yeah right. My friend immediately knew I had asked this as a sort of a trick question for the breeder. I asked her how many dogs she had total and she answered with, "not a lot." Strange answer. She later told me she had 8 breeding females and 2 studs. She didn't even let me go and see the other dogs. I'm guessing they were probably locked in cages too.
On the plus side, she did show me the puppy's vaccination and deworming records. The puppy had also been microchipped and tatooed (this seems to be done a lot in Mexico).
But overall, I think I just visited a puppymill. The dad, the picture I posted in the first post did not look like that picture. He looked unkept and his hair was not silky like she had advertised, but instead was very wavy. The puppy was very dirty. Her hair felt very oily. It didn't seem she had been given a bath in a long time, if at all. She's also almost 4 months old, but her silver is starting to come in. I don't know if that's at the age when that happens. I'm going to post some pictures of the puppy and her father. Compare the one of the dad to the one I originally posted.
But so far, my impression is not good at all.
I spoke to a top breeder here in Mexico and I asked him what his prices were...he told me $2200. I told him that was a little out of my budget and thanked him for his time. But before I hung up he asked me what my budged was and I told him $1000, plus or minus a bit. He told me to stop looking for a Yorkie. He said I should just save that money and buy a different breed because I wasn't going to get a well bred dog for so little. I guess he might be right...