[ssmith]

Today I went to see a breeder about purchasing a female nine-week-old yorkie. On the website, the breeder portrayed herself as a professional and well-put together businessperson but when I went to her home today, I must admit I was disappointed.

As I was standing outside her door waiting for her to answer, I could smell unpleasant odors coming from her property and when she did answer her door I was disappointed with her appearance and not in a vain sort of way, rather it was in the way in which she presented herself. I expected that she would have had a neater appearance since she was conducting business. However, I still went ahead and walked into her home hoping that I would be proven wrong. The first thing I noticed was the strong odor. The same odor that I had smelled from outside her door was present inside her home and this in itself set off some red alarms. As I stood in her living room she asked me to take a seat as she went down stairs to get the puppy I had inquired about but that seemed strange to me, I thought surely that she would be more inviting and more welcoming to a potential buyer. Everything about her demeanor seemed contradictory to what she had presented on her website.

I thought that she would have welcomed me into the part of her home where she had the dogs so that I as the potential buyer of this puppy could inspect its current living arrangement. However, it seemed to me that she was trying to do quite the opposite. When she went down stairs to get the puppy I had inquired about I heard a lot of barking and her trying to settle the dogs down, I also heard her say, “I know it’s hot down here.” Then another red flag went off in my head because why would a professional breeder who claims that she has been in the breeding business for years keep her dogs/puppies in a hot area. When she brought up the puppy that I had inquired about, she looked exactly as she had in her photos but as the breeder got closer and handed me the puppy, I noticed that the puppy had an unpleasant odor. While holding the puppy, I attempted to ask her questions about the personality of the puppy but she didn’t seem as knowledgeable or as articulate as her website made her seem. In the end, I told her that I needed time to think about buying the puppy and I thanked her letting me view the puppy and I left.

I would also like to state that I’ve read on this website that yorkies aren’t supposed to be sold until they are twelve weeks, yet this ‘experienced breeder’ with years of experience was willing to let her puppies go at nine weeks. That in itself seemed odd to me. She also stated that she preferred to be paid in cash, which again rang red in my head, because if something did go wrong with the puppy and I had to take her to court, proving that I paid her eight hundred dollars in cash may be hard to prove. I would also like to know if it is a normal practice to sell unregistered puppies for eight hundred dollars, although on her site she claimed that the dogs were registerable, but that the registration would be an additional fee. Moreover, if anyone thinks that this is indeed a small puppy mill what can I do to help the animals in her possession?