Adopt from Shelters or Rescues or buy a puppy from a good breeder, don’t get your dog from a petstore or from the internet.
Adopt from Shelters or Rescues or buy a puppy from a good breeder, don’t get your dog from a petstore or from the internet.
When you have decided to bring a puppy into your home it is very important to be a well prepared dogowner and that includes choosing the breeder of your puppy with great care. When looking for an English Bulldog puppy you need to be sure that you find a reputable English Bulldog breeder. English Bulldogs are a very expensive breed, unfortunately this also attracts the wrong kind of breeders.
There are a lot of breeders, if not most of them, who are just there to make a profit on these dogs with minimal care and costs.
Now most people know about puppymills. But don’t be fooled, a lot of price winning, high rated breeders with champion dogs are no different. A lot of these breeders keep the dogs in kennels outside. They get five to ten female dogs, let them have puppies three times and than dump the female dogs online or in pounds or shelters. I know this from experience since I adopted several female bulldogs that were used for breeding in this way. Most of these dogs never get to go outside their kennels, don’t get to interact with other dogs or animals and don’t get the love and guidance from a human they need. Now every breeder will tell you that their dogs go for daily walks, stay all day inhouse and only sleep in the kennels, which is in most cases, not true.
There are several things you need to look for when you are researching an English bulldog breeder. First off, the best way decide who to choose is by looking locally. Before you make an appointment to go visit, do some webresearch about this breeder. You’ll be amazed how much you can find about breeders by googling the kennelname, adress and the owners name(s). Make sure to also google the adress, bad breeders quite often change names. Also ask around on forums about the kennel, a good breeder won’t mind and will only applaud you for being carefull and wellinformed before choosing your puppy. If they have a website what are the topics, a lot of kennelsites are just advertising for the puppies and stud dogs. In my personal opinion a website does say a lot about the kennel. When they have no personal information about themselves or even the dogs, breed several dog breeds, have no pictures of the dogs outside (only in kennels or shows) these are all serious warning signs.
When the websearch had a good result make an appointment to visit the breeder.
A good breeder will show you the paperwork and documentation proving that both the male and female are pure bred dogs. They can also show you the documentation of the veterinarian to show that both dogs had all their shots etc.
Your visit to the breeder is an opportunity to get to know the dogs, the breeder and to get all the information you need before making that big decision. You can get to know the dogs before you commit to purchasing one of the puppies.
Look at the picture above and let’s say for example the three dogs on the left are female and the others are male. Which one would you choose? Of course you can not choose a dog from a photo! But when you ask yourself that question, several other questions come to mind. What gender, what color, what size etc. Make sure that before you make a visit to a breeder you make a list of your criteria and include the whole family. This way, when you go to visit you are a 100% sure what to look for. All those puppies are so darn cute and adorabull, so beware when you are going, you want to take them all. So before emotions take over make sure to make a list, so you make a thought-out choice. Keep in mind a breeder will recommend a certain puppy for you. Even when you have a good connection with the breeder make sure to make your own decision! A breeder has other interests in mind: how many dogs have reservations, which dogs will go to other breeders (and go to show and maybe win prices which will be free advertising for their kennel), female dogs are favorited so they will try to find homes for the males first, etc. etc.
You want to make sure that the English bulldog breeder is willing to offer you some sort of guarantee or paperwork on the health not only of the parents but of the babies as well. You want to make sure that they can verify the health of their puppies. You don’t want to pay all that money only to find that the little puppy is sick and will have medical problems later in life.
In my opinion a good breeder:
When you think about getting a dog, have you considered a rescue dog?
There is nothing wrong with buying a puppy from a good breeder of course, but there are also a lot of Bulldogs in shelters or even deathcenters waiting for someone to take them home. Even puppies end up in shelters and rescues so when looking for breeders online you might want to check out some local rescues and shelters aswell.
If you have any questions or suggestions on this blog,
leave a reply or e-mail to baggybulldogs@gmail.com