The Last of the Purebred Puppies

Zoe in 2005

This is Zoe when we brought her home in December of 2005. Wasn't she adorable? She's still sweet as can be at seven years old and we love her dearly. I hate to say never, but I think she's the last purebred puppy we'll ever buy.
 
She's a French Brittany. We bought her from a friendly breeder who seemed to have nothing to hide. We went to his home, met his family and saw both of Zoe's parents.  We scrutinized her pedigree going back several generations and saw no evidence of inbreeding as far at we two laypeople could tell.
 
Zoe has hip dysplasia, which showed up pretty early in her life and now at the age of seven, she lives with a lot of pain and her back legs frequently collapse out from under her on smooth floors. We wonder how long we can maintain her quality of life. I had assumed that since hip dysplasia is supposed to be more common in larger dogs, that a French Brittany would be less likely to develop it. Zoe weighs about thirty five pounds, which is average for females of her breed.


Until our newest dog, every dog Rick and I have ever owned was a purebred purchased as a puppy from a home breeder. When we were young, we would just decide what breed we wanted and then look in the classified ads for puppies for sale.   

Max as an adult with Dusty as a puppy in 1976.

Rick had a fox terrier growing up, and so that's the breed we chose for our first dog. Sadly, Max's life was short. If we had been older and wiser he might have had a better chance at a longer, happier life. A male fox terrier was not necessarily the best choice for a household with small children.

Ten year old  Erika, with 14 year old Dusty in 1990.

Our Weimaraner, Dusty, was destructive and hyperactive into her old age, but she took whatever the kids dished out without a hint of aggression.

We bred her with a neighbor's male Weimaraner just once, sold her puppies, then had her spayed with some of the profits. I suppose that made us backyard breeders, except that Dusty and her puppies lived in the house.

Dusty had heart worms when she was young and her treatment was expensive for us and dangerous for her. We learned our lesson about heart worm prevention, but thankfully Dusty came through the experience just fine.

She was hardy and healthy and lived to the ripe old age of fifteen when she spared us any painful decisions by dying quietly in the backyard on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

After Dusty, I did a lot of research before deciding what breed to get for our next puppy. We still preferred  larger breeds and females, but now understood that Dusty's hyperactivity and destructiveness were typical traits of her breed, which we had been ignorant of when we bought her as a puppy. Maybe, I thought, with enough careful research, we could select a breed without those traits. In hindsight, I realize one thing I was still ignorant of was good breeding practices.

Paul and Erika with Shadow the day we brought her home in 1991

We bought Shadow, our black Labrador retriever, from a family who lived out in the Texas Hill Country. She was loveable and great with our now older kids.


Shadow retrieved the first ball we ever tossed her without any attempt on our part to teach her how to fetch. She lived to fetch tennis balls for the rest of her life.

Shadow,  1991

Once Shadow was past adolescence, she did turn out to be less destructive and hyper than Dusty had been.

But when she was still fairly young she began snapping at small children when they got up close to her face.

Before she was two years old we learned she had hip dysplasia, but it didn't progress nearly as fast as Zoe's has.

Shadow, 2002

 
Shadow lived to the age of thirteen when we had to have her put down because she was living with too much pain and too little  mobility.  We may have let her suffer longer than we should have, but anyone who's ever had to make that decision knows how difficult it can be.

Shadow lived longer and had more good years than we had hoped for after we learned about her hip dysplasia and we were thankful for that.

In looking back at her pedigree after she was gone, I noticed something I had forgotten: Her father was also her grandfather. The couple that bred her assured us that this was common practice to reinforce "good traits" and was safe, but now I wondered if this inbreeding had something to do with her hip dysplasia and her tendency toward snappiness, which I had not anticipated in a Labrador.



When we were ready to get our next dog, I made one visit to the Humane Society. I knew people who always adopted mixed breeds from shelters and I thought that was admirable, but after all a pet is a long term commitment. I wondered how you could predict the likelihood of serious problems with a dog whose breeding and background you knew nothing about. Getting a dog from a shelter seemed risky. I wanted as much predictability as possible.

We decided we would do what we had always done, buy a  purebred puppy. We knew we wanted a breed that was unlikely to be aggressive with children and a puppy that had not been inbred, so this time I was going to pay more attention to the pedigree. We weren't getting any younger, so we thought we should get a smaller dog this time. Also on my shopping list of desirable traits was "less doggy odor," "not a heavy shedder," etc, etc. I had taken on quite a consumer mentality about selecting a family pet.

Penny, 2005

 A Vizsla seemed like the perfect choice. We paid more for Penny than we had ever paid for a dog in our lives.


And she's everything we hoped she'd be, super-affectionate, great with children, no doggy smell, with a silky short coat and velvety ears.

Penny 2007

Then there's that earsplitting high-pitched bark when she gets excited, which is often, and her habit of jumping on people, which we just can't break her of. Oh well, no dog is perfect.

At seven and half years old now, she's healthy and energetic and we expect her to be around for a long time. We love her dearly.

(Edited to add: June 24,2014 Yesterday we had to have Penny euthanized after learning that she had cancer that had metastasized to her lungs. It was probably lymphoma which, as it turns out, is fairly common in Vizslas. We are heartbroken. She had just turned 9 years old. It's hard to believe I wrote the words above just 18 months ago. And two weeks ago, Zoe had her second hip surgery, a femoral head ostectomy)

After we'd had Penny a few months we decided we could handle a second dog and that it would be good for Penny to have a canine companion.

Zoe and Penny in 2011

The same kind of research that led us to choose a Vizsla also led us to choose a French Brittany. Zoe is just five months younger than Penny and didn't cost quite as much. They get along together beautifully.

Zoe is lovable, sweet and affectionate with us and with the children in our lives. Like every dog we've ever had, she has a few annoying habits, but what dog doesn't?

It's heartbreaking to see her living with pain and having a hard time climbing the stairs at only seven years old. Some things just aren't that predictable.



A year ago when I was making the rounds of shelters looking at cats, I couldn't help but notice all the dogs and somehow I felt differently about them than I had in my visit to the Humane Society seven years ago. I saw so many adult dogs that looked gentle and friendly, frightened and stressed. I couldn't help but think that if people like Rick and I only ever chose purebred puppies, dogs like these were doomed.
 
I thought about how quickly our own dogs' puppy days had been over and it didn't seem so important to only ever consider puppies. I thought about how we've learned that the health and behaviors of purebreds are not necessarily all that predictable.

The latest addition to our dog pack is a beautiful, loveable mutt who was about a year old when we brought her home from the city shelter.

Penny, Zoe and Gypsy in 2012

Rick and I aren't getting any younger and we probably don't have many more dogs in our future anyway, but  we bought our last purebred puppy when we bought Zoe. The key words here are "bought," "purebred" and "puppy." We won't purchase a dog again and contribute to the market for puppy mills and breeders when so many adoptable dogs are put down every day. We've learned that an adult mixed breed can make a wonderful pet. Too many of them never get a second look in the shelters because everyone wants a puppy and most people prefer purebreds. But even purebreds can be found in shelters and adopted from rescue organizations.
 
I had heard about the horror of puppy mills for years, which is why we at least always bought our purebred puppies from home breeders. This year I  actually "met" a product, or maybe I should say a producer, of a puppy mill. This is Rainbow Diamond. She was rescued in a raid on a puppy mill and taken in by "Diamond Dachshund Rescue." She is a patient of our veterinarian. She lived in a grungy bathtub where she was bred continuously despite a fractured spine that never healed. I don't know why any dog lover would want to be a consumer of this market, if they know about it, that is.