Bring home the gold!

by Ed A from NJ
(New Jersey)

I had never bought a dog before, I always adopted and though Beau was a great service dog. The price of service dog training has totally sky rocketed. To buy the dog and training they want $15 to 20 thousand dollars! That is right. I spoke to the trainer who trained Beau and just for training the price had doubled from eight years ago. In other words it is going to be very expensive so I knew I had to make the best choice I could to insure the perfect dog. So the research began. Since the dog will be a balance dog I knew I needed a very large sturdy dog and Beau at 165 was not your average Pyrenees. Since I had rescued Maximoose at 5 he was to old for training so I had somewhat limited my options. First was to find a good breeder with Not only strong AKC ties but I also wanted OFA certifications. While my love for Pyrenees is strong I knew I needed a big big girl so as not to upset maximoose. After a ton of searching I found a breeder in Maryland who had big boned Newfoundland that he claimed were OFA certified for hips, joints and eyes. He was happy to give me all the information I needed to go to the OFA site and look up the dogs.He said he had a litter of 8 and 6 were spoken for but he had one female who was only 1 pound smaller then the biggest boy and she was not spoken for. My guess was her size was a bit larger then most want when buying a girl. After reading the horror stories about some breeder I knew my next step was to go see the breeder and confirm all I had herd. I had one more trick up my sleeve I was going to try to confirm that I was going to get what I was paying for. So far I had a highly recommended AKC breeder with OFA certs on both mommy and daddy but I had not seen anything myself. When I got to his home things started looking good. Well maintained property, nice solid looking dogs,he still had his retired breeding stock which were now kept as pets. All his dogs has permanent IDs that matched the OFA certs. So this is when I seen the most beautiful big female puppy bounding her way toward me.I was in love but kept my cool. I told him I would need one more thing before I could obligate myself to her. I don't know if he ever had this request before or if I was going to get tossed off his property. I said I had brought 3 DNA tests. I wanted to swab the daddy, mommy and the puppy I would get to be sure she was indeed the puppy from those two dogs. Even though it was obvious the puppies were suckling from that bitch.He smile and agreed without a second thought! Since it would be 4 more weeks before I could take the puppy home I had the time. I left a deposit and returned home. The test came back and sure enough everything checked out. Nava is now home with us, she is ten month old in training and so far her first set of x-rays look great. She will finish training long before she will be old enough to do her job. Since Newfoundland bones won't be hard and strong until she is 18 months old we are taking our time with her. By taking my time and doing the research I think I got the perfect dog. The best new is Maximoose and her are the best of friends, Maxi actually looks after her as if he is her daddy. After doing all the leg work myself I can tell you it was worth it and in the end I have done all I could to insure a health dog but no garrenty is ever there. We will see if this little girl can do what my Beau did.I think if you are looking to buy your dog my outline may help you find a good one and even if you are just looking for a pet is it really any less important. I think not , after all we all want our puppies to last forever.