continuing our story

so in my last entry I ended at us calling the number in the paper about the mastiff pups for sale. I spoke to the woman who was the so-called "breeder" and we set up a time we could go down to her place to see the pups. I was VERY excited as you can imagine and so was my husband (even though he tried to play it "cool" - I knew he was excited simply because he ran to the bank and withdrew the $800 in cash - oh yeah that is what the woman was asking for the pups $800 which right there should have sent up a red flag but really what did I know? I thought WOW that is a real bargain LOL!) The day we were going to see the pups I got out of work alittle bit early and we headed down to the woman's house (which luckily was only about a hour away from where we lived). Now mind you this was January and it was EXTREMELY cold so when we got to the woman's home we expected to be "seeing" the puppies inside the house. Nope WRONG! These little pups were being kept outside in the yard - they were in a fenced in enclosure and there was a little dog house with a "heat lamp" in it. Right there I was turned off - not that I am bashing anyone who keeps their dogs outside - I mean that is what some people choose to do I guess I was just turned off because it was FREEZING outside and the dead of winter and these were just 8 week old pups. Moving on we looked at the pups and they were all pretty cute only they were a bit on the scrawny side - all but one - he was pretty hefty looking and the breeder proudly told us "he's the biggest he weighs 16 lbs!" now not knowing a whole lot about mastiff puppy "sizes" and really what should be the healthy weights at a certain age we thought ok he looks good so hmmm maybe we will take him only to find out that he wasn't for sale. Ok WTH? Then why show us him? The breeder told us that someone has already come and put a deposit on him BUT if we really wanted him we could have him. Uh ok I thought the reason you put a deposit on something is so someone can't snatch it out from under you? That didn't sit too well either. But he was pretty cute and I really did want a puppy so before we said we wanted him we asked if we could see the mom and dad - which according to the woman when I spoke to her on the phone were "on the premises". Only somehow now that we wanted to see them miraculously she didn't remember telling us that both parents were there - only the mom - the dad was somewhere in LBI??? HUH? Well whatever we thought ok let us see the mom. Now from what I read and from what people have told me that the way you can sort of predict what the temperment of the puppy will be is to "meet" the parents - if the mom and dad dogs are approachable and "nice" then most likely the pups will follow suit. Well here that didn't seem to be the case. We were not allowed near the mom (who BTW was chained up way in the back of the yard). There was also another Mastiff over to the other side of the yard who we were not allowed to go near either because apparently he had been abused and didn't like strangers :o( So ok now I am really getting turned off and I think my husband probably would have left even sooner had I not been asking some questions. We decided to talk privately so we took a little walk across the yard and now here comes the part that even 10 years later when I think about it I start laughing out loud. As we are walking we come across what looked to be a giant swan of some sort - so my husband (oh my gosh now I am laughing) decides he is going to try to pet this thing and just as he is reaching out to pet this swan-like duck thing the woman yells NOOOOOOO!!! Don't touch him!!! and with that this ducky thing raises it wings (and now it looks huge) and kind of lurches forward and starts chasing poor Scott through the yard. He is running like hell and I am just standing there not know whether to laugh or somehow try to help him!!! Eventually this duck/swan got tired and stopped chasing him and wandered back wherever the heck it came from. I think it was at that point that we both decided that this was not the person or place we wanted to buy our puppy from. We didn't want to totally insult the woman so we just told her we needed to think about it some more and that we would contact her. She proceeded to follow us to the car telling us how that pup would be gone and how it's now or never blah blah blah. But we stuck to our guns and we told her we would call her (which of course we never did). One thing too I forgot to mention was this woman was also supposedly breeding Labs and Rottweilers. There were also about 50 cats roaming around the "grounds" as well. It just didn't sit well - even though it killed me to leave those puppies in her hands. Honestly if I could I would have taken them all (I believe there were 8 total). But I think we made the right decision in not taking the pup. I had hoped to be driving away with a puppy in my arms but the more I thought about the more I realized with a dog this size we REALLY needed to go to a reputable breeder - one that really cared about their dogs and one that we could trust to help us if we needed and one that was honest and just flat out a loving dog owner - not just in it for the $$$. And lucky for us about a week later we found that person :o) (to be continued)