Adopting/buying a dog

OK, so this week has been stressful. Staying up late to de-clutter, clean, tie up wires... and getting emails from the puppies' owner. This post is a bit of a saga but worth reading if you're thinking of adopting from a breeder or just someone whose dog happen to have puppies.

When we visited last week, the owner told us she liked the black male puppy best but also that she can't keep a puppy because that would mean having 3 dogs and that's too many.

We started getting emails about the puppies. It seemed like the owner wasn't really sure we should be adopting the puppies. (Or should I say buying them. She asked for $375 each! She didn't mention this at all when we said we wanted to adopt 2 of them but we were thinking we'd offer $200 each anyway. We negotiated down to $325 each. They are mutts so this still seems steep to me but we went along with it because we thought we know what kind of home they are coming from and we know they are not inbred or sick.)

The owner's emails said various things about the black male puppy - he's deaf, he's anxious, scared of everything, doesn't like visitors, gets sick when nervous, cries a lot. She questioned us about our jobs and free time to take care of the puppies (I guess it's natural). She said the female puppy chews everything - no biggy, I mean she's a puppy, teething, right?

Another email said she couldn't bring the puppies on Saturday (when she was coming with Max and Izzy for their grooming) because Izzy, the mom dog, would get really upset if she left the puppies with us. I offered to pick them up Sunday morning but she said no. We wanted to get the puppies on Saturday or early Sunday so we could spend time with them before having to go to work on Monday.

By Thursday, we were concerned about the daily email. I called but only got voicemail and then another email. I spoke to her on the phone Friday night to see what was going on. She sounded fine and we were going to see her, Max, and Izzy for their grooming appointment on Saturday and she finally agreed to a Sunday morning pickup of the puppies. Saturday she seemed fine too and spent the grooming time talking to my girlfriend about everything.

Sunday morning we went to pick up the puppies. The owner looked awful, having been crying all night about giving up the black male puppy. She said we couldn't have him. We thought about it and decided not to take any puppies. We thought we'd adopt 2 dogs somewhere else, no bad feelings. We stayed about an hour and played with the parent dogs and the 3 puppies that were still there. When we got up to leave without any puppies the owner said she'd changed her mind and we could buy the 2 puppies!

We were so happy! We called the owner about an hour later to say the puppies were doing well. No problems at all. They were happy, eating, drinking, pooping and peeing. We had 6 different neighbors meet the puppies that day. Then around 4pm the owner's boyfriend called to say that the owner had been crying all day and that he had to come take the black male dog back. We didn't know what to make of this. We thought it was the nice thing to do to give the dog back to her but at the same time it wasn't fair to us. We'd paid for the dogs! If anyone reading this ever pays for a dog I recommend getting a receipt and a document that transfers ownership of the dog! Get all the veterinary records too!

We wanted 2 dogs. We thought about whether we wanted to return both dogs or just the one. Our instinct was that we didn't want to deal with these people anymore and wanted to look elsewhere for 2 dogs. But a neighbor told us the female puppy was just so great that we HAD to keep her and should ask for our money back too. This was tough. I mean we HAD spent $500 on supplies for 2 dogs and couldn't return half of it but I didn't know how to ask for my money back and keep the female puppy too. I tried to make the boyfriend understand our predicament and about the money we'd spent.

When he came for the boy puppy we had decided to return both but HE even wanted us to take the girl puppy. We told him we were concerned that they had other friends or relatives they wanted to give her to but he said no, that they had no one to give her to. He offered to sell her for only $200 this time saying we could put the other $125 towards getting another puppy. So that's what we did. We kept her. She is so cute and has such a great personality. We are really happy with her. We think we'll get another dog but maybe in 6 months or a year.