This question is asked way too often. My answer is: "It all depends on what you are looking for." Adopting from a shelter or a breed rescue can be equally rewarding as buying from a responsible or reputable breeder but there are some major differences between the two that should be considered.

When you buy a puppy from a responsible or reputable breeder, your puppy is health tested and you get a health guarantee. If your puppy develops a genetic disease or illness within the first few years of his life, the breeder will be there to help you giving you invaluable information on how to properly take care of your puppy and provide financial support by covering your veterinarian bills. When you adopt a dog from a shelter, you do not get this kind of support. If your adopted dog got seriously sick, you would have to cover the expenses yourself and would have a very few people around you who could offer you advice based on their expertise.

Puppies from responsible purebred breeders are also bred for temperament and when buying a puppy of specific breed, you already know what you are getting and what to expect from this dog breed. If you are looking for a dog with specific traits or a working dog, then a purebred dog would be your choice. Adopting a mixed-breed dog or puppy from a shelter usually means that you do not know their temperament very well ahead of time which can lead to problems when it comes to training and socializing your dog. I say adopting a mixed-breed dog since most dogs in shelters are mixed-breed dogs. The percentage of dogs in shelters that are purebred is 25% according to the HSUS 2008 estimate. However, this does not mean that you cannot find purebred dogs or puppies in shelters. It just means that you may have a harder time finding one at your local shelter. If you really want to adopt a specific breed of dog and your local shelter does not have one, then you can also look in shelters outside your area code.

If you are looking for a puppy, then a shelter may not be the best place for you. Why is this? Puppies are cute when they are small so parents will buy them for their kids to play with. After a while, they may not have the time to properly take care of the dog once it matures and grows to be an adult. A dog that matures without being properly trained and socialized in his early stages of life can develop some serious behavioral problems. What some of them decide to do is to give the dog for adoption or try rehoming the dog as they feel that they cannot provide adequate attention to the dog. As a result, there are more adult dogs in shelters than puppies and you may have a harder time finding a puppy that you like.

Dogs in shelters in some cases come with behavioral problems. When you are getting an adult dog from a shelter, many times he will come with some previous history of problems and will require extra care and attention in order to successfully adapt to your family and the surroundings. This is not a problem if you are the type of person who is patient and is willing to devote their time to help this dog.

If you are on a budget and just want a dog to keep you company that you will love and care deeply about, then adopting from a shelter is a great idea. You will pay only for the vaccinations and health testing done on the dog/puppy, so your total cost for adopting a dog/puppy from a shelter will be in the range of $100-$200. This is a lot less expensive than buying a purebred puppy from a responsible breeder who may charge for their puppies anywhere from $700 to $5,000. The other expenses that include providing food, proper health care, and maintenance for your dog will be the same regardless of whether you adopt from a shelter or buy from a breeder.

As you can see, adopting from a shelter and buying from a responsible breeder both have their advantages. Adopting from a shelter means that you are helping save a dog that has been mistreated and this brings satisfaction to many people. You can also give a donation to your local shelter and help them be able to take better care of the dogs and also find all of them good homes. Buying a puppy from a breeder, on the other hand, gives you more choice when choosing your companion or working dog. Whatever you decide to do, do not let anyone tell you that you made the wrong decision. As long as you are a responsible owner and your dog gives you unconditional love and friendship, it does not matter from where your dog came, nor how much you paid for him.

We all have visited pet shops and seen those cute puppies that they sell. Sometimes, we cannot stand looking at their sad faces through the small cages in which they spend their entire day. Your kid comes to you and begs you to buy them that puppy. In a way, you feel guilty if you do not buy that cute puppy. By buying the puppy, you feel that you have helped the animal and also made your kid happy. The truth is that you have not helped the other puppy who will replace the one you just bought and will face the same treatment – i.e. mistreatment.

Puppies that end up at pet stores or pet shops are puppies bred by irresponsible breeders. These are breeders who only breed for volume and profit. They have so many puppies that they cannot find a good home for all of them. So what do they do? They sell the puppy to a pet shop for $200, and then the pet shop keeps the puppy until someone comes along and buys the puppy for $2,000. These puppies are usually not properly health checked and they will not let you to see their parents. The puppies are bred by puppy mills whose main goal is to profit, and profit a lot. In order to do that, they have to have many litters a year to sustain their business. They also need to have someone who will buy them after they distribute them to these pet shops. Someone buying the puppy from the pet shop will only help the puppy millers continue with their high-volume breeding.

Puppies that are kept in crates or cages for the first few months of their lives are not socialized properly. They come in contact with a lot of people and see other puppies, but this is not proper socializing. Being behind bars or glass and having people look at you is not something that will make anyone feel relaxed. As a result, many puppies from pet shops have behavior problems when brought home and can suffer from stress and anxiety. They are also harder to housetrain or housebreak. They will eat, poo, and pee in the same place – their crate/cage – because they had nowhere else to do it while living at the pet shop. Housetraining is one of the most important things to teach a puppy. If not taught on time, you will have to clean up mess for the rest of the dog’s life.

Pet shops will usually overprice the puppies because it costs them money to pay for workers, rent, and taking care of the puppies while they are still waiting for a buyer (which can take many months). You will find puppies that are of much better quality directly from responsible breeders and that cost less than a puppy from a pet shop. Even if they tell you at the pet shop that the puppy is purebred, you will never know for sure until the puppy grows up. They might give you some papers saying that the puppy is purebred but on many occasions those papers end up being falsified.

Many puppies bought from pet shops end up with illnesses, genetic problems, and temperament issues later in life. This is because in most cases, the puppy’s parents and the puppy are never checked by a qualified veterinarian who can assess if the parents should be bred at all or not. This leads to many puppies that come from pet shops having health problems, as well as, behavioral problems.

So next time you go to a pet store or pet shop and you see a puppy for sale, remember how that puppy got there and what will happen if you buy him. It may look like you are doing the right thing by saving the cute puppy but in reality you are just continuing the puppy mill cycle. It would be better to go and adopt a cute puppy from the shelter, purebred or not, for $100 than to pay $1,000 and support puppy mills and dog overpopulation.

This is an age-old question. People who had owned a mutt or a mixed-breed dog will tell you that their dog is just as healthy as a purebred dog and lived for just as long, if not longer. To answer the question of whether or not mutts are healthier than purebreds, we need to look at the general mutt population, not specific cases.

Mixed-breed dogs are usually a result of breeding intentionally or unintentionally two purebred dogs of different breed. Most of the mixed-breed dogs are born as a result of unintentional breeding. This means that the parents of the mixed-breed puppy are either unknown or have not been tested for different types of diseases before the breeding occurred. As you can see, we already have a problem since we do not know what diseases the mixed-breed puppy could have inherited. Whether the puppy is a purebred or not, he will inherit genes from both the mother and the father. Some will argue that the bad genes will cancel out, but if you look into genetics a little bit deeper, you will see that this is not true. If any of the parents or both of them had heredity faults or genetic disease or were predisposed to a certain disease, this will reflect on the puppies born.

Purebred dogs on the other hand are usually a result of a breeding between two healthy and tested purebred dogs. We are not talking about puppy millers or backyard breeders or whatever irresponsible breeders are called these days. Puppies from irresponsible breeders could be just as bad as mixed-breed puppies from two unknown parents. We are talking about responsible breeders breeding two dogs with a pedigree that are not related (i.e. avoiding inbreeding). Such dogs are health tested before being bred which will decrease the chances of the puppy having any ailments when he matures. The breeder will therefore ensure that the puppy comes from a proven/healthy stock. The puppies born will have a much higher chance of being healthy than the puppies born from unintentionally mixing together two other dog breeds.

You may say:  “What about all those poodle mixes (-oodles) that are being sold by breeders who intentionally breed them and also do health testing?” The problem with those mixed-breed dogs is that not every puppy will properly inherit the desired traits. What I mean by this is that these dogs are bred supposedly to create a hypoallergenic breed of service dogs. The truth is, from the litter born, only a small amount of puppies will inherit the poodle coat that is considered hypoallergenic. The poodle mix project was started by Wally Conron from the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia in the early eighties. He wanted to create a new breed that was a good guide dog but also allergy-free. He tried multiple times and finally abandoned the project because he could not achieve the consistency that he wanted. Breeding or ‘designing’ a new breed is not as easy as he first thought. This led to many irresponsible breeders creating even more crossbred dogs for profit by crossbreeding poodles with many other breeds, adding to the dog overpopulation.

Shelters are full of crossbred dogs as a result of irresponsible breeding. There are also purebred dogs in shelters waiting for someone to adopt them, but according to HSUS (The Humane Society of the United States), only 25% of the dogs in shelters are purebred and 75% are mixed-breed dogs. This does not mean that we should not adopt dogs from shelters. We need to stop the irresponsible and unnecessary breeding of mixed-breed dogs that is fueled by people wanting to have the next ‘it’ dog.

Here we discuss what is needed to become a successful dog breeder and establish your own breeding kennel.

Before you even start thinking about breeding dogs, you need to ask yourself: "Do I have everything that is required to start a breeding kennel?"

What do you need to have to start a breeding kennel?

The most important thing that every dog breeder needs to have is knowledge about the breed. By knowledge about the breed, we do not mean you read a book on the particular breed. We mean that you and your family grew up with that breed and have years of first-hand experience with the breed in question, as well as, its specific needs. Also, you need to have plenty of space to exercise the dogs and a rural setting or a farm with a large property is usually preferred. Breeding dogs in the city is not recommended, especially considering that there are restrictions in some places on how many dogs you can have in your household and you do not know how your neighbors will react to your dogs.

To start breeding, you need to own a quality bitch, in most cases more than one. She will be the foundation of your kennel. You need to have enough funds to pay for your veterinarian bills and general care for your dogs and puppies. If you think that taking care of one dog is expensive, then you should not start a breeding kennel. The bitch and the puppies need to be registered with a kennel club such as the AKC (American Kennel Club) or CKC (Canadian Kennel Club) to prove that they are up to the standards of the breed. You also need to register your kennel which will involve paying for the membership and abiding by the rules of the club. Being a member of a club gives you advantages since you will be able to connect easier to a network of other breeders and be notified of special news and events available to members only. In most cases, breeders will take their dogs to shows and other types of competitions such as agility and obedience. This is where they can prove the quality of their dogs and their temperaments and preserve the true essence of the breed. Each time your dog wins a show or competition, he or she will win points and titles. These points show the quality of your dogs and your dedication to the breed.

Taking a dog to a dog show costs money, especially if you need to hire professional handlers or try to reach some of the more prestigious shows such as the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Some breeders/owners pay in the $80,000-$150,000 range to reach the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show with their dogs. Not only do their dogs have to be of the highest quality, but it also takes time and money to get there. This is why you will see that some dogs have more than one owner because they split the costs. Not being a member of any clubs just shows that you are not really interested in the breed and only care about producing and selling puppies.

Once the puppies are born, you have to be prepared to spend a lot of time with the mother and the puppies. In addition, each puppy needs to be health screened by a veterinarian, DNA profiled, and vaccinated. All of this costs money, so be prepared. You then have to decide which puppy to keep and which puppy will carry your breeding tradition. If you are unsure, then you can make contracts with the owners where it says that you are allowed to take their dogs to shows or competition whenever you wish to do so and thus earn points and promote your own kennel. You can then use that dog or bitch for breeding when the time is right.  

Why do you want to start a breeding kennel?

You have to understand that breeding dogs is a very expensive and time-consuming hobby. If you just want to breed dogs for profit and ignore the consequences, you will soon find yourself labeled as a puppy mill and lose your reputation. If you want to become a reputable breeder and produce litters with the goal of improving the breed and keeping a puppy or two from the litter with which you would continue your efforts, then you will make a lot of friends along the way. Reputable and responsible breeders make very little money. Usually, they lose money and this is why we call this a 'hobby' and not a business.  

How to find top quality stud dogs or bitches? 

First of all, you need to fully understand the breed standard to pick a champion stud for your bitch ot to pick a bitch that will be part of your kennel. The best way to do it is to go to dog shows or competitions yourself and make connections with other well-respected breeders in the field. See if you can meet with them privately and discuss your plans. You can also visit different official breed club websites for your country and ask them for breeder references or look through their directory of breeders.

Many reputable and experienced breeders are willing to help as long as they agree with your intentions and plans. They can even tutor you on how to become a better breeder. If you become successful, then they will also benefit from it since you bought your bitch from them or their stud was used to inseminate your female. Having a champion stud or a quality bitch ensures that the puppies will be healthy and true to the breed's standards. Not all puppies are going to be show dogs, but those that cannot be shown in the ring can make great companions if they are healthy and with good temperaments.

It is always advisable to buy your future bitch or dog when they are puppies so that they can properly adjust to the new environment, which means that you will have to wait for a little over 2 years before you can start breeding them. This is why dog breeding takes patience and cannot be forced. You can expect to have to invest a lot of time and money before you can start breeding your dogs and producing litters. Only at this point will you see any returns on your investments depending on how skilled of a breeder you are and how lucky you are that all of your puppies are healthy, as well as, that their mother does not have any complications.

How to find buyers for your puppies?

Before you start thinking about producing a litter, you need to have a waiting list of potential buyers for the puppies you are going to produce. These buyers need to be screened to make sure they will be able to take care of their dogs and not abandon them at some point in the future. Breeding dogs without any plans is irresponsible and can lead to overpopulation. Breeding without first finding buyers can leave you with puppies that you may not be able to sell or for which you cannot take proper care. Usually, such breeders either sell them to pet stores (always a bad idea since the buyers are not screened and you can be sure that the puppies will be mistreated) or to anyone that shows up at their front door for a low price.

Aside from you having to be a responsible breeder, you need to find responsible buyers who will not contribute to the overpopulation at the various shelters. You will want to stay in contact with those buyers well after they have taken their puppy/dog home to make sure everything is going well and assist them if they need some help or advice. Sometimes, you will need to be prepared to take a puppy/dog back if the buyer cannot take care of him/her anymore. You also need to have a well-written contract where all of your responsibilities and guarantees are outlined, as well as, the responsibilities of the future owners. Having a well-written contract can save you from having a lot of headaches in the future and protect your kennel's reputation. If you are unsure what goes into a contract, ask a reputable and experienced breeder to show you one that you can user as a template to construct your own.

Dog breeding is not for everyone and as you see now, requires a lot of patience and work. You need to be prepared to spend thousands of dollars to run a successful breeding kennel and to always set your goals when you breed. Dog breeding can be a very rewarding experience and will allow you to meet a lot of interesting people who share the same love for the breed as you do. It will allow you to make long-lasting relationships and many friends along the way. 

Here is an excerpt of an article we found on latimes.com. It provides what a breeder like Kathy Weichert (a breeder, owner and exhibitor of champion Beagles including Uno - last year's Westminster winner) thinks about PETA and similar-minded organizations: (please post your comments below)

PETA, according to Weichert, is "a radical group that believes no
animal should be domesticated. They are targeting [Westminster]
because it is highly visible around the world."

"Hobby breeders" like herself (as opposed to puppy mills, which churn
out purebred dogs for profit), says Weichert, are not responsible for
genetic defects in purebred dogs. "Reputable breeders, as opposed to
mills or backyard breeders, would never intentionally or knowingly
breed animals that were diagnosed or known to carry genetic or fatal
faults." Small-time breeders, she thinks, "most definitely are a
positive influence on the breeds," and breeders are among the most
prominent donors to groups like the AKC's Canine Health Foundation,
which research genetic disorders in dogs.

So what about breeds like the Pekingese and Pug, whose squashed faces
can cause breathing problems, and the Chinese shar-pei and
Bloodhound, whose wrinkles can become breeding grounds for
infection? Do breeders contribute to such problems by locking these
traits into their dogs' bloodlines?

On the contrary, says Weichert. "Those are breed traits! Those
breeds have always looked like what they look like. No, those traits
come naturally when breeding dogs of the same breed...Peke to Peke
produces all puppies that look like Pekes!" Genetic problems, she
says, will happen regardless of the care a breeder takes; it's just a
part of nature. "Can [PETA] explain why children are born with
allergies, Down's, deformities, mental retardation? No!" Canine
genetics -- like human genetics -- are not an exact science, Weichert
says. But breeders like herself take every possible precaution by
testing their breeding stock for health issues and knowing every
intricacy of their dogs' lineage.

She scoffs at the suggestion that pet overpopulation is related to
purebred dog breeding. For one thing, many hobby breeders like
herself breed a relatively small number of puppies (Weichert
generally breeds one Beagle litter per year, although she may try to
breed two in 2009). For another, potential puppy buyers are
thoroughly vetted (no pun intended) to make sure they're serious
about pet ownership.