i have just had an email off someone wanting a pup, but as he says, £is has to be female and i only want to pay £400"

i guess he wont like the message i sent back to him telling him where to go

have any of you ever had anyone like this email you?

I've only had polite email enquiries, none of them have mentioned price. I don't think I'd even bother to reply to one like that!

well after telling them that they will have to go to a byb and buy a mutt i got an email back telling me to grow up and that they have found pups for £350, well if they have found pups at that price why on earth are they asking me to drop the price by £300?? some people need a reality check

Unbelievable!  I dont think I would reply to that either!

I had an email last week from a man informing me that he lived locally to me and given this,  he said that I could use his dog at stud, for a reduced price because he is 9 years of age and never been used before. So because he thinks he has a 'good pedigree' and a nice personality he thought it was a good idea.

So, not that I had any intentions of using it obviously, I mailed back and asked him what health tests he had done on the dog to ensure he was as healthy as he could be if we was going to use him at stud, I never got a reply suprisingly lol.  

Last time we had a litter 5 years ago, I had a mouthful from a lady who was interested in having a pup and then rang me back and said she wanted 2, and I said I wouldnt sell her 2, and then there was another email from somebody who would be happy to take the last pup, but only at a reduced price. 

You certainly have to bite your lip and have a thick skin when dealing with some folk!

I get it so often for kittens (not only do they want them for "no more than £100" but also less than 8 weeks old!!) that I've put a message on my website saying requests for a free or very cheap kitten will be ignored. They just get deleted now.

I get emails from people that have been scammed, and sent off money for a pup - unseen!

As, naturally, there is no pup, they are left short and ask for one free or very cheap.  I don't have time to waste.  It takes long enough sending emails to genuine people.

Delete - delete - delete!!

I once had someone unsure about buying the last of my litter - bearing in mind they were only 3 weeks old at the time, they didn't seem to understand that there will always be a 'last one' in a litter.  They asked for a price reduction due to it being the last one, but I didn't waste my time responding.  I just laughed about it!  Fortunately good owners do come along in time.

I had a phonecall a couple of months ago concerning my last litter from an Irish man. And within 30 seconds of the phonecall he said he wanted a brindle boy no more than £200 and could i separate it from mum and the rest of the litter (they were 4 weeks old) as he didnt want it to get used to other dogs as he wanted it for fighting!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was one of those times when my mouth ran away with itself before I engaged my brain and I was a nightmare to be around for days afterwards. It had been a long time since I had been that mad and upset!!!!! 

6 weeks sleeping on the settee whilst pregnant and nursing a bitch with raging mastitis and a pup with a drained abscess on her face had taken its toll on my patience!!!!!

i had a phone call last week and was told i was chargeing to much!!!!!!!!!
plus she wanted to breed with her when she was older!!!!!
i told her were to get off and like the poster i told her to find a pup that perents have had all health tests and fantasic temprements like mine ,i wasnt even charging the top end price like some are! the cheek of them.!

I haven't even bred a litter yet, but any request I get, I try and give them as much information as possible, tell them why, if they've seen adverts for cheap pups, that will be the case and explain about responsible and ethical breeding, health tests etc, etc.  The usual type of request I get is 'have you got any chocolate pups we are after a bitch/dog' - and that's it!

I've only been receiving them for a couple of years, so maybe by the time I've been doing it for ten years I'll get fed up, but out of all the requests, every now and then, you get someone who does want the right advice and is grateful for any help to find a litter bred by someone responsible.  In that instance, I spend ages looking through pedigrees and helping out, seeking advice from others to try and make sure I point people to what they want from a good source.  I don't look at replying to emails as wasting my time, just an opportunity to educate, not everyone will take any notice, but if I can change the mind of a few people they may well help educate others in the future. 

Ive had someone walk up to me with their lab girl and ask if the could mate her with the black lab male I was walking.  She said that this encounter could quite easily take place in the carpark round the back of the supermarket!  Apart from the normal 'erm I dont think so, that just sooo wouldnt be a good idea' The black lab I was walking is Guide Dog puppy complete with yellow flash on lead and tags, he was only 4 months old at the time!  Her explanation was that Guide Dog pups are always good, so she wanted her dog to breed with one.

I had to keep what I really wanted to say in my head (I didnt want to give people a bad impression of Guide Dogs by losing my temper), so I just bit my tongue and walked away. Some people!

I don't even bother to reply to emails like that.

Someone who had already got one of my pups emailed me to say she had rehomed the bitch [without my knowledge] and that she had regretted it ever since. She saw that my other bitch had a litter and asked if she could have one of those!!!!!!!
Before I let rip, I asked her for the details of where the rehomed bitch had gone which she duly gave me thankfully.
This person has since to my knowledge had another 2 dogs of the same breed and rehomed both of them!

I also had a small pup in a litter and a chap asked if he could pay half the price because he was half the size!

I had one today asking if I had any puppies of a similar breed to mine that people always get mixed up with it - will have to reply politely saying no, I don't breed 'x x' I breed 'y x x'. :)

I would have taken a softer approach, trying to educate as to why the cheaper pups were cheaper, you should not take it personally.

If you put yourself in their position, they see lots of puppies advertised at bargain basement prices, and their friends and relations probably got cheap pups and they seem OK.

If you had perhaps advised that many cut Price back yard breeders skimp on very important aspects which may well impact on the health and nature of their puppy as well as effect the likelihood of it looking much like it's breed they may have listened, maybe not as sometimes you can't educate pork.

With my breed being numerically small we often get the opposite reaction people being surprised that they are much cheaper than many easily found breeds. 

There is the odd person who thinks you can knock the price off on an older puppy but then you explain the extra care, vaccinations and socialisation and/or training you have already done that they are getting a better deal. 

There are people who will haggle over anything they buy, personally I find that distasteful where puppies are concerned and simply say the price is the price that I have set as being fair for my outlay and time in carefully rearing my pups.

Mostly people don't even ask the price as they have their hearts set on the breed.

> they didn't seem to understand that there will always be a 'last one' in a litter.  They asked for a price reduction due to it being the last one,

I always keep the most promising one until last if I haven't a definite show home lined up for pick.

One last one puppy is now a 10 year old champion, eh was to my disappointment bought purely as a pet, but in the end a puppy needs a home, but two years later they started showing him after bing advised by relatives in the know they really should.

First all breed champ show he won the Dog CC and BOB.

Yep someone recently said their friend wanted a Pomeranian bitch puppy and only wanted to pay £250 at the most.

>Yep someone recently said their friend wanted a Pomeranian bitch puppy and only wanted to pay £250 at the most.

<

I'm pleased to get out of Tesco for not much less than that!!!

I'm pleased to get out of Tesco for not much less than that!!!

Switch to ASDA or Morrisons, they are much cheaper. ;)

Asda is not for me but I do use Morrisons - they seem to have cut back on some items of late so I am apt to go where I know I can get everything.

Yep! had enquiries like that before.. I have replied to some of them in the past explaining the reason they find puppies cheaper on certain puppy website (sure you know what sites I mean) is because they are from puppy farms!! I have tried to make them understand you get what you pay for? A well reared, well bred puppy with breeder back up for that puppies life is what you are paying for...but it just falls on deaf ears half the time so I dont even bother replying to emails like that now. 

I had a lady after a pup from my last litter who lived local to a friend who has 2 i bred. At the time she called i didn't have a pup available but told her i would let her know if anyone cancelled. As it happened, i decided not to keep a pup after all when we looked at them for show potential so i rang her and left a message on her answer phone that i had a pup available asking her to call. She rang when i was out and spoke to my husband and said she would consider taking the pup if i could keep him for 6 months and let her have him half price!!!!!!!!!!hahaha, well i'm sure you guessed my husbands reply............i'm only glad he took the call and not myself!!!!!!

Mel.x

We had a guy who called and wanted to bargain the price, then he wanted money off because he had to travel. I told him this is not a second hand car you getting, and hung up on him. The funniest and sweetest inquiry was a soldier phoned me from Afghanistan, wanting a pup for his fiance for valentines day. I wouldn't believe him, eventually his mother came to see me, it was right enough, but the weird thing was we had named the pups with military style names as they were all boys, his was Private on Parade!

Unfortunately there is a knock-on effect from all the puppy scammers. Many many many puppies of all breeds being offered at £125 each or less, is leading people to believe that THAT is a going rate. They probably do not answer the ads themselves, but these ads are everywhere to be seen. If people consistently see ads offering puppies for £125-£200, then they will assume that is the average price. And these scamming ads are absolutely everywhere. I think the ad sites should do more to ban them, not just because they genuinely do fleece potential buyers, but the fact they are there makes people think puppies are a lot cheaper than they are.... possibly this has a knock-on effect benefitting the puppy farmers.

Before anyone says "Oh, but they shouldn't be looking on sites like that for puppies anyway!!" people do and it's a fact of life - these sites have replaced the newspaper small-ads nowadays. Mr and Mrs Average who have no idea how to look for a puppy start there... there will always be a low starting point, and if that place is peppered with ads offering puppies for £125 (scammers) then no wonder Mr & Mrs Average think that's the normal price. My own parents 40 years ago had no idea where to look for their first puppy and found a newspaper ad, went to see, got a pup which it turned out was from a puppy farm and was blind by the age of 5 from PRA. The biggest disappointment is that 40 years later, people are still being taken in, in exactly the same way. So no matter how much we all tut and say "they shouldn't be looking on sites like that anyway" it's clear that any education in the last 40 years is still not getting through. In fact its far worse now as we didn't have the scammers back then offering cheap/free puppies for delivery cost!

What can be done to change this, when it's actually got worse over the years??

> I had a phonecall a couple of months ago concerning my last litter from an Irish man. And within 30 seconds of the phonecall he said he wanted a brindle boy no more than £200 and could i separate it from mum and the rest of the litter (they were 4 weeks old) as he didnt want it to get used to other dogs as he wanted it for fighting!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> That was one of those times when my mouth ran away with itself before I engaged my brain and I was a nightmare to be around for days afterwards. It had been a long time since I had been that mad and upset!!!!!&nbsp;
>
> 6 weeks sleeping on the settee whilst pregnant and nursing a bitch with raging mastitis and a pup with a drained abscess on her face had taken its toll on my patience!!!!!

I bet you wish you could have put your hand down the phone and grabbed his throat......

I was asked if I had ever thought of breeding my Dallie & GSP, very observant sensible person asking the question ... after I finished with the sarcy laughing, I pointed out they were both male !

> Private on Parade!

Fate ???

I got a weird one the other day through this site wanting a bitch puppy urgently to take to India willing to pay anything etc etc, it read a little weird and our list was full and polity said sorry and no, anyhow 2 says later they emailed me again saying they were in contact with someone else and they said no as well and they wanted me to help them, but they were no longer polite and a bit pushy.

well cb87 I have had an enquiry today that even beats yours for cheek!!

I received an email asking for a bitch puppy for £300.  I was going to reply, asking them to let me know where they find one, as I would like one too.  But I refrained!

I hate it when they say 'well why are yours £xxxx when I can get the for a lot less in Wales'.....I tell them if they get them that much cheaper in Wales then they will probably end up paying double the cost of my pups in vet bills before it reaches a year old.  They then say they want 'show type' but not for showing so it should be cheaper.  I have politely told them about Optigen PRA and Antagene FN DNA testing, but they think because they want them as pets only it doesn't matter if they've been tested!!

Actually, just to turn this on its head a bit, as a non-breeder and as someone who in the past has made enquiries about pups.  What is the best way to approach a breeder via email, what information would you like?  I have always asked how much a pup was, purely to make sure that I knew how much money to get out of the bank if/when we were chosen to be a new owner, however Ive read on here, that that is frowned upon :(  However I would NEVER question the amount.

I usually initially ask something like the following if there is little info in the initial email contact:

"A breeder will need to know a lot more about you to determine if you and your circumstances are likely to be suited to (Insert breed) ownership.

As the saying goes one mans meat is another mans poisons, and this is very true when it comes to dogs which apart from their looks vary greatly in their mental traits, which may make one breed your ideal and another a nightmare for you to live with.

Is there someone home for a greater part of each day.  If not what day-care arrangements have you in place for rearing a puppy and providing company for a pup and older dog?

It would be very helpful if you could tell me more about yourselves:D  Family members etc"

I also point them to my website that has a longer list of things to consider and links to more info on the breed.

> Actually, just to turn this on its head a bit, as a non-breeder and as someone who in the past has made enquiries about pups

I know other folk will have different requirements, but one of my first questions is what reasearch has been done on the breed  It amazes me that people are surprised when I tell them the basic knowledge they need to have about the breed.  I never mind people asking questions though, it shows that they want to learn.

I ask why they want a pup.  If they say it's ONLY for a pet, I explain that all dogs are pets first and foremost, and only doesn't come into it.  The health and temperament requirements are the same.  

If emailing, be sure to be honest about work schedules.  I have lost count of people that tell me they work from home, and are surprised that I've done some research and found out otherwise.  I work myself, and wouldn't want to be refused a pup for this reason.  But I expect people to be advising me what arrangements have been made for a puppy.  One lady that worked part time, but a little too long to leave a pup, sounded an ideal owner.  She went away and made enquiries.  I appreciated the fact that she had made the effort.  A dog walker was arranged, just a short walk, and then play with puppy, breaking up the 4 hours twice a week was an ideal solution.

Giving your previous canine experience is always welcomed, also a little about the other household members.  And if you have already found out that your vet has puppy socialisation classes, so much the better.  I always like new owners to carry on what I have started.  These are just some things to think about.  I'm sure that others will be along to give you more food for thought!  :-)

e-mails that get the thumbs-up from me are ones where you have details of family/circumstances etc, previous experience of dog ownership, ask questions about my girls, ask to come and see mum before pups are born etc.  Another bonus is if they ask about what health tests mum has had etc.  I feel you cannot tell a breeder too much in the initial email - first impressions.....

Ones that I will not answer are one liners that are just asking the cost, yes I know its a factor but most people know within a little what price range their chosed breed will be in, far better to create a rapport with your breeder than save a few quid.

I have always asked how much a pup was, purely to make sure that I knew how much money to get out of the bank if/when we were chosen to be a new owner, however Ive read on here, that that is frowned upon :-( 

I have had the boot on the other foot recently as I wanted a pet puppy, not to be shown or bred, of a breed I have had for years but am not involved in other than as a pet keeper. What I have tried to do is offer all relevant information about myself, what I am looking for etc first, then ask the "how much" question LAST. Everyone NEEDS to know the price, there could be a big difference and it's one thing coming up with £500 and another to come up with £2000, the higher prices you probably have to save up for, so it's a valid question. But people who ask me, as a breeder, the price as the FIRST question give a bad impression. It gives the impression the price matters most.

Agree MarianneB, it is necessary for a person looking for a puppy to know if they can afford it or they will finish up being called a time waster. Give details of yourself, your domestic arrangements, your experience and requirements. Then ask about the breeder and the dam and sire, and if you can visit and if they think you may be acceptable to go on the breeders list would they let you know the sort of amount they are asking for their pups.

It is no good thinking the pup will be £500 to find out a few days before you collect that the breeder is asking £1000 it does not give you time to deal with that, there may be others in the family that need consulting and paying more than expected for the pup is not the way to start a happy relationship with either the pup or the breeder.