Choosing a Teacup Puppy Dog Breeder

Choosing a breeder is the single most important factor in choosing any dog.

Here’s the tip of the iceberg on what you need to know:

For starters, absolutely positively do NOT buy any dog from a foreign country, period, or from someone who gets their puppies from a foreign country.Air flights are stressful, and the longer one is, the more stress the puppy is. Teacup puppies are fragile, and the more stress your dog has, the more likely he will have hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). If this condition is not taken care of immediately, your puppy can die – even on the plane ride coming to you.

Try to avoid buying over the Internet and having the dog shipped to you. There are a lot of unscrupulous people who care more about your money than they do about the dogs, and there are a LOT of scams! We talk about the types of scams in Teacup Puppy and Dog book: Choosing a Breeder & Choosing a Dog.

There are different types of breeders: show or conformation breeders, hobby breeders, backyard breeders, and puppy mills. Then there are brokers who buy dogs from breeders.

A teacup dog may have “papers” from a breed registry but cannot be shown in a breed conformation show because it does not fall within the standard parameters for the specific breed. A dog who has “papers” means that dog’s parents were purebred dogs and were registered with a registry, but it does not denote anything about the quality or the health of the dog. A show or conformation breeder generally belongs to a breed club and is active in promoting and improving her breed, so her standards are generally pretty high.

The best way to find a breeder that you are comfortable with is to visit her and see what her facility is like. But before you do, ask the breeder a lot of questions.

I monitor the Internet on a daily basis, and here is a perfect example of a dog where I would run the other way. My interpretation of each sentence is below each example.

• All shot are completed.
  • This person does not use proper English suggesting he is poorly educated or from a non-English-speaking country.
• He has no sign of illness and has undescended (cyptorchidism) testis.
  • Undescended testicles IS a medical problem, and the dog MUST BE NEUTERED AND NOT BRED.
  • The neutering procedure costs more because of the difficulty of the procedure and it is riskier than a simple neuter.
  • Dogs with retained testicles are at greatly increased risk for cancer.
  • The testicle can twist inside the body, and if it is not removed immediately, the dog can die.
  • Behaviorally, cryptorchid males are prone to increased aggression, marking or inappropriate urination, and mounting.
• Price: $19000 **When we send pups we take delivery payment but it different within countries and provinces so please first email us your location and we will reply the exact payment.
  • This makes no sense in English.
• $19,000??? A Westminster champion (Westminster being the top US dog show) does not cost this much!
  • DO NOT SHIP A DOG THIS SMALL! It is way too stressfu for the dogl, and the stress can actually kill him in transit.]
• Age: 9 months
  • Why did the breeder keep him for 9 months?
• Character: Albin can’t stand without a human company. He would always beg to be held or sleep on your lap. It took awhile for him to get adjust sleeping not on the bed with us. He just has so much love inside him.
  • NEVER let such a small dog sleep in bed with you. If you roll over, the dog can be crushed and killed.
  • “He just has so much love inside him” translates to me as massive separation anxiety, which means you will NEVER be able to leave him alone without a LOT of training. Plus all the resulting stress likely will translate to hypoglycemia.
• He is what we call smallest Maltese I’ve ever seen.
  • This is not a plus. The smaller the dog, the higher the likelihood of increased medical problems.
• Physical Looks: Adorable big round eyes. Doll-like-face. Three star coat; they are long but not as fluffy compared to the breed standard. (so not much hair lost in summer)
  • A small dog with long hair needs to be groomed one or several times a day. Because of his small size, you can easily break a bone when trying to get a tangle or mat out.
• Size: 900g (1.9lb) Fully Grown.
  • No comment.

The ad then refers you to the breeder’s blog. On that blog is a wealth of MISINFORMATION that is too much for me to go into here. But one glaring example is that the breeder talks about what happens when a male dog goes into heat. Males DO NOT go into heat; only females do.