When I was much younger, my first dog as an "independent adult" was a standard Cocker Spaniel from AKC champion lines. He was a gift from my brother-in-law and he was gorgeous! He was a gentle, sweet boy. My 2 year old daughter saw him as her personal stuffed dog, and she and "Rusty" had a mutual love affair following each other across our 1/2 acre of "city" farmland.
We enjoyed him so much that two years later we decided to buy a little bitch puppy as his playmate, but we had just moved from college and were not familiar with the area.
We located a breeder from the newpaper that lived an hour away that raised papered, AKC Cockers. She described just what we were looking for as a companion for Rusty and a new puppy for me.
The puppies could only be seen at night (she said) because she only had help then to both show her to us and take care of the other pups and the mom. That sounded reasonable enough, so we went in the dark to Fontana, CA, and brought back the cutest puppy! She was red with blonde ears and was a fiesty companion for our male -- he loved her just as much as we did and was very sweet to her. We called her "Amber", it suited her to a "T".
Within 6 months Amber became unreasonably aggressive, to the point that she would and could make our adult dog back down from a giant Christmas present (a beef bone). Later over the same bone, she bit him in the face. We took both dogs into the vet at the same time, and our vet found it curious that such a tiny dog could do so much harm to our big boy, so he kept her for examination.
It was determined that she had an ospenis and was most likely a hermaphrodite which meant that she had an overload of testosterone and estrogen coursing through her. If she had been left any longer in that conditon, she more than likely would have injured our toddler so we agreed to let our vet perform surgery on her. Once they opened her up they disovered that she had both her ovaries, a set of internal testicles AND the ospenis. She made it into a veterinary journal but we about went broke! She was little and the surgery was long, and in the end, we lost our puppy to her inabilty to urinate following surgery. Her death was shocking, heartbreaking and expensive.
When we called the breeder to complain there was no response, we left messages but no one called back. Later that week the phone number was changed so we drove all the way out again. The breeder did answer the door, no she didn't care that we had lost her pup to disease, no there was no refund, and we were told "sorry, but there must have been a mix-up in the breeding. That happens from time to time and there isn't much we can do about it". Yes, you can draw the conclusion that the vet did, this was a result of indiscriminate inbreeding.
So at the ripe old age of 20, I learned a very hard lesson and from that day forward I have done extensive research on my dogs. When I became a breeder with my husband, (whose family has been breeding dogs since the 1950's) I vowed to research my lines, health test my dogs and offer the best puppies I could to my home, show homes and pet homes.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and please, if you don't buy a dog from me, do your research on your breeder. Your puppy will thank you with 1000 kisses!
Lisa Saxey
Esplendor Havanese
Copyright 2008 - not for public use or copy
