Did we accidently buy a puppy from a puppy farm?

A question we have asked ourselves far too often. Why do we ask this? Mainly because of how Roo has turned out.

Having read a lot on dog anxiety, most stems from the very early days of a pups life when they are with the breeder, if they have more generalised anxiety - which Roo does. Other forms of anxiety and reactivity can often be traced back to a particular event that happened.

Those first few weeks should be calm and relaxing. Where the first socalisation period is happening, they are learning to interact with their littermates and mother, forming safe bonds. The breeders should be handling the pups, getting them used to household noises and interactions. If a pup is born into a stressful environment, like a puppy farm or poor breeders, they are more likely to suffer from anxiety especially if their mum is also stressed.

Two of the professionals we have seen have said that Roo's issues would have began before we got her, she would have been showing signs of anxiety when we picked her up, displacement behaviours. Obviously we had no idea what those looked like.

We found Roo on a pets4home ad. An ad for 3 black and white working cocker spaniels - perfect. An average price for Covid rates, didn't seem too low to be concerning. The photos were of the mother, father, the pups together and 3 shots of the pups on their own. Again nothing odd there. The description again gave us nothing to worry about. The puppies were 8 weeks old and ready to go. In hindsight, this was probably a red flag. Although not always the case, Molly's parent's dog was advertised as ready to go and he has no issues!

The pups sold within an hour of being up. We were gutted we didn't enquire sooner. The next day, when looking again, the ad was back up with one of the puppies homes falling through, we jumped at the chance and messaged straight away. The seller got back to us within 10 minutes and we had arranged to go and get her the next day. We offered to pay a deposit to hold her but the sellers said it was fine. Later that evening we got another message to check we were serious about getting the puppy as lots of people had been in touch, we said we were and again offered to pay a deposit to show we were serious. This time they accepted. We were so serious that we had rush to pets at home to buy everything we needed.

As we now had the name and address of the seller, a quick google and facebook search was done as well as a google maps street view search of the address. Nothing came back unexpected.

Roo's mum was a working farm dog, her owners worked on a farm. Her dad was a gun dog belonging to another local farmer, the KC registered information for the father was provided, as well as his family line.

The next day we set off to get her. It was tipping it down with rain, the roads were flooded. This is important as it is why we didn't end up seeing where they were keeping Roo. It was outside in a barn, the mother was kept outside in kennels. Again not that uncommon for a working farm dog. With the weather being so bad we didn't ask to go outside and see it.

We arrived at the house and were greeted by a woman who had posted the ad. She matched the image we had found on facebook. We came into their home, Roo was in the living room playing on the floor with their small son. Roo was happily interacting with him and was also happy to come over and say hello to us. She even sat down by our feet.

We talked about the usual kinds of things. We explained who we were, what our lives were like, our experience with dogs. They talked us through Roo, how old she was, that her tail was docked (we have all of the paperwork and know the vet that did it - that made us feel better), when she was last wormed etc. We were told that they also keep chickens and Roo had been well socalised with them. We couldn't see her other two littermates as they had already been collected - again, this didn't worry us, it was plausable. We asked to see her mum, they brought in a very excited soaking wet black cocker spaniel who looked like Roo. Given the weather and the wetness of the dog, we didn't interact with her or spend much time with the mum. We did ask if the mum had previous litters which they said she had, the year before.

We left feeling fine about it all. No real issues. We had asked all the questions we thought we needed to based off the research we had done into puppy farms and the signs to look out for.

It wasn't until we got her home and a few days had passed that we realised Roo had very dry skin on her back and it was flaking. We spoke to the vets about it and they said it could be because she had been used to living outside in kennels and was now living inside. This cleared up on it own within a couple of weeks. Roo also had worms. This took us a few months to get under control. Again, sadly this didn't send of any major alarm bells.

The first real alarm only came recently. When they found the cyst in her brain and the unclosed part of her skull. The neurologist said it was most likely caused by some kind of trauma before we got her. This could have been anything but it does start to make the mind wonder and go to some dark places.

Will we ever know if Roo is a puppy farm pup? No. It is more likely that she just came from some crappy backyard breeders? Yes.

Or maybe Roo did have a very nice upbringing before us and this is all just the luck of the draw.