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This cracks me up. Congrats. Riley doesn't lift his leg. I think he'd fall over if he tried... poor uncoordinated guy. He doesn't really squat, either. He kind of leans forwards, barely bending his knees, and goes. I like it. I don't particularly want him to raise his leg, but if he does, okay. lol

When she's mad at us, it never fails that she finds us and proceeds to hurk up a nice juicy hair ball and then non-chalantly walks away flicking her tail.

I've heard that cats flip their tales as a kind of "just watch me" thing. LOL. One of my three boys, Bevo, used to throw up fairly often. We tried various types of food, and the one that works is Nutro Natural Choice Indoor in the green and white bag. I think it's chicken flavored. Anything fish flavored seemed to do it, as did some other random foods. He's not a hairball thrower except when he grooms foster kitties, which we haven't had any of in quite a while. Thomas, my longhaired tail-flicker, has occasional hairballs, but this food has seemed to help. He also sometimes gets a cat laxative/anti-hairball treatment (a bit of brown stuff that comes out of a toothpaste-looking tube). He doesn't like it. Go figure that the other cats do. He only eats dry food and some dry treats, though. This cat doesn't like canned food or even cooked meat.

He lives a few counties away, in the country. There is a town nearby, but I don't think he's within their city limits even. I will look up the county's laws and regulations to see if there is anything on pets. In the meantime, I think I will call him and reason with him. I'm thinking of doing it tomorrow around noon (I have a soccer game in the morning).

What should I say? I don't want to offend him, so I guess I'll start with how much he obviously cares for his dogs and go from there...

Do you think I can get a rescue group to go out there and adopt the older Newfoundlands? I don't want to support what he's doing (I know that taking a puppy does, but how to do you walk away from dogs that are slowly becoming less and less comfortable around humans?), but I don't know what else to do about it. I think I may call him and try to reason with him, but I don't know that that is going to get me anywhere.

*Mom2Sadie, I think we posted at the same time.

So I checked this guy's place out. He had 19 dogs kept outside only in mini-yards (I'm guessing 20 ft. by 40 ft.), usually with more than one dog per yard. They didn't have much in the way of shelter-each had an overhang/little building thing, but it wouldn't provide any shelter from the rain (too narrow) and not much from the sun, depending on the angle.

He had 3 bloodhounds, 2 mountain dogs, and the rest were Saints and Newfs. He said that he usually charges $1000, but he had three litters of Newfs in November. He had three from the previous two litters. Two had eye issues (lots and lots of drainage) and were very timid-one wouldn't even smell my hands). The other was outgoing, jumpy, seemed healthy. Then he had 8 more. They were all skittish, didn't seem to even know him. They were 10 weeks old. The adult dogs were either rambuctous (jumping up and slamming against the cages for attention) or scared to meet me (I'm guessing it was me and not him, but these were saints and newfs that you'd expect to be social).

The puppies were kept in a barn. They were in 7'x7' pens with concrete floors. He told me he usually has hay in them, and there was hay in the barn itself, just not in the pens. There were windows that they could walk through to go outside into pens that were about one and half times the size of the pen they were in. The three older pups (12 weeks, he said) were in one pen, and the 8 younger pups (10 weeks) were in another. A third one was empty. They were being fed Purina Dog Chow. He said the puppies wouldn't eat it, so he had to put some canned food in their food. He figured they didn't like the taste, he said, but he said that is all the adult dogs got.

The adult dogs that were happy to see a new person were very friendly, just wild, like I said. But I guess if they get almost no human interaction, they would be. They had mats in their hair and were quite dirty, but not excessively so. Most all of them had water (I noticed one dog had an empty bowl and commented on it). I couldn't see if some of their bowls had water.

He came right out and said that the dogs are better the more time you spend with them and that he just didn't have enough time to spend with them. I wanted to say, then why the heck are you doing this? But I didn't.

The way I see it, the only thing I can report him on is the not-so-great shelter and an empty dog water bowl. Can you report a breeder like this for not socializing his animals or not spending enough time with them?

He told me his puppies were usually $1000, but now they were $500 for females and $700 for males so that he could "move them". I asked about the older female and male and he said they were $500, too. I asked about the one outgoing puppy, and he said she was $1000 b/c she had such a great personality (but they all would if he socialized them!).

I really wanted to take the older female or male out of there... especially the male, as he was on his own in a smaller pen. The female was with another female and the male that he uses as his stud. The male seemed to have issues with other males, and Riley is right near his age (7.5 months). The female was friendly enough, but she was wild. She had to be about 150 pounds, and she had no idea that she couldn't jump up at people. She was taller than me when she stood and she'd throw all her weight at the fence. She was a doll, though, just completely untrained. I couldn't decide whether to take her (wasn't sure how to get us all home safely, as I brought my dogs with me and I drive a Jeep), take a puppy, or just walk away. I just felt so bad for all of them... I ended up getting the least scared of the 8 puppies. The rest of them literally screamed when you picked them up. They were scared out of their minds. She clung to me when I picked her up and seemed to show a little interest in me after that (well, she looked at me, the others cowered in corners and hid... this was after they were all inside-originally, they were hiding outside, and when we went out there, they either ran inside or hid in holes they'd dug under the concrete of the building).

So what now? I really shouldn't have a third dog right now (I rent, though I'm hoping to move very soon), but I couldn't leave them all there. Who do I report him to? If I report him, what do I say? What is important to note (other than they need better shelter, constant water supplies, etc.)? Can I mention that he doesn't socialize them? There were 30 dogs total, assuming my count of 19 outside was right. One thing that really got me was he baby talked them and seemed to care, but why doesn't he do more? 

I'm sorry this is so long. There are probably people out there with worse breeding practices, but you've got to be doing a pretty bad job to end up with scared and unsocialized Saints and Newfs, don't you?

I love gentle leaders. Sadie, for as small as she is (55 pounds), can pull with the best of them. With her and Riley, who will stop when the leash starts to pull but stand there with it tight-he only drags when he sees people coming, I was getting pulled around too much. We couldn't really walk. Plus, they kept wrestling, instigated most often by Riley. I got one for Sadie first, and it was great. I must have called 10 people during that first walk to tell them how great it was. LOL. I got Riley one, b/c he still pulls at people and he's getting too big for me to hold back then, plus I guessed that it would stop the wrestling, which was at that point, all due to him (poor Sadie!). It worked.

They are okay with them. Sadie will rub her nose around the floor and couch when we get home. Riley still picks at it when we walk, but that's probably my fault, b/c I don't always use it with him. It's like walking little shih tsus or something, though-a totally different experience.

Okay, I just emailed him back saying I'd give him a call later about visiting them (it's a little after 8am here).

I guess then I'll go from there. I searched for him last night online, and he doesn't have a website. I found him listed on a website called Breedersclub.n et. He doesn't have his own website (I checked the tailend of his email address, and it came from an internet provider, not a personal website). He just has this one ad from what I can see, and I guess ads in the paper.