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Still no news from the lady about my puppy. 😢

I am definitely concerned that she has changed her mind. We have sent her a text to ask how she’s doing, and how we are still very much interested in the puppy. But we have not heard any news yet. Not since we found out she was sick. 12 days ago.

My spicy senses are working overtime. 😢😢😢

This is so disappointing. I can’t imagine that I would EVER get this opportunity again…for a healthy, female, dachshund puppy for a reasonable price.

Oh, well. First world problem.

ETA: The owner is sick - not the puppy.

[This message edited by WhatsRight at 11:36 AM, Friday, April 7th]

WR I would encourage you to make outreach to rescues in the area, and let them know what you are looking for.
It's crazy how many Weener dogs come from puppy mills in my region. I have a friend that has 3, and 2 are rescues, one is a mini short haired, and the other is a mini wirehaired, and he is adorable.
Both times she decided she was going to get another she made outreach and had a young dog in a matter of weeks.

Sadly, Florida is overflowing with unwanted cats and dogs. Facebook has many rescue groups and if you reach out to some of them, especially the ones that specialize in dachshunds, you might find another that would be perfect for you.

And I would consider driving 6 hours to deliver said puppy to a deserving soul. I once drove a transit van up to Arlington, VA with 23 dogs and loved doing it. Last November, I delivered a puppy to a friend in Outer Banks, NC.

I don't know where you live but if it's feasible, I'd definitely consider it. I live in the Orlando area. AND, it just so happens that I'll be driving to Richmond, VA May 29.

In the meantime, I'll keep my eyes open for any that become available in my area.

(And I wrote all that so it will trigger the Universe to follow through on your original plan since now it knows you have a Plan B and so it doesn't have to play Murphy's Law nonsense with you)

Y’all are so kind.

Still no news.

I have tried with rescues before, but if you are not searching at the time a dachshund is posted, you miss out.

But I will keep trying.

So, basically, I’m guessing that the woman just sold the puppy to someone closer to her home. I don’t think it was an initial scam because she didn’t ask for money upfront.

The next couple days I looked and looked and looked online and found some dachshund puppies for sale for $600. I was going to be able to afford that, so I texted them. It turns out they are in Massachusetts and it is approximately 15 hours from where I live. Also, they offered to send the puppy to me via airlines, with an escort, for an additional $400. I feel like it was on the up and up, but I refuse to send someone money and just hope that they follow through with actually bringing me the puppy.

So I’m at a bit of an impasse right now. I’ve already bought the stairs for the bed and for the couch, and her collar. I’m going to keep looking, but I’m not going to get my hopes up.

Thanks for all the encouragement gang!

Whatsright, be very cautious about puppy seller's scams. Personally I would never want a puppy shipped as I think it would be traumatic for the puppy. I'm sorry the other baby didn't work out for you. That is sad as I know you were so excited about the puppy.

As someone involved in the dog world (showing, breeding, obedience trials, etc), there is nothing wrong with having a puppy shipped. It happens all of the time. That said, if you're involved with the dog world, it's a whole different thing. We know who to trust. We don't just buy from anyone. We tend to *know* each other from long-time involvement in national/international clubs and participation on the various newgroups/boards, participation in shows, etc. We also don't just sell to anyone - we have the homes checked by someone that we know in the area, we ask for references from vets, trainers, etc. Trust me when I say that we all know someone somewhere, and if we don't, we are not likely to buy/sell.

I have purchased puppies from another country, and both of us checked each other out. I have sold puppies that were shipped within my country and outside of it, and again, I checked those people out. And maintained contact with them for the whole of the dogs' lives.

If you're not experienced in the dog world, I would probably advise against dealing with anyone at a long distance that you can't or don't really get to know. I would advise dealing with breeders that belong to their national or local breed clubs and who have signed Codes of Ethics with those clubs because they are agreeing to at least some regulations, and can be held accountable to some extent. Just google whatever breed it is you like and add Club Of America - that will probably find you the national club, and most national clubs have breeder referral.

My knowledge of shipping puppies is limited to two separate friends of mine who purchased puppies from Germany and had them shipped. Both were horrible experiences for the puppies and the buyers. They were very expensive German Shepherd puppies. One got 'lost' in transit and went from German to Texas, to Portland, then back to Houston. Airlines screwed up. That puppy arrived very dehydrated and ill and had lasting problems. The second friend (these friends don't know each other) bought a beautiful, solid black German Shepherd puppy from German who only lived six months as it had cancer. I guess that could have happened if he'd bought the puppy from a mile from his home -- but it was still so sad to see.

I used to breed and sell tiny Chihuahuas but not really for the money - as all my puppies went to friends that I knew well - at basic costs. My girl only had two litters, 1-1/2 year apart. I kept up with the puppies and got lots of pictures and videos One went to Mexico and another to Canada. The one in Mexico only understood Spanish.

SackofSorry, I agree that it really helps if there is a way to independently verify both the persons involved in selling and buying of a puppy, like you describe.

Jeaniegirl, as I'm currently waiting on a solid black male puppy from Europe to reach the age to be shipped, your post about your friends' experiences importing was a jolt! I hope our puppy doesn't suffer like that from his trans-Atlantic trip...but I worry all the same.

One thing I've learned about solid black colors in German Shepherds is their coat color is the result of a recessive-recessive gene pairing. So, along with the color there can be other issues. For example, our 9 year old solid black GSD had one malformed ovary, the vet said it was that way from birth. She's "line bred" to some solid blacks on both parents and, especially due to rarity of the gene pool in this country, line breeding can produce these issues. You're right, weird stuff can happen, but some breeders aren't looking at the ones that don't quite "make" it. We already got one of those dogs....

I would not do this site unseen, esp for the cost.
I would continue to monitor rescues in your area, and see if you can get a young adult, 6mos-1 yr, that someone else could not keep. Happens all the time.

We just did a 12 hour both way trip to get a full blooded brother to our Chocolate lab and he is amazing. He is also costly, and we keep in frequent contact with the breeder, as she is well known in the HRC (Hunt Retriever Club) and WAterfowler community for breeding high quality dogs with great demeanors. But this dog is not just a pet he will have a job.

When I was a kid we had a rare large breed and we shippped 2 puppies to Miami to be police dogs, this was a complex process, and costly to ensure that the dogs were treated well, and insurance to cover the what if's because accidents happen.

I just see far too many dogs in my region that go to rescues because people impulse buy or have no clue the amount of work a young dog can be, and get overwhelmed and dump them.

All this puppy talk gets my blood flowing!

I’m going to keep looking in my area. I had miniature dachshunds, my whole life, and I bred two or three of them… Registered… And sold them for nominal fees. It was just the experience of having puppies that was so thrilling to me!

The thought that somebody would play with somebody’s heart I pretending to have puppies is just beyond my imagination!

All of you that are in the process of getting your dogs, I hope everything goes fabulously well!

Tush, how old is your new chocolate lab?

My two newest dogs, one, 12 months old and one two years old, came from rescues. So I will keep looking. It just seems so very hard to find a miniature dachshund, and since I refuse to have another penis in my home, the dogs are all girls… A requirement! 😊

I know the feeling, WhatsRight! I'm stressing out right now, as it's been months and months of searching and yesterday we got a call from a cargo company at the big jet airport, telling me to be there May 24th at noon with $200 to pay for the puppy paperwork they do, then I will have to walk over to Customs and see if I can get the pup admitted to the country. No stress THERE...

But I learned only that he is coming here on an 11 hour flight from Istanbul, Turkey! How does the breeder get him to Turkey, I wondered. So I emailed and asked. And will he be held overnight in an airport crate, poor little guy. No answer yet. Honestly I'm getting so stressed that I'm considering forfeiting the deposit, so the puppy won't have to go through this ordeal. If somebody could please tell me what to expect....but the 6 hour time difference and the language barrier (she writes me in English but I don't really know if she's fluent enough to talk it out on the phone, and she's SLOW to reply to my newbie questions...I guess it's standard operating procedure for them to export, but I never did it!)

So I got to looking at the local rescues in the entire area of the state we could adopt from. All the dogs there are either troubled in one way or the other - like they have to be the only dog in the home - or they are not appealing to us. Our female GSD probably needs us to get a male companion as they tell us 2 female Shepherds can't always get along in the same household. Sigh.

Keep up the HUNT!!

And I think anyone who is going to have a dog shipped from someone they either don't know or cannot go and meet should acquaint themselves with the myriad of scam techniques that have been reported, it's mind-boggling!

I just this morning read the website of an international pet shipper organization (non-profit, certifying agency) and saw pages of scammers reported. Even had one for dachsunds, WhatsRight, but they give lots of tips on the way fake puppy sellers send 'official' looking documents after you've already given a deposit, claiming urgently that you need to send money to some pet shipper for transportation items like crates, veterinary expenses, etc. They even will steal official logos so they can fool you! (I can't give the organization's website here but if you search it's easy to locate.)

I know some European German Shepherd breeders have partnered with shipping companies. I bet they mark up the costs to the buyer...it's a pain.

[This message edited by Superesse at 4:23 PM, Wednesday, May 3rd]

Well, I had another near hit, or near miss as the case may be, yesterday.

Found a puppy online. Filled out a short form and sent a request about the puppy. Heard back in a relatively short time. Very personable in letting me know about the puppy. Texted back-and-forth for over 30 minutes.

At one point, I asked about my worries of being scammed. Told them I had had some bad experiences. Asked for reassurance. He seemed a little bit taken aback. But just said that he was a family man with his businesses name to protect. Said that he had no desire to "take my money" but was just concerned about providing good homes for their puppies.

Then we texted back-and-forth more about the process of shipping the puppy, since they are about 450 miles away. (I even thought about driving to pick the puppy up, but it’s difficult to arrange being gone from my husband for 15 to 20 hours and I’m not sure I could drive it and back in one day.)

I finally just decided to take the plunge and go for it. He suggested four possible ways to send payment including Zelle, Google pay, cash app, and Apple Pay. When I said I didn’t have those apps, he said I could get American Express cards and put the $$$ on them. My H said that would have been cause for concern if he hadn’t offered the other methods first.

So I got my niece to set me up with Apple Pay. When I pressed "send" there was a fraud warning on my phone screen. I sent him a snapshot of the warning. He said it was because we do not have a history of doing business together. My niece said that was reasonable. Then when I tapped on "send anyway", another message came up saying "services unavailable ". ???

So I also sent him that picture. And I have received no response. I don’t know what "service unavailable" means, but I’m wondering if it was not the universe protecting me from another scam.

If I never hear from him again, I’m assuming it wasn’t real. Even if I do hear from him, at this point I’m not sure if I am willing to risk it.

My heart can’t stand too many more of these failed attempts!

Tush, how old is your new chocolate lab?
Today he is 12 weeks, and goes for second round of Parvo vacc, so excited so that we can then really let him be out and about.

He is doing great, come, down, sit, waiting to go out when I open the door, ringing the bells when he needs out, and patiently sits by the door. The crazy thing was I didn't even show him the bells and he started using them all on his own. I sure does help to have big brother show him the ropes.

I'm sorry you are struggling to find a breeder, a lot of puppies are born in the spring, have you searched for rescues?
I have a friend that runs a rescue that only takes in pregnant females, and works with a local petco to find them homes. She often has mixed breeds, keeping in contact with someone like that you will eventually find a litter of mixed dogs, and that can be great because when they are not pure bred, tend not to have the health issues. Just a thought.

We only go with pure bred labs because of the work they have to do. I have had many rescues, and mixes.

I'm so sorry WR.

According to the well known breeder that we dealt with, reputable breeders will not ship their puppies. When we were looking for a breeder that rang true.

There are so many awful, horrible people in the dog business. They run puppy mills and breeding farms. They keep their female dogs pregnant every heat cycle and keep them in cages with no vet care. Meanwhile they post cute puppy pictures and use all the buzz words to fool you into thinking you are dealing with a breeder who actually cares for their dogs.

A reputable breeder would encourage you to ask questions. Ours let us see her facility and meet her dogs. She was not put off by any questions we had nor were any of the reputable breeders we talked to. Reputable breeders also don't have to advertise their puppies.

Sometimes people selling puppies on the internet are brokers for puppy mills.

I have a friend that got a puppy from a place like that. The sibling pup to the one she was taking was blind in one eye. The guy told her he was going to break its neck. These people only care about money. My friend took that puppy too.

I hope you will consider what They suggested. I wish I could clone my mixed breed rescue!!

Oh yes…I love mixed breeds.

I have a black lab/jack Russell mix, a beagle/border collie mix, and a beagle/fox hound mix. And my grandbabies mothers dog that is staying with us until she can get set up in her new apartment is a pug/jack Russell mix.

They are all fabulous dogs! And I thought I was finished… For the rest of my life, really. Being older, I don’t want to leave this earth and have dogs with no homes. In fact, I have already made sure that my boys understand which dogs they will each take.

But, I have always had miniature dachshunds, and my heart wanted one last one. And I know my H would love it to cuddle with him - he spends so much time in the bed.

If I am unable to find a miniature dachshund by fall, I will probably just let that dream go. I love the dogs I have right now. The little pug mix will be gone soon. And very sadly, so probably will my 13-year-old lab/jack Russell mix. The other two are quite young, two years and one year old. They adore each other and we adore them.

So I’m trying not to feel too sad.

Regarding the shipping of dogs, it is my understanding that they are not shipped as "cargo". That they are in the cabin of the airplane with an escort. But of course I have no way to know that for sure.

WhatsRight, I think you "dodged a bullet" here, but it's also true that financial agencies have been getting a LOT of fraud reports on puppy purchasing, since Covid especially, so they are being super cautious. It's truly shocking that people are that ice-cold about animals.

Lots of puppy mills, even among AKC bred dogs. Our vet warned us not to get a dog from certain rural areas of the country where it is big business, and whenever I have contacted a "breeder" from one of those areas and asked a few health or pedigree-related questions, I'd get the response that told me "nobody ever has asked that before" so I knew right then they're just breeding for $$$.

One option that I cannot understand why the puppy seller didn't offer you, if he is legit, is for you to send him a check, he can deposit it, and when it has cleared his bank, then what's the problem? The fact that these breeders want to have money "wired" rather than accept traditional methods of payment makes me wonder. It's a crime to write a cold check, so they should know you wouldn't do that, and they can hold the dog until the funds clear. So there must be another reason - traceability and legal issues?

On my puppy saga, I found out that the country I'm "trying" to import this German Shepherd puppy from, stopped using paper checks 20 years ago! Over there it's all "electronic" banking, which we try to avoid. I wish dog breeders took American Express, we'd have more recourse.

And what do you all think of this: 2 days have gone by and still no reply to my question about how long the pup will spend in a crate in cargo (Since he's a GSD, he is too big to go in the passenger compartment even if I were flying over to get him, which would be better in some ways.) I think if the breeder hasn't been bothered to answer my 1 question on this shipping concern, maybe she doesn't care too much about the details of the puppy's life, either. Like once he leaves and the money clears, the dog is no longer her concern? I just don't want an impressionable puppy from a working line of dogs to get traumatized on it's first trip out of the kennel - it could have a lasting, negative effect on his temperament. Our same breed, female at 10 weeks old, screamed for the whole 3 hours we drove her from her birthplace to here; it was traumatic for all of us. This puppy will be 10 weeks and 3 days old when he gets put on a plane...

SackofSorry, if you are reading this, am I out of line to ask a simple question about the welfare of the puppy in transit?

[This message edited by Superesse at 4:41 PM, Thursday, May 4th]

I'm reading, what's the question?

For me, I didn't ship often and I didn't ship extreme distances. I do care about a puppy being stuck in a crate for too long. The flights my puppies were on were usually less than 6 hours. I had no interest in all at shipping overseas, and said no to any enquiries from there. I had a few situations where I drove 6 or 7 hours to meet someone who drove a similar distance to complete a sale, and I certainly didn't charge anything for that. I was happy to get the chance to meet their new owners in person.

I shipped an adult dog out to the west coast for showing one time, but I found another dog show person going that way to take him on as her responsibility on the flight (even though he was in cargo), which is something you see on the various dog boards -- breeders looking for other breeders or show people going the same way that can just be there for the puppy. We also do that just for driving puppies or dogs. Show people will look out for other show people's dogs even if they don't like that person - lol. One time when one of my owners was sending her puppy back to me for showing in my area, she just found a dog show handler that was traveling in my direction and the puppy hitched a ride with him. When we moved across the country, I also made use of a dog show handler. Who else travels more with dogs? I was moving with a number of them, they have the vehicles to house them so I paid a handler to take my dogs to my new home.

For WhatsRight, we have a saying in dogs. You get the dog you're meant to have. If a situation doesn't work out, it wasn't meant to be. It may not seem like it sometimes, but there are always more dogs.

You get the dog you're meant to have.

Well, that certainly seems to have been the case with practically every dog I’ve owned since I was five years old! So I’m trying not to give up hope.