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Litter Of Puppies At The Beach


Simply Grand
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This doesn't really warrant a thread probably but I couldn't think of another thread to post it in so why not.

I was down at the beach today (Burleigh Heads) and when I arrived there was a man on the grass foreground area with his BC girl and her 4 babies (she had 8 but 4 had already gone to their homes).

Puppies were 8 weeks old today apparently. They (apparently) had their "needles and health check" yesterday at the vets. So today they were playing in a high dog, human and who knows what else traffic area with half the people who walked past patting and playing with them. They were happy, healthy looking confident little pups who had a great time but, yeah....

Mum was lovely but was running around off leash in an on leash area (there are plenty of off leash areas up here and the council seems pretty reasonable to me, it pisses me off that people do the wrong thing and potentially risk that for the rest of us) and she loved fetching sticks but would snatch them out of hands and the owner (and the parents) were letting kids play freely with her.

I had a lovely play with the puppies and mum because hey, they were already there and I am dog deprived at the moment with mine all in boarding but I walked away biting my tongue when a lady asked the owner what breed the tan and white pup was (the other 3 were black and white) and he answered "same as the others, Border Collie. There were 2 tan and and whites, they call those ones Coolies".

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Sounds like you did well biting your tongue. Sitting in a high traffic area he was probably hoping someone would want a puppy and that's one less to take home!

If we're going for dodgy breeder awards I have one too. Yesterday when walking the dogs I ran in to someone with what looked like a beagle cross. In conversation I asked where they got him from and they said they answered an ad. When they got to the address there was about 20 dogs which all looked the same in a large enclosure, puppies included. Apparently the 'breeder' feeds them by throwing chickens over the fence!

In my head I was thinking I hope he means chicken carcasses and how could anyone think that was a great place to buy a puppy from??

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Sitting in a high traffic area he was probably hoping someone would want a puppy and that's one less to take home!

Some people have no idea, and a lot don't want to be educated :(

Some people have no idea, and ARE TOO STUPID to be educated :( :(

I try very hard to educate people on animals, but some are truly beyond help crying.gif

Wow. Judgemental much?

Here's something to think about... well socialised puppy that has been exposed to everyday situations and can function in the real world with confidence VS pup that has been locked in the breeders backyard for 8 weeks.

Suggesting the owner is stupid, uneducated or is just out there to sell dogs, is a pretty close minded statement.

At least they were being socialised

Exactly

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I don't believe that chucking 8 week old puppies into a public park area for anyone to interact freely with is a good method of socializing them. Not to mention the health risks.

And whether or not he was stupid in general, he clearly had limited knowledge about the very dogs he's breeding and selling to other people :shrug:

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Good socialisation definitely is a great thing to have happen but there needs to be some control or thought involved to avoid scary situations which can affect a puppy too.

Off lead dogs giving puppy a fright, loud or rough people or kids bowling a puppy over etc. It can be tough monitoring what one puppy is getting up to let alone keeping an eye on five animals! If the owner was assuming all interaction was good interaction then I guess that's why he took everyone down the beach at once?

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The beach would be a great place to socialise. The sand gets a clean every day when the tide comes in. The benefits of socialisation outweigh the risks anyway.

My vet would whole heartedly disagree with you - we had this discussion, among others, regarding what's an appropriate level of risk vs the advantages of socialising last year when we got our latest pup. The beach was high on her list of places not to take puppies not fully covered by vaccination when I wanted to get my pup out and about. Her advice was that there are plenty of places to socialise puppies where the advantages don't present an unacceptable level of risk to puppy's health.

The tide doesn't come all the way up the sand cleaning the whole beach in every beach.

I'm not having a go at you; just addressing your POV in comparison to what my vet recommended.

Edited by suziwong66
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The beach would be a great place to socialise. The sand gets a clean every day when the tide comes in. The benefits of socialisation outweigh the risks anyway.

My vet would whole heartedly disagree with you - we had this discussion, among others, regarding what's an appropriate level of risk vs the advantages of socialising last year when we got our latest pup. The beach was high on her list of places not to take puppies not fully covered by vaccination when I wanted to get my pup out and about. Her advice was that there are plenty of places to socialise puppies where the advantages don't present an unacceptable level of risk to puppy's health.

The tide doesn't come all the way up the sand cleaning the whole beach in every beach.

I'm not having a go at you; just addressing your POV in comparison to what my vet recommended.

I don't really care what your vet thinks. Myself, I would not take a litter of pups I bred to the beach but I can understand the benefits of getting them out and about early. What right do we have to tell them they are right or wrong? Just because your vet said so? :shrug:

Edited by Florise
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I don't have a problem with this but I'd not do it myself. As far as I'm concerned puppies at 8 weeks will be pretty much covered by their mother's immunity and with having the first vaccination as well I think the risk is pretty slim. Not impossible but slim. You know when I started in dogs we took the puppies home at 6 weeks or even 5.5 week. Often litters were vaccinated in the morning and went to new homes later that day or the next day and they were taken out and about right away. They survived and in my experience most thrived.

I really don't see the difference between going to a show or a breed club event as being any safer. Do you really know for a fact that the dogs there all have their vaccinations up to date. You can assume but I bet that assumption is wrong.

Just because one person thinks something should be done one way does not mean it is the right way for everyone (or is some cases for them even)

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The beach would be a great place to socialise. The sand gets a clean every day when the tide comes in. The benefits of socialisation outweigh the risks anyway.

My vet would whole heartedly disagree with you - we had this discussion, among others, regarding what's an appropriate level of risk vs the advantages of socialising last year when we got our latest pup. The beach was high on her list of places not to take puppies not fully covered by vaccination when I wanted to get my pup out and about. Her advice was that there are plenty of places to socialise puppies where the advantages don't present an unacceptable level of risk to puppy's health.

The tide doesn't come all the way up the sand cleaning the whole beach in every beach.

I'm not having a go at you; just addressing your POV in comparison to what my vet recommended.

Yup my vet said the same thing when I thought it would be a low risk area to take my immune compromised dog to due to the tide 'cleaning' things away. Her view was that beaches are congregating places for dogs from suburbs all over the place. While the suburb that we live in is a pretty low risk area for parvo - the beach attracts dogs into the suburb from areas that have higher incidences of it.

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