A doggy for my thoughts

Any opinions and thoughts are purely my own.

I think a year back I did a presentation on puppy mills for a school project. In that I briefly highlighted the bad conditions of dogs kept in the kennels and how unethical the breeders/owners were. I talked about an owner abandoning his dogs, how parvo virus and kennel cough were killing the dogs and how female dogs were forced to keep on breeding just for business sake.

So when it came down to selecting my own puppy, I firmly told Tim that I will never get my dog from the farmways  because it’s not a place that I trust. Additionally, prior to getting Jelly, I did an extensive research and found much bad air about the farmways, looked at case studies and it just made me more determined.

Tim agreed and we crossed out the option of the farmways and instead I scoured online websites and pet shops even though I knew fully well that some pet shops get their puppies from the farmways. I was careful to avoid the farmway ads because it’s fairly easy to tell when different puppies had the same chunk of words that included “small, cute, toilet trained, obedient, price nego” plastered all over it.

After weeks of searching, I came across Jelly’s owner ad and enquired a bit before making the decision to go down to view the puppies. They were only 3 weeks old and when I went down, well the rest is history. 
Read here to find out the full story.

I guess what I didn’t say was that I liked everything about the environment that she was bred in. It was warm, cosy and clearly surrounded with much love from the owner. She was a housewife and she devoted her time to taking care of her furbabies. With jelly’s siblings, they had an astounding total of 10 dogs in the house and came out for play time 3 times a day. 

So pampered!

So far, jelly’s grown up to be an active, smart dog. She is bigger in size than the average maltipoo puppy but it doesn’t concern me cause she is so full of love and I am totally crazy about her. But I get questions about how come she’s so big at 3 months when other puppies are so tiny and I am pretty sick of answering it.

Yes my puppy is bigger than average because while her mother is small, her father’s slightly larger in size hence she’s a bit in between.  I know tiny dogs are massively cute. Trust me I would probably feel my heart strings tug too when I see small and petite dogs but I love my dog for the affectionate, large brat that she is.

And while those bred at the farmways are small in size and adorable, I just didn’t want to risk the dangers of bringing home a sick puppy, love it and then watch it die. With farmways, you’ll never know what you’ll get since you can’t view the parents and don’t know how they’re treated and it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.
But maybe it’s just me.

Out of this whole situation, the only thing I regretted was perhaps not considering the option of adopting. It saddens me to say that when I was looking around, I didn’t try hard enough to look at adoption drives because I had this mindset that most dogs that were abandoned were not suitable for HDB living. The only place I checked out was SPCA but that was it. No looking at any other animal shelters that could use my help and my love. It’s really a horrible feeling knowing that I could save a life but I didn’t try.

So, that’s just my two cents worth. The one piece of advice I can leave you with is to adopt and help save our furry friends. I know im being such a hypocrite but if you’re seriously considering getting a dog, sniffs around the animal shelters and you may just find your best friend. 

Till then,

Melissa