Puppy mills, pet stores and commercial breeders are in the business of selling dogs. Their primary concern is the profit they can make on each sale. Puppy millers also broker dogs bred by others and then sell them to pet stores, other puppy mills or to unsuspecting private buyers who are not informed that they are buying a brokered puppy.

Have you ever thought about the puppies in pet stores who go unsold for several months? Once they are past a certain age, their price is reduced in the hopes that someone will feel sorry for the poor thing and buy it. Once the puppy has passed the cute stage and the business can no longer expect to make any profit, the unsellable puppy is either returned to the puppy mill breeder as a breeding animal, or sold to a research facility for experimentation. As a business they have to find any way of cutting their loss on "their investment", the poor animal.

Some of these businesses try to fool the legitimate pet dog buyer and the dog breeding and showing community into thinking that they are "legitimate" and are conscientious breeders, going to the point of representing themselves as potential pet puppy people, having fancy websites and advertising themselves to the unsuspecting gullible public as extraordinary breeders, or even applying for their judging credentials. Not only should people not have any dealings with these businesses, by buying or selling dogs to or from them, they should also not buy their "bill of goods", either.
Let The Buyer Beware...Caveat Emptor!

Well said, CCK.
However, unfortunately many people do not know what to look for when buying a puppy from a puppy miller who portrays herself as an honest and caring breeder, committed to the health of the puppies.....until it is too late.
A fancy website, and pictures of nice dogs tug at the heartstrings of potential puppy buyers who don't know better.....until it is too late.
I don't have any answers. I wish I did.

Thank you lots CCK and Pete for warning people. We do have plenty of potential puppy families visiting the list who should know these puppy mills exist and we're not all like them, most of us aren't. Check us out like we check you out! I have tried to educate many buyers as alot of us have. Each one we do successfully keeps the buyer away from the P.M.'s or B.Y.B's also. Both don't always do proper clearances yet I've seen on a site in particular where they claim they've done more clearances then any other breeder. Yea rite. Check OFA; www.offa.org. Too many of their dogs have no or minimal clearances! They believe their own lies about more clearances then anyone;

So what we can do is continue to educate the public! I recently taught someone how to use the OFFA aka OFA site and they were in shock at the lack of clearances the breeder they almost worked with had on the parents of the puppies available. They backed out of the deal, fought to get their deposit back b/c they were out n out lied. It wound up, the new story was both the dog and bitch were 16 + 17 mo. on prelim clearances. Nothing showed up on OFA and the breeder had no proof of the supposed prelims. BS there were none or she would have produced them when the buyers asked for scanned copies.

It's sad to hear about after a poor tempered or very unhealthy pup coming home with buyers. Either they spend a fortune with the vet or lose the puppy completely sometimes with these liars. Have you ever seen the $5,000 Dollar Dead Dog website? Google it and read it all when you have time. Who the had the nerve to charge $3500 for a pet puppy in 2008 or today and when the pup dies of an inherited disease, did not give the people what they're asking for? Especialy when you breed that much for goodness sakes. It wasn't an unreasonable request. I cried when I read the whole story the 2nd time.

I wish we could self police more and tell those that are lying on their websites to stop making the rest of us look bad when it's them doing things like brokering, not doing clearances or lying about and forging OFA clearances and titles.

I am off my soapbox. Let's all chipin and help buyers not go with a BYB or Puppy Mill when we don't have pups available for them. It's not skin off our backs to help them find a good breeder who is well known by their local club members.