The search for puppies

Somehow I have become the worst blogger on the face of the planet. I blame this partly on actually liking my job for once and also on not really having a lot going on these days.

It's November, so that means we have been married and homeowners for just over a year on both accounts. You know what that means... time to get a puppy! (No jokes allowed about puppies being the gateway drug for babies, mmkay?)

My Nicky went on to doggie heaven almost a year ago (RIP: Dec 11, 1996 - Dec 16, 2006) so I am excited yet anxious. When we had Nicky my family was not really prepared to have a dog in our clan and I sometimes feel like she did not have the best doggie life possible. Not that I should be doing this, but I kind of see the prospect of a new dog as a do-over to make things right by Nicky again. *sigh*



The breed we have been eyeing is the Polish Lowland Sheepdog (a.k.a. Polski Owczarek Nizinny, or PON for short). Yes, that’s right GG fans – Paul Anka was a PON. Mike doesn’t want me telling anyone that though, because he thinks it’s sort of lame. It actually turns out that the PON is a fairly awesome but rare breed and we’ve had to look at breeders just for availability.

We’ve never dealt with dog breeders before, so this is an interesting learning experience for us. I’ve contacted 4 breeders in the vaguely near area and have heard back from 3 so far:

1) Just North of Belleville – This breeder has ~10 years experience with PONs. However, not only is their website terrible, but when I tried to contact them with further questions (and really just to get in contact) the woman rudely, IMO, told me to refer to her website and if I had further questions to call her instead. She also will not place puppies for breeding or showing, which kind of puts up a red flag for me. Isn’t that the opposite of what breeders are supposed to do? Shouldn’t they be breeding for the betterment of the breed, not to prevent competition?

2) Just East of Montreal – This breeder is one of the founding 3 Canadian breeders. They have been working with PONs for ~20 years and have been totally accommodating and helpful with my questions. They’ve provided lots of information and have a ton of show dogs in their flock (?) so I have a good feeling about them. Unfortunately, the litter we were looking at for Feb are all spoken for now, so we’d have to wait until April/May when the next 2 sets of litters will be ready. The distance of this breeder is kind of worrisome since it would be a 10.5 hour drive each way, if we’re lucky. The other option is to ship the puppy via Air Canada Cargo, which must be pretty traumatic, though people have told me it’s not.

3) Just outside of North Bay – This breeder is new to the game (though they’ve been breeding Dobermans for years). They bred one of their foundation females at the end of Oct, so if “it” took there will be puppies in Feb. She researched the breed for 6 years before choosing her dogs, and has met and discussed PONs with the originator of the breed in Poland. For a noob, I’d say she’s done a ton of research and seems to really know what she’s talking about… but… she’s still inexperienced. As much as everyone has to start somewhere, it’s kind of chancy to match our inexperience with hers, no? The distance is much more doable, and Mike says really how different could breeding different breeds be? If she’s got experience breeding Dobermans and knows a lot about PONs, she’s probably pretty safe for breeding PONs.

Decisions, decisions!

If you’ve made it this far, you really ought to be rewarded with a Scooby snack pictures, so here you are. If we go with #3, this cutie pie, Jasmine, would be the mother of our puppy: