Buying a Purebred Dog: An Interview with Sarah Dye
Volume 2 Issue 1
April 1, 2008
Author: Laurie Haight Keenan
I am not the person whose example you should follow if you're looking to buy a purebred dog. I did not do anything right and was, in fact, so ignorant that I had no inkling that I was going about things the wrong way.
Here's what I did on a Sunday afternoon in 1979. I visited a pet store and noticed an adorable, sad puppy. She was a Scottish Terrier, I saw from the sign on her cage. She was marked down to $350, for quick sale. Huddling in one corner of her cage, she ignored me as I tried to coax her nearer. I could see she had runny eyes. I felt so sorry for her; I asked to take her into the playroom. Once there, she hid under a chair and I fell in love. Although I was subsisting on a graduate student stipend in an apartment that didn't allow dogs, and even though I knew nothing about Scottish Terriers, I wanted this puppy. As my boyfriend, Joe and I, were driving home without her, I chose the name Hanna. Later that week, I convinced Joe to lend me $350 and to pick up Hanna on his way home from work. Voila¡! I had my first dog.I'm sure most readers can rehearse the many mistakes I committed. Don't go into pet stores that sell puppies because you'll just get a broken heart or make a bad decision, is the advice offered by Sarah Dye, a breeder of Scottish Terriers for over twenty-five years. Dye assumes that most people now know that many dogs sold in pet stores regardless of what the staff may believe come either from puppy mills, where conditions are so deplorable that supporting them with your dollars should give moral pause, or from disreputable breeders who have no interest in their puppies' fates.
