For the health and safety of our Puppies and Families, we have come to the collective decision to not allow Home Visits. You will meet your puppy at a Public Location, which you may choose when Scheduling a Meet & Greet.
** Prospective Puppy Owners are NEVER prompted for a deposit before meeting the puppies in person. You will only be suggested to place a deposit if you want to exclusively reserve the puppy from a period of time. ***
We understand, Prospect Puppy Owners may want to visit the puppy’s place of residence, but this does not define a good caretaker. We require our CO-OP members to provide in-depth videos and written content of both the Puppies and the Parents publicly available via the Puppy’s Profile page and the Meet The Parents page, so that you may see where the puppies live, how they interact with their siblings, parents, and their family. We also post Reviews from past families who have completed the adoption process. Satisfaction, safety, and health are our number one concerns with our puppies and families. You will see that our past families messages, photos, between families and our independent co-op members!
Why are Meetings Better outside of the home?
We believe there is a great benefit to meeting puppies outside thier place of birth. In many temperment tests used to select Service Dogs, a puppy is brought to a Brand New Enviroment to meet Brand New People and have Brand New Experiences. This experience reveals a great amount of the puppy’s true, natural, and in-born temperament.
More Information about the Volhard Temperament Test
Safety For Families
We have listed several public incidents to illuminate the safety risks of in home meetings.
- Who killed a beloved rural Kansas dog breeder? Case Remains Unsolved.
- Five English bulldog puppies have been stolen by burglars who threatened their owners with weapons at their house.
- Man killed in dispute over stolen puppies
- Puppy stolen by four masked men during armed robbery
- Family robbed of 2 puppies, held at gunpoint in Mall parking lot
Health Concerns
For puppies under 15 weeks:
Visitors can bring parvo, kennel cough and possibly other diseases on their shoes and pants.
The health risks associated with public visitation are very real to a puppy’s immunity. Those who experienced with raising puppies and are experienced in puppy health will sanitize frequently with their own Family’s comings and goings. They will keep their own family’s shoes “quarantined” from tracking in unknown contaminants into the home. The added workload of sanitizing for frequent visitors to ‘pop-in’ not only adds a layer of inconvenience but simply opens the home up to more risk and human error.
Meetings are only allowed when the puppy is Vaccinated and Microchipped. The Puppy is kept exclusively in a dog stroller. No one is allowed to set the puppy on the ground during these meetings. People will be prompted to use hand sanitizer before interacting with the puppy.
Harassment
You may be surprised to learn that 9 out of 10 of our co-op members have been subjected to harassment while promoting or showing their puppies to the public. Much of the harassment comes from those affiliated with Animal Rescue Groups who believe breeding (even home-based responsible hobby breeding) is somehow wrong. Unfortunately our members have been on the receiving end of other forms of harassment such as sexual harassment.
Most harassment comes online, but on occasion our co-op members have been subjected to harassment in-person. This is just another reason why we have moved to public meetings.
However, it is our hope to offer in-home visits again in the future, when we are able to organize a safe and effective vetting system.