The title of this blog was deliberately worded in hopes of getting to people looking to buy Lakeland or any other breed of puppies. If you found it because you are searching for a puppy, please read on before resuming your search.
I am the proud owner of two Lakeland Terriers, a dog trainer, and the friend of three of the finest Lakeland breeders you could ever know.
Last week one of them spent a couple of days visiting us. She just ended her term as president of the US Lakeland Terrier club. She told me that they had registered about a 165 puppies with the AKC each year the last two years. What she then said shocked me. She said that half the puppies came from puppy mills.
That hit hard because the last time I had checked it was difficult to find my breed in the puppy mills. I was pleased with that then because I knew that it meant others would not go through the heartbreak we went through with our first Lakeland Terrier who was a puppy mill dog.
So I searched for Lakeland Terrier puppies and was horrified to find quite a few were available from puppy mills.
I would like for my breed to be more popular. And the more Lakeland puppies that get bought, the more likely the breed is to stay around and have a stable breeding population. And on a philosophical level, if people buy puppy mill Lakelands, they might be a Lakeland owner for life.
And that is exactly what happened to me. We moved into a new house and could get a dog. Two days later I went to work and when I came home that night my wife and youngest daughter had gone to the puppy store and we had a dog.
I had heard you don’t buy a dog from a puppy store but did not know why. But I also knew you do not tell your fourteen year old daughter she has to take a puppy back.
Back then I could not find anything out about the breed but by day two I was a lifelong Lakie person.
The reason you don’t buy puppy mill dogs quickly became apparent. Button no sooner became an adult and her kidneys started to fail due to a genetic fault. We would keep her alive until she was seven, but the average life expectancy for a Lakeland is 12 to 14 years.
I would spend more keeping her alive those seven years than the two breeder produced dogs I own now would cost me.
It would have been easy to assume that Lakelands are short lived with very expensive medical costs from that experience. Fortunately by then there was a lot available on the internet. That is when I found out why you buy puppies from reputable breeders. The higher cost at the start is quite often more than offset by longer life and lower vet bills.
Many of my training clients buy puppies from the puppy stores, who get their puppies from puppy mills. Now these are usually nice dogs. Their owners often tell me that they paid one third to one half as much as they would have paid from a good breeder. I hope that they were lucky and got a dog that will live a normal life span. But on more than one occasion I find out they had the same bad experience I did.
I also see dogs from good breeders. And they did cost more. But they have fewer health problems.
Losing a dog is never easy. But losing a dog well before its normal life expectancy is horrific.
The sad fact is that puppy mill puppies are cheaper because the breeding programs these breeders aren’t sound. They mass produce dogs using female breeding stock too often and too long. And the older a female dog and the more often she breeds, the more likely the puppies will have genetic problems and shorter life spans.
The fear is that the puppy mills will make it harder and harder for good breeders to place their puppies. And since good breeders don’t make money from breeding, there will be fewer and fewer source of sound and healthy dogs, especially in the lesser known breeds.
It would be a shame if my grandchildren wouldn’t be able to consider owning a good Lakeland when they are adults.
Doug
If you are looking for a reputable breeder for Lakeland Terriers go to the United States Lakeland Club website. There is a list of reputable breeders.
