Process Essay #9 Three Step Process to Attaining my Three Dogs

As previously stated, my love for animals is relatively new, probably within the past five years. We have three Maltepoo’s. A Maltepoo is a Maltese and toy poodle mix. They are only breed once, which means maltepoo offspring are not allowed to breed. The journeys of their arrival into our home are not more than 24 months apart. We do not have any children living with us now that help take care of the dogs. We are our own little family; we have certainly grown on each other, and learned a lot about each other’s personalities. The unconditional love they return to us far outweighs the demand they are on our time. For this reason I can’t be sure we aren’t going to go spontaneously go get yet another dog from our breeder. We seem to be old hats at it by now.

The first step in finding our first dog led us to finding our breeder. ATender1’s Puppies came highly recommended from the friend who also had the first Maltepoo we had ever seen. When people hear the word breeder visions of run down puppy mills and deplorable conditions in which puppies and dogs of all ages are forced to live come to mind. Just because she has a nice looking website, a license and she is an inspected breeder within the State of Maine does nothing to quench that vision in my head. So we took a drive to Norway one day in to see for ourselves. We found out a lot about our breeder that day, and have since become very good friends. Just an important though we found out a lot about the breed that day. They are do not have an undercoat so they are non-shed, they don’t usually get bigger than ten pounds, and they like to bark. They have great personalities and love people of all ages. Truly to this day I don’t know how we were able to leave her home that day without a puppy.

The second step was finding a good vet because of the intense aftercare we needed to provide, as stated in our signed contract from the breeder, which had to commence by the fifth day we had our puppy at home. This important step obviously had to take place before we had our puppy. We were concerned that we wouldn’t be able to find a good vet that was taking new puppy patients. Yet again, upon a wonderful friend’s reference, we were able to secure a wonderful vet. We showed him our contract and set up the necessary shot appointments and mandatory spaying of our girl that was required by the breeder. We were not interested in paying an additional 200.00 for breeding rights.

The third step was picking out a puppy, a step that involved a little backwards planning. We had to wait for dog that met our qualifications to be born. We had a three stipulations we left the breeder with, we wanted her coat to all-white Maltepoo, the dog had to be a female, and if at all possible, the runt of the litter. We gave her a standing deposit to be applied when we made our final purchase. We began a two month wait, as many male dogs or brindle colored females were born. Finally, our Gracie was born on March 8 2008. She was the only female in a litter with two other males and she was indeed the smallest in the litter. We waiting 9 weeks after her birth to go retrieve her and brought her home on Mother’s Day!

The same steps were used in acquiring all three of our dogs as they all have come from the same breeder. If it isn’t broke don’t fix it, we always say.  The question of why three dogs in my even numbered world I live in, remains unanswered. However, we acquired the second dog, for a companion to the first, and the third because everyone deserves a home at Christmas time. I have to admit even though we are friends on facebook I stay away from our breeder friend’s website because I’m afraid of what will happen when I see the photos of the newest pups that are readily available. Although it would even up the numbers for me!