It would seem pretty simple: You decide you want a dog, you look on-line, find a breeder or a dog looking for a new home with reasonable travel distance, agree a price, pay and bring your new dog home, but unfortunately there are many folk out there disguising themselves in plain sight as perfectly nice and descent loving families that are fronts for puppy farm and illegally imported dogs.
While these dogs too have beatings hearts and might truly deserve all the love there is for you to give them, in buying them you will often find yourself paying inflated prices, and a puppy born in less ideal conditions will very often lack vital early socialisation and suffer poor health with infections and weakened immunity against parvovirus and giardia that’s putting aside their poor dams plight.
A network of support
One of the most wonderful things about pedigree dogs, and especially the Weimaraner, is that they have a very loyal and true network of enthusiasts right across the UK (and indeed around the world) who will go to great lengths to help Weimaraners in need.
In life, sometimes things can go wrong – it’s a fact that no matter how carefully you might lay your plans, sometimes you do find yourself no longer able to keep your dog, or you may even just need someone to help with short term foster care.
That’s really where the support network is amazing, whether you have a rescue or a puppy from a breeder, and while this has been something I have always appreciated, it was really brought home to me how vital and valuable this network of support is when I found myself fostering a Bulgarian Shepherd dog this Autumn*… (a long story!). It’s a back up that many other breeds and breed types simply do not have in place.
The Weimaraner is not a particularly commonplace breed but there are several breed clubs devoted to them, and two dedicated rehoming organisations, (The Weimaraner Club of Great Britain Rescue and Rehoming, and the Independent Weimaraner Rescue and Rehoming Charity) as well as a specialist rescue for ‘blues’. There are also several facebook groups that have members and contacts who are directly involved in the rescue and rehoming services.
Rescue or Rehome
For every owner that said that they would rather have a puppy to bring up as a clean sheet, there is a young dog that ended up in rescue because their owners really did not appreciate how much work a puppy can be.
As a breed, they seem also particularly slow to mature, reaching adolescent at around 8 – 11 months and still stretching the rules to see how far they might bend at 3 years! A big strong 40 kg puppy bouncing about on the end of a lead is a lot of hard work,