Latest / The Doodle Pro®: Positive Dog Training for Calm Doodles / How to Find a Good Doodle Breeder: Puppy Brain Book Club, Part 1 with Kerry Nichols

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How to Find a Good Doodle Breeder: Puppy Brain Book Club, Part 1 with Kerry Nichols · The Doodle Pro®: Positive Dog Training for Calm Doodles

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to dive in and talk about this phenomenal book today.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I am thrilled to introduce Carrie Nichols from The Puppy Brain.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you might have followed her on Instagram.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to see the cutest Goldens in casserole dishes, this is the place to do it.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is such a delight watching each step of your work.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just delicious little family members for all of these families.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here, Carrie.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited about this book club.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we have members of our membership, the Doodle Pro Honor Society, in here today, and our current students in Zumi Suzen.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone, I have to tell you, Carrie, I could see we've got 21 students here.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a hit.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so many people said, I should have read this before I got a dog and before I chose my breeder.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just been wonderful.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I must say, I have enjoyed reading this book.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I also listened to the audio, and a lot of our students did the same.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is a book that before I was doing this work, I would have devoured as just a dog fan.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: You really got into just understanding how puppies work, and it felt like a love letter to puppies.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just a delight to read with the science there too.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: What a kind thing to say.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my pleasure.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I'm making all this about me.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I saw a lot of myself in this with your love for research.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And just if you're this wasn't the career, and when you got into it, you were gonna do it right.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And learned everything you could.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it just is so wonderful for the reader to learn from you and all that you've learned.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I one of the first things I'm gushing here, but it was a really phenomenal read.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: One of the third first things I wanted to address was the theme about resiliency.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're talking about that with puppies from the Welping Box Beyond, can you share a little bit with our listeners what resiliency kind of means to you?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, I mean, I feel like this has been evolving for me.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was even talking with a friend yesterday, and I said, what I understood when I wrote Puppy Brain about layering and what I was intuiting about developing resilience continues to evolve with every litter and just my own dogs.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think the simplest shorthand for resilience is bounce back.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's I think a lot of us have expectations that our dogs won't like we think that the goal is that they won't have a reaction to something or that they won't be faked by something.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think I think we're missing the target when we expect that of them.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think they are fight or flight animals.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: They are going to naturally have a response.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: What we're hoping for with resilient dogs is that they will bounce back from that quickly and then they will even show initiative and interest in exploring the thing that startled them.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of curiosity in their mind, I think is a really big part of resilience.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: When people talk about puppy socialization and they have their checklists and stuff, I mean, it's very important for positive exposures.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: But what you're saying is equally important that doing so, even if you do it the most skilled way, they are going to encounter something that will startle them or that will be novel or new.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And can they do they kind of have a positive outlook of most things are safe and it'll turn out okay or not?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you're really starting that from day one.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think like that's been part of my just continuing education personally is that, and even when I wrote puppy brain, I remember trying to choose what what am I how am I going to explain layering without making people feel like they have to expose their puppy to every single thing they think they're.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yes, we want to anticipate what they're going to experience in their life, but what happens in a dog brain is they become resilient to novelty.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: They become resilient to variables, they become resilient to the unknown.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: They have trust in themselves that, oh, I've done this, I've overcome a fear before.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: I can manage this, I can be curious about it, I can explore it, and I'm not going to die.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: But, or even that, you know, like I'm I might find something really interesting and enjoyable on the other side of this thing that startled me initially.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I think like that's been that this continues every litter.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is part of why it's so much fun, because I'll see somebody be startled at something I haven't had a puppy startle at before.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like it'll always be like add it to the list.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Add it to the list, but also it proves the point that eight puppies may not startle to something, and one might.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not trying, yes, we are trying to prepare them for the human world, but we are also trying to get those neural pathways really entrenched of just responding to newness, just novelty itself.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I love the specifics you give of carrying this little puppy like a little football while you get your morning coffee, and just doing all down their initial baths.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: How when you're discussing the layering, for those of you who haven't read the book yet, Carrie discusses in that it's not just plopping them in the water, but we've got a light turning on all of a sudden, the sound of the water, like all of the different steps and each step you make safe because we know that these dogs are gonna need baths forever.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't really like flinch at a light being turned on or having a ceiling fan on.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so those things you kind of put yourself in their little furry minds and see what would be novel to them.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And what part of the well, and what part of the experience would be a surprise to them that I don't even think about?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: That, you know, I will just walk in the bathroom.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a huge one.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: What are they smelling?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: What are they smelling that I can't smell when I walk into a new room?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think about that all the time.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm at my parents' house and their golden retriever is level 10 sniffer.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've just not, I can't, none of mine even rival.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: And everything, like my mom says, Oh, let her smell the box.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I walk in the house with something, oh, let her smell it.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Everything that I bring in the house, I have to put it down for testing the smell.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, because she is gathering all of this information that I have no idea exists.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that happens in every environment that a dog enters.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: You talk a little about the science of how powerful their ability to smell is.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you mind sharing a little bit more about that?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: That our our students in Zoomy's design were really excited about that part.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I think Alexandra Horowitz, you know, she did a TED Talk.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Was it a TED?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the librarian in my brain is getting very slow.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm pretty sure.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, where was that?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty sure.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, she there, if you if you do a Google search for Alexandra Horowitz TEDx or TED Talk on the nose, they have these really neat graphics that show the architecture of the dog nose.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it is a wild system in there.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: But they I think that this was her analogy is that a dog could have such exquisite sense, scent, that they could detect a teaspoon of sugar in an Olympic-size swimming pool.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I it's not that they could actually go, I mean, maybe they could, I don't know, but like that is how acute their sense of smell is and compared, right, compared to us.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so that informs everything we do with them.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like we can never forget that there is a person in the room called smell that we can't see, that they are very aware of at all times.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't give you a really great example of that.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: I had a dog, he was a Moses voying preacher.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I took, yeah, you know, we were with like the theme.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And because, you know, Moses, I think, was a preacher or something.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: But anyhow, we I took him to go get uh a cardiac clearance.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, Goldens, you can't actually duplicate the sound of a murmur if they get too excited, like they have to be pretty calm for a cardiac clearance with it with an ascultation, with an echo, it's different.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I took him and they had moved where they did this clearance, they used to do it in one building of this practice, and they moved it to this other building.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we walked in, and he, I mean, he freaked out.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: He was terrified, just walking through the door.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, What is happening?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't figure it out because he was a very mellow guy, and so I I he was not calming down, and I was worried about his clearance.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I talked to the vet tech at the front.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I don't I don't really understand what's happening here, but he's reacting to something.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Oh, well, this is actually where the morgue is.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, so he smelled death of dogs.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And can you imagine what that did to his brain, right?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: The fight or flight, every door closing.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that happens when we're out in the world with them.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: They are aware of things we're not aware of, and it's really important that we always keep that in the back of our mind with them.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah, that's great and great asking.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, good, and he's still past, even that.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's wonderful.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you, I mean, perfect segue, I must say, Carrie, because we I wanted to ask you about choosing a breeder.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have people who are looking for their second pup, and every golden doodle is half golden.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you've been raising our doodles cousins for years, but yes, you when they're looking for their second pup, or some are even real nerds like us and researching before their first next dog, they hear health testing and stop there.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Can you share a little bit more when you talk about health testing, what that means and how like we swab and send to DNA all of our puppies, what we actually mean we're looking for.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna try and oh, I'm such a nerd.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: I have to be really careful to not overwhelm.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Get in there.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna give a couple of resources because these resources are fantastic.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: One is the OFA website, right?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: OFA.org.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: On the OFA website, they list every purebred dog.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And just because you're looking at buying a mix doesn't mean you should be not looking for health clearances because these conditions are passed on genetically.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: So even if you take a golden retriever paired with a poodle, if the golden retriever has SAS, the heart condition we're clearing for, just because it's a pairing doesn't mean that puppy can't take that same condition.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it really matters.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mix his purebreds with.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're looking at two.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're looking at, so what are the what OFA does is it collaborates with the parent organizations of breeds.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So the Golden Retriever Club of America lets OFA know these are the conditions that Golden Retriever breeders need to obtain in order to be compliant with the health tests that we as a parent organization say should be obtained before somebody breeds dogs.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: All of that is on OFA.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: It is a public database.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: We are so lucky to have it.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Other countries don't have what we have.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's really amazing.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you can go on there and you can search for the breed or breeds you're interested in and see it'll say four golden retrievers hips, elbows, eyes, heart by a cardia a cardiologist, not by a practitioner, right?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very detailed, and you have to really be it.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the put the chapter on puppy brain kind of lays it all out, regardless of the breed, because you have to go through each of those.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what I observe, well, okay, so there's those.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Those are those get put on OFA.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: There are DNA tests that are also really important that you can also put on OFA.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I some of my dogs I have and some I haven't because I haven't done the paperwork.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: But anytime anybody, you know, what is getting a dog from me, I have all the DNA clearances.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a swab.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so the reason some are done with DNA and some are done with board certified specialists is we can actually look at DNA through a cheek swab and see does a dog carry something, a skin condition called ichthyosis, that is a condition we don't want to perpetuate in the golden retriever breed.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so if mom has it and dad has it, you don't pair these two dogs.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Really simple.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like$200 to do this super comprehensive DNA.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's amazing.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of breeders fake people out and are deceptive and say, oh, yeah, we have all of our health clearances.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Here's our DNA panel.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: But you need to go or vet checked.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's another one.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's a board certified specialist for whatever for cardiology and golden retrievers, it's a board certified specialist.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: For eye clearances, it's a board certified specialist.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hips and elbows can be done by a normal vet, but they those hips and elbows they get submitted to OFA.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: The whole point is everything goes to OFA because OFA is a neutral website that lists everything that's been obtained according to the parent breed organization.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if you got it from your local vet that said, Oh, your hips look good, well, you have no way of submitting that to OFA.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: OFA will not accept that.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you bring in a litter of puppies for a vet check, they're like, that doesn't keep puppies.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's not, yeah.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they we don't know how their heart is, we don't know how any genetic components in these puppies.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I think, you know, the one thing I spend a ton of time helping people look through breeders, and I have a document called Good and Bad Breeders.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's just for my it's just sort of to repeat the work for myself.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I do the same.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uh I there are gold standard circle breeders where it's just this is who I refer to and who I would trust.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I would say some really common things I see from bad breeders are they will claim to have clearances on their website, they will list all of them, it will look very impressive.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you go to the OFA website and you take the registered name of that dog, lo and behold, either they're not there, they're patchy, they were done by a non-specialist, like for Goldens.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be by a cardiologist, not a practitioner.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if I'm if I'm I want to make sure I'm answering the questions that people are asking, but you you know, you have to trust but verify.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: You have to dig in yourself and see the copies of the DNA test, make sure the registered name.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's very easy to falsify these records, you know.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: If someone and I've seen it where they take a OFA eye clearance and they have asked obviously AI to just put the names of the dogs in the program, but that falls apart when you go to OFA.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: The central recording.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Falls apart when you go to OFA, because OFA has the copy from the vet, not these false documents.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's too bad.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's um it's too bad that people are so deceitful, but it's that's a reality that we and I think like the better websites look, people think they're more trustworthy, or the more words that are on the website, people think that's trustworthy.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing that's trustworthy is the OFA clearances, understanding the breed clearances that are required for that breed and checking DNA results.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: I can say working with breeders about standards and what are their best practices and learning from them.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the most talented and like leaders have the worst websites and not the glossiest Instagram.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody is as like talented as your Instagram skills.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And but they are darn good at healthy, amazing temperament puppies.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, and they're just not needing to invest in a lot of people just don't enjoy social media or any of that stuff.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, I think that you know the bottom line is due diligence is checking yourself and being careful to not.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: I I have one thing I hear about that surprises me so much is people will say, Well, they're really trying.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're really trying to like well, and I appreciate trying, but they're but the person who first off, I will say this the responsibility that you feel when you bring puppies into this world, that they don't suffer, that should keep somebody up at night.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not getting the health clearances, that says something about you as a person that you're willing to bring puppies into this world who aren't given the best shot at being healthy.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had puppies that still have conditions, even though I've done all the best practices.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's not a guarantee.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: It is not a guarantee, but it sure makes a world of difference and it's a reflection on my moral center.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I can share for people listening that were looking for a doodle puppy, the Golden Doodle Association of North America now is registered with OFA for Golden Doodle standards.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: But Golden Doodles and Australian Labra Doodles, Australian Labra Doodles with Walla and ALA are their organizations.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: They have testing standards that you can look for.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: But exactly what Carrie's describing of if you're looking for any cross, we're checking both lineages.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So don't just hear the phrase hybrid vigor and think, oh, we crossed.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: So now nobody has any of these issues.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's all neutralized.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now we've just doubled what we're checking for.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if we are going to bring life into this world, we can do our due diligence to give them the best shot.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then can I can I give one more thing on the research on breeders?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the health clearance component because you know, for me, the health clearances is just the lowest bar.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just like that's bare minimum.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Then there is the whole, you know, that's why I wrote puppy brain, because there's the whole socialization and the way that puppies are raised.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think that if we are undertaking this process of raising puppies, we need to demonstrate to potential buyers that we are doing what we say we're doing.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: It is not enough to say puppy culture or whatever.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I recall I saw somebody recently, we raise our puppies according to puppy brain.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh no.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, no, you're taking that off of there because there was no evidence that they were even doing anything.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, people, it's deception.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's really important that you see that if a breeder is making a claim that they are doing barrier challenges and they're doing noise desensitization, they should have evidence of that.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: That that's that's part of our job.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, what would that look like for you when you're looking at these different breeders helping people out?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a video?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or when you're asking questions, if somebody's asking questions of the breeder, are you asking, can you tell me a little bit more about what your protocol?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: How do people discern?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think like you know, initially you can ask a set of questions.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think I, you know, there's someone in puppy brain.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone here, if you want to email me, I have an email that I send to every person who asks me about puppies because it has questions that you can send, like, tell me what you're doing on a weekly basis to I like um, yeah, tell me what you're doing on a weekly basis that capitalizes on where the puppy's development is.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I like leaving a really open-ended question because if they don't know that those ears are opening at three weeks and they don't know that, you know, there are certain windows of opportunity that it tells you what their experience level is and what their intentionality is.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like I don't feel like this information is hard to find from a breeder.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is just takes a little bit of work.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: All they have to do is is read some books and they should know the answers to those questions.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think social media is so easy.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: If they have a social media account and all they're posting is cute puppy pictures, right?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: That for me is a little hmm.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Which is like a prop.
• 22:00
  unknown: Yeah.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're all cute.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're all cute.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Can I can I see a little more behind the scenes there?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And one other thing that I'm oh man, I have so many like little triggers.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, this is your day-to-day passion and what your your purpose.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if I see something that has been posted where I think now who is this for?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is this for the best interest of the puppies?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Or is this to create virality?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Are you trying to create a viral video?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're taking a puppy, driving a puppy, I'm not even gonna uh people do things with puppies that are very obvious.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: They're they've been done for the social media response and not in the best interest of the puppy.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so these are things that we can pay attention to when we're looking at social media feeds.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I personally I say to so many people, unfollow, unfollow that account.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Don't give them the benefit of your algorithmic support.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: But then if you're looking for a puppy and you see someone being really intentional and careful, they have kids around and you like the way that the kids are engaging with the puppies, like that's a really big green light that this is someone who's trying very hard to honor the puppies that they're caring for.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: I hear sometimes from some of our listeners who I I have followed some of this advice, and I see now this probably isn't the kind of breeder I thought they were, but I feel so bad leaving the dog there.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: I hear that.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: What do you say to somebody who's feeling like in that kind of bind?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh first off, I understand.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's really tough to leave a puppy that you know needs a better life.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think we have to the we like one way we can be part of the solution is if you can only rescue one dog, don't rescue that dog from a puppy mill or a backyard breeder, rescue from a rescue organization.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're still rescuing one dog, and uh you're not then inadvertently supporting that puppy mill or backyard breeder because it's the dollar bills that keep them going.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: So if we can dry up the demand for their puppies, and I mean, that's like a really that's easy for me to say.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not the person standing there looking at what my heart is working for, right?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: But from a from a detached perspective, my lawyer brain kicks in, and that's just the way I think about it is you know, logically, you are going to save one puppy.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it in a way that helps future puppies, let's do it in a way that supports changing this system that we are all a part of because the puppy mills they are in existence because they make money.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Not the greater purpose that you're advocating for.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: It it's a tough spot to be in.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really tough.