Love at first sight

I had spent hours upon hours gazing at this photo of our puppy. I chose him because he had a beautiful white blaze on his forehead and the sweetest face. I fell in love with his crimped ears and perfect cross on his chest. He was waiting in Germany, unaware of the traumatic journey ahead of him, the journey to his new family.

Back then, before Jeffrey and I joined the Bernese Mountain Dog Club of Nashoba Valley (www.BMDCNV.org), we were ignorant PPOs (potential puppy owners). Unfortunately, we thought we were doing everything right and did not truly understand the terms puppy mills, puppy brokers, or backyard breeders. http://bmdcnv.org/puppy/BrokersFlier.pdf We looked through books about dogs, searched on-line, talked to people. I thought I had done my research:

• No pet store puppies as they are bought from puppy mills. These are people who breed dogs soley for the purposes of business. Basically, these are the people who don't care about dogs and just want to make money.
• Find a breeder close by so that we may continue to have a relationship with them throughout our Berner's life.
• Find a puppy that is raised by a family so that it is well socialized.
• Spend time talking to the breeder. I wanted to know that they were willing to spend extra time talking to me and answering my questions.

By the end of June, 2003, we located a "breeder" whom I will call the BB (for Berner Broker) who lived close and had puppies at their house. Although these puppies were spoken for, we could meet them and get a chance to talk to the BB. They invited us to their home to meet their very own Berner and two female puppies that just arrived from Germany. The story we were told was that the family bred BMDs and Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs (Swissies) in Germany. They frequently traveled between Germany and the US and thus they were able to bring Bernese puppies with European blood-lines to the US. We were so blinded by our excitement of having a new puppy, we were unaware of red flags, though now in hindsight, I see them everywhere. But I thought to myself, These people are so personable. We've met their whole family. They obviously know a lot about BMDs and are owners of one themselves. They took care to tell us about the health risks Berners are associated with and what to watch our for. They asked us all the questions we expected a breeder to ask us. They seemed very concerned about the welfare of their puppies and offered their home phone number and cell phone number to reach them with any questions. We went home that day dreaming of holding a bundle of Berner fluff in our arms. We were told to wait for their phone call. They would have more puppies soon. Perhaps a male for us. And indeed, a few days later, that phone call came. Three more puppies were coming. They sent us pictures and we fell in love.

Alas, we were overcome, as the majority of PPOs are, by that single photograph and enticements of this BB. We did not realize whom we were dealing with until well after Riley's first birthday. For now, we were basking in the initial bliss of bringing home our first BMD puppy. We prepared the house, we shopped for all the puppy essentials, we looked into puppy kindergarten classes, we prepared to change our schedules to accomodate him. We thought we were being responsible. After all, we are good people, right?