Welsh puppies typically cost $900 - $1200, and for that price you should expect written guarantees, at least one set of vaccinations, and all health clearances on both parents, as discussed in Choosing a puppy/ Choosing a Breeder, as well as lifetime availability to assist you with your dog from the breeder. Some breeders include microchips, completed eye exams, and rebates from the breeder when you complete an obedience class or an AKC title or certain health checks. Some include videos or books on puppy raising. A dog costing significantly less may be no bargain. A dog costing significantly more may be nothing special. The two biggest mistakes you can make are to buy based on price alone, and to buy because you just don't want to wait any longer.
To give you some perspective on price, keep in mind that you should expect to pay about $250 per year on dog food and about $250 annually for vaccinations, heartworm preventative, and flea and tick preventative (maybe more, depending on where you live). While it's certainly easier to buy that $20 bag of dog food each month than to write that one big check, the fact is that what you pay for fundamental maintenance of a healthy adult dog for about 2 years equals the original purchase price of a Welsh Springer puppy.
Responsible breeders are not getting rich at this price, by the time they have paid for stud fees, health checks, transportation, puppy food, vet bills, and the training classes and entry fees involved to prepare their own dogs for the competitions that lead to external confirmation that their dogs are worth breeding. I could break down the costs for you, but I imagine the question for you is not how breeders justify the price they charge in their own minds, but whether *you* should budget for this purchase, and what you would get for your money. A lot of that depends on the contract you have with a particular breeder.
We believe a responsible breeder should not only try to avoid producing inherited diseases, but should also "put his money where his mouth is" by giving money back when inherited disease occurs. For example, a friend of mine has told me that $1000 is way too much to pay for a puppy. She has a purebred dog that she got for $400. Handsome dog with an exceptional temperament, but no health info on the parents and no guarantee from the "breeder". By the time he was two years old, she had spent $1500 having one of his hips replaced, was facing another operation for the other hip soon, and was spending a substantial amount of money on supplements such as ester-C, glucosamine, and chondroitin. If she had paid more for a responsibly-bred puppy, he would be less likely to have such problems because he would be the product of a breeding between two animals known to have normal hips. In addition, if she had bought him from us, we would have reimbursed her for expenses related to hip dysplasia up to the purchase price of the puppy. He would have been cheaper in the long run if she had paid more for him initially. Other breeders have different policies. A person who used our stud dog two years ago would refund half the purchase price for a puppy that was dysplastic, regardless of whether it required medical treatment. In addition, many breeders offer rebates for things like completing an obedience class that make the ultimate purchase price less than the original.
To sum up, a $1000 dog purchased directly from the breeder may be less expensive in the long run than a $500 dog or even a $50 dog.
If you can think about the purchase price as part of total expenditure on the dog over a 10-15 year period, rather than a one-time expense, then it is probably worth pursuing the idea of getting a puppy even though you consider $1000 to be a lot to pay for a family pet. Visit a breeder, correspond with a few breeders. Tell them that you understand that they incur substantial expenses in breeding and raising puppies, but that this is still a substantial outlay of money at one time for you, and you are trying to decide whether this is a purchase that makes sense for you, given that you hope to have the dog for 10-15 years, and expect to have the expenses that go with dog ownership. Ask them if you can see a typical purchase contract. Ask them what inherited diseases they are concerned about in Welsh, what they do to try to avoid them, and what they will do if your puppy has one.
If you are set on a Welsh but cannot see paying the puppy price, rescue is an option, but a slow one. Very few Welsh end up homeless, largely because breeders typically breed carefully and seldom, place puppies carefully, and take back dogs they have sold if their owners can't/won't keep them anymore. When breeders take dogs back, or when they retire a dog from breeding or competition, they sometimes look for new homes to place them in. However, these dogs are not advertised, and not formally in "rescue". Often, breeders will not even mention that they are available until they have had a long conversation or several with a family.
Note also that retail pet stores typically charge $900 - $1200 for a purebred puppy, and those puppies come with no health clearances on the parents and absolutely no information about how they were socialized and cared for during the critical first 8 weeks of life. Since puppies sold at retail stores typically come from high-volume breeders with minimal standards (commonly known as puppy mills), purchasing a pet store puppy (or buying anything from a retail store that sells puppies) typically supports and encourages the puppy mill industry. There is a good chance that behind each pet store puppy are two dogs who will spend their lives confined to cages and bred at every opportunity. To avoid supporting this cruelty, consider a dog from a rescue organization, or buy directly from the breeder after seeing how the puppies and their mother are kept.
Valerie Young
(Last modified on 06/19/04)