01/17/2025
I saw this shared by a breeder friend and boy does it ever capture how we feel as breeders. There is something so special about bringing these wonderful beings into this world, but it comes with so much heartache that I can barely function some days.
A woman once contacted me looking for a puppy. But she kept saying she was hesitant because the borzoi has such a short life span. I’ve had a few who have lived to be over 14 and a more recent one who died at under five months. I felt that she was not connected to reality and was probably not someone I needed to get involved with because there would always be some problem. The problem is that when people pay you for a puppy, they act like they are buying a designer handbag or something. Authenticity, exclusivity, and that it will last forever and be in the Met. The reality is that it is a living, breathing being and it does not come with spare parts, any real guarantee as to what will happen to it or how long it will last. There is no expiration date.
Like all things with dogs, it is a gamble. You go to a show, it is a gamble. You breed a litter, it is a gamble. You place a puppy, it is a gamble. There is no way to know what will happen along the way.
I placed a puppy in a home I took a chance on. There wasn’t enough yard there but there was a huge park nearby and she went to work with her owner everyday. Never did we see a fungal infection in her future.
I placed a puppy in a home in Mexico at the beach. Perfect. Never in a million years did we think she could escape and while harassing pelicans on the cliff, it would give way and she would fall to her death.
How did that dog eat an entire box of fire starter cubes? What is really in those that blood was shooting out his butt? And then he was gone.
Not being a man and never having had male children, I had no idea testicles could torsion. Had I not shaved D’Argo down and got all that hair off of him I would have never noticed that giant shiny black ball under his tail.
I’ve always known how dangerous foxtails are. But you just don’t think about them all the time. Until your dog crashes and they show you the track on X-ray of that “foreign body” heading for his kidney.
I’m sure no one ever thinks about them smacking into each other. Or missing a turn and hitting a fence post. Pneumothorax or simply a broken neck.
And whatever had caused that intussusception was never found but it took out his whole gut all the same.
There are also the freak accidents. The coyote that ran across the trail and the dog who je**ed out of his owner’s hands. The driver just missed hitting the coyote and while watching it, he slammed right into the borzoi. Then there was the silly borzoi who ran out to do his borzoi dance in the middle of the busy street. He didn’t make it to the vet either. And then there was the borzoi I bred that took off through the only open gate at their local high school and their other borzoi ran after her. Again, the car just missed the first one, slammed right into the second one.
So when breeders offer you the chic # of their dog as if it is some sort of bulletproof guarantee that your little puppy is going to make it to 14 and still be able to hike and p*e and p**p on its own, please realize, that testing covers such a teeny tiny little piece of all the possible problems you might face along the way. We spend hundreds of dollars testing for stuff, less on structural analysis, but none of it will prepare you for the myriad ways the universe can take that puppy out.
As a breeder, I deal with up to ten times the number of deaths an individual will face. I have my own dogs and I have all of yours. I have all the ones someone else bred where my dog was used at stud. Each and every death I absorb. Each heartbreak of yours I carry with me. Each litter that doesn’t happen, hopes dashed. Each neonate that doesn’t make it. I have a deep well of sadness. It is so deep I can no longer see the bottom.
What they die from and when, we cannot possibly know that. And if all this testing proved something, it would be that it doesn’t mean what you think because we have to keep testing. It is a way to track trends over time. It is no guarantee for your puppy. And really, since we have yet for one to die of thyroid or heart issues or be born blind or lose their eyesight, of fall down at four or five from degenerative disease, I’m not sure that I can make you any guarantee other than this is a living breathing bundle of love and you will have it for as long as you have it and not a second more.
-Bunny Kelley
