disbelief and disgust !

[WGD]

I think working dogs are changing hands between shooting folk with maybe slightly increased prices but nothing like the prices advertised. I have a couple of stud dogs, I don’t push them so don’t see masses of bitches, but the owners of a few bitches seen last year all asked that details of anyone looking for working pups be passed on as they didn’t want to advertise at “normal” prices for fear of people buying just to sell on at inflated prices.

[ips]

I think working dogs are changing hands between shooting folk with maybe slightly increased prices but nothing like the prices advertised. I have a couple of stud dogs, I don’t push them so don’t see masses of bitches, but the owners of a few bitches seen last year all asked that details of anyone looking for working pups be passed on as they didn’t want to advertise at “normal” prices for fear of people buying just to sell on at inflated prices.

refreshing to hear WGD,
i know someone (a keeper) who refuses to sell at "new rate" however i know another who has jumped on the band wagon so to speak

[Norfolk Fowler]

I have seen some owners trying to sell on the dogs that are no longer pups at the price they paid. Only problem is they havnt trained them or anything and have found that having a dog is more work than they originally thought.
Due to the price they paid they clearly dont want to do the right thing by taking the dog to a rescue as it would be the same as dropping off 2.5k and walking away. That has really got on my chaffers. Some folk will just see a dog as a cash machine rather than a family member

[WGD]

Arguably pups have been too cheap for too long - I paid £600 for a springer pup 8 years ago and folk still expect the same product for the same money?

[Nickheref]

Arguably pups have been too cheap for too long - I paid £600 for a springer pup 8 years ago and folk still expect the same product for the same money?

I discussed this with a mate when I told him how much my pups were as he said they were cheap, I would happily give £2,000 for a pup guaranteed to be exactly what I wanted but begrudge £600 on one I ultimately do not like. You are buying a prospect nothing more. In the late 80's I paid £500 for a 6 month old bitch, I suspect that was about 3 or 4 times the price of a pup then, I cannot remember how much they were then, so she would have been the equivalent of £6,000 depending on how you look at it but I would not pay £6,000 now . I never regretted paying a penny of it because you could see how she was going to turn out by then.
The problem of higher prices is it encourages people to knock out a couple of litters and make £20-30,000 who aren't really interested in the end product as bizarrely almost any pup is £1,500 - £2,000 . If you google Working Springer pups you will see loads of adverts for "working pups" from dams that are pets (if they really are pets and not some dodgy puppy farm) not registered etc, so no one really knows what they are like by dogs who appear to be easy to get to with no other thought in the breeding. I often look to see if they are shown as frequent advertisers which is interesting for people who have decided to take one litter from their much loved family pet!!!
Next thing is people who bought unregistered pups will be campaigning to have a secondary register so they can make exaggerated claims for them when they breed arguing they didn't understand when they bought the pup. It is like sprockers, cockerpoos etc. People forget they are a first cross and I saw one advert for sprocker pups which said:
"Father is a KC registered springer, mother is a FULL sprocker. So the pups are presumably 3/4 springer! Full sprocker was presumably meant to make them sound better almost as if the unknown dodgy element was the KC reg Springer Sire !!
They might be great workers but you cannot guarantee it.
Recently there was a letter in one of the shooting magazines about a chap taking on an unregistered bitch with no pedigree and asking about its future breeding prospects. It may well have been a spoof letter to highlight the issue but the problem to my mind was the response missed the elephant in the room, with no pedigree you might later be mating it to her brother or sire, you have no idea!

[trekmoor]

I am unashamedly stingy when it comes to puppy prices. The best lab I ever owned was Trekmoor Tessa . She cost me £30 about 45 years ago . I've had labs since that cost more than she did but in no way were they better than her and in some ways they were all worse.

Much the same applies to cockers. I bought "Charlie" for about £120 12 years ago and he has been the best spaniel I have ever owned. He did everything it said "on the tin" that spaniels should do plus quite a lot more !

My brittanies and GSP's were bought fairly cheaply too..... none of them cost more than £600 and all of them worked to a very high standard.

In my opinion a pup's breeding does matter but my motto for many years was "breed for the best ...train for the rest." A good trainer is the thing that puts the value on a gundog. I always buy a pup that has had , as far as possible, it's parents "researched" by me. I do not buy from dogs that do not want to work or from dogs that are "noisy" or hard mouthed but apart from that the future development is up to me no matter whether I bought the pup for a few hundred quid or not.

In fact I would not pay more than about £ 800 for ANY puppy no matter how well bred it was. I can, or at least, I could - - - - - "Train for the rest."

My daughter has had gundogs of quite a few breeds. They all worked well even though they were rescue dogs......they wanted to work !

Wullie

[Nickheref]

I think "want to work" is the key phrase there, not all do, even from the supposedly "best" breeding.

[Dummy1]

To be honest, I think we are bad for talking down our own dogs and under valuing them.

When you get the non pedigree crossbred mongrels going for 3-4 grand a pop, Realistically we should be selling our fully health tested kc reg trialling pups for 6 grand a pop!

[Lloyd90]

My mate bought a house for £5,000 many years ago. His mother has lived in it for the past 30+ years, sadly she died last year.
He recently sold the house for £350,000.

He didn't sell the house for £5,500 or whatever else, because of some moral obligation that he wasn't allowed to make a profit.
Like absolutely ever single sale in life, it worked off supply and demand, and what someone was willing to pay.

Personally I would not buy a poorly bred dog, whether is was £10 or £1,000... yet these pups are advertised at £1,500-£3,000 and people are paying it currently (although we shall see for how long).

As someone who hopes to buy more gundogs in future I would prefer them to be a lot cheaper lol, because that suits me, but gundogs have been very cheaper for a long long time.

People have been buying "cockerpoo's" for years before Covid at £1500-2000+ a pup, but pups out of some of the best gundogs lines most likely in the world have been half that in most cases.



I don't think that prices of £2-3,000 are sustainable, and personally if offered a pup for that sort of money I would refuse to pay it. But there are loads of people coming out bashing breeders stating they should be selling their pups for a lot less, and calling them greedy (greeders etc), as if the breeder has some sort of moral obligation to this complete stranger to sell them a pup for 50% of what they are selling for to the general public.

What is a shambles at the miniute however, is due to the high price being paid, people are breeding absolutely any dog they can get their hands on to make a quick buck.

As above, I would not buy a dog with poor breeding, yet I have seen untold dogs bred from parents who are very poor workers, have major faults as per the J regs etc.

HOWEVER, this is not new!! People have been breeding their gundogs with the romanticised idea of "carrying on their line" for years when the dogs have been absolutely crap!! A woman recently posted on a gundog group on facebook how her older cocker bitch was so badly behaved she never ever let it off lead ... but what a lovely pup she had from breeding it ...

A woman I saw at a test last year who's cocker couldn't do a retrieve 20 yards over a 2ft high fence because he wouldn't jump told me what fantastic pups he threw, and he had sired 2 litters that year already!!




People are acting like breeding crap is a new thing, but it's always been going on! People are just upset now that other people are getting in on it.

The real hard part is finding decent bred dogs in the first place. The only lads I know who have bred decent dogs, put tons of effect and thought into the pairings and how they improve the breed as a whole, rather than just going to the nearest stud just down the road, are the field trial lads, many of whom I also know have not sold their pups are extortionate prices.

Whilst some have increased prices, many I know are more interested in the hobby of trying to improve the dogs and training, and don't breed to make £££ in the first place. My field trial bred pup cost me significantly less than recent prices off a mate who sold the whole litter for half of the silly prices when this all started.

He didn't do it out of some moral obligation he felt to strangers, he just covered his own cost and he kept a few pups back for himself to run on.

On top of that, the field trial lads are tight!! They won't pay current prices LOL. One judge I spoke to the other week told me I'm the only lad he knows from training that has a pup they are bringing on, everyone else hasn't bought one in.

[munstyman]

Stupid people deserve one another, just a shame a good dog may have to pay the real price