We adopted' our Dane from these people several years ago now. We love him so very much. Here is our experience of GG:
We had been looking for a Great Dane for a little while and decided on getting a rescue dog, hopefully a puppy, which needed a loving home. At the time we had a 1 year old Rat Terrier and a 14 year old Lab. Anyway we found GG and after the endless question phase was over. We were informed they had an 8 week old puppy ready for us to adopt. How fortunate we thought. We were told he was taken from a breeder who had recently stopped breeding and was a highly reputable breeder. We were told to bring our other 2 dogs to meet him and also as when we left town we left out dogs with a friend to bring him and his dog too. We lived a long way from Norco and it took us 4 hours to get there. We were very excited.
When we got there we were told that our other 2 dogs were not permitted out of the car for fear they'd touch the 'puppy grass'. Grass which I noted wasn't fenced and any old Coyote or wild animal could walk on it any time they wanted but went along with this whilst silently laughing at the idiocy of 'puppy' grass and had this image of coyotes in top hat and cane doing the soft shoe shuffle on the grass after dark.
My laughter soon turned to disdain when they trapped us there endlessly looking at a parade of dogs that we did not want to adopt and had no intention of adopting. Meanwhile back in the car which we had to keep running so the air would work. The 14 year old lab, they had demanded we bring with us and who suffered from arthritis, was in pain. After a 4 hour car trip and another few hours in the back of the car who'd blame him. So I took him out of the car much to the horror of Tracy. He didn't touch the puppy grass but he needed to get out, it was also spring so the car was getting hot. She did not at anytime offer us water for the 3 other dogs she demanded we bring with us. But as we actually like dogs we had bought some with us.
Another few hours passed whilst she bought out an endless parade of dogs we were never going to adopt because we wanted a puppy and the adult dogs she kept parading were either too un-healthily skinny, over-weight and or badly behaved who knows how much time we'd have to spend un-training her 'trained' dogs so they could live in harmony with us and the other 2 dogs we already had. Finally she bought out our puppy but we were not allowed to actually touch the puppy, just look at it on the coyote trodden un-fenced puppy grass. All we knew is that we wanted to get that puppy out of that place.
She charged us as much as a breeder would charge for a show worthy dog. Love our guy as much as we do, he could never be a show dog, although he does like to dress in clothes and dance (but that’s another story we love our big gay dog
). I didn't care he cost that much, its just that breeders make a profit from sale and when a non-profit organization sells you a dog with no papers and a dubious pedigree for the same price you gotta say what the &^%$ have you been smoking. Anyway I'd of paid twice as much to get a dog out of there and we hadn't even gotten home yet for the next part of the never ending story.
After we signed the completely unenforceable contract and before we left she demanded that she introduce the new puppy to the other dogs. By this time the dogs had been in the car for 4 hours traveling there, had been allowed twice in their 4.5 hours waiting for the dogs we don't want parade to end and even though the car had its air on they were hot and the 14 year old Lab was cranky. Anyway he growled at the puppy after Tracy shoved the puppy in the older dogs face. She then HIT (yeah HIT) the 14 year old lab on the head with an empty plastic water bottle. At which point I decided the woman knew as much about training dogs as I do about quantum string theory. My gathered knowledge of which could fit on the head of a pin.
Like normal people we took the dog to our own vet the next day. He had worms, although Tracy told us he'd been de-wormed. We rang to tell her and apparently our dogs gave the new puppy worms overnight although they had been also tested by the vet and their results were negative.
Our Vet told us he was very un-healthy, under-weight and shook, he weighed as much as our rat terrier and was very lethargic. He had not been housed trained of course. He did not know how to socialize with other dogs, although Tracy had claimed he had been with her since he was a puppy and had trained and socialized him, after experiencing her training methods practised on our labwith a plastic water bottle, I should of known better. The Vet recommended other food then the horrible grocery bought stuff Tracy was palming off as 'breeder' quality food. We tried several times to get information out of Tracy and were never given a rabies certificate.
Our dog is now a sweet and loving guy who we love more then I have words to express. But he has endless medical problems and costs at the very least $300 each time he goes to a Vet, which is about every 4 weeks and he even has his own dog dermatologist. He has very bad allergies which was most likely the product of being taken away from his mother at a young age, bad breeding and then been feed inferior quality food as a very young puppy.
Our experience has lead me to these conclusions, which I may say are my own conclusions and I have no idea if they are actually true:
1) Tracy trains dogs by hitting them on the head with plastic water bottles(remember she hit my Lab on the head with one in front of me). Our guy for no reason that we can work out other then being hit on the head as a young puppy is to this day head shy and it has been only in the last few months (and we have had him for years) has he let us touch his head. He would always move away and try to get us to pat or touch his body or neck. He will not let strangers touch his head he moves away from them and hides behind us when they try.
2) Doesn't know if the dogs have had Rabies shots or not. I say this because we had our dog tested right after we got him and he had not been given a rabies shot. And she claimed she had him from when he was a week old and he had his shots although could not provide an actual certificate.
3) She breeds herself and or acquires puppies from something akin to a puppy mill. It's never failed to astound me she had a puppy for us when we said we wanted a puppy but only one puppy mind you and we had to come quick to get him.
4) Tracy really believes she likes dogs but doesn't really. As evidenced by her lack of concern for the dogs she had demanded we bring with us the day we got our guy.
5) Does not keep that place clean. It smelt worse then a downtown bar on New Years Day.
6) Anyone who can get a dog out of that place should
). I didn't care he cost that much, its just that breeders make a profit from sale and when a non-profit organization sells you a dog with no papers and a dubious pedigree for the same price you gotta say what the &^%$ have you been smoking. Anyway I'd of paid twice as much to get a dog out of there and we hadn't even gotten home yet for the next part of the never ending story.