GretchSS

If we don't take him home what happens to him? He ends up getting dumped by the side of the road? He ends up in a kennel when he's too young to cope with all the diseases he'll be exposed to? I feel like he's relying on us to not end up in a worse situation. Unfortunately, their vet has told them the puppies can be weaned and given away by 6 weeks and they won't hear of any different advice from anyone else. Prior to this issue coming up over the age for him to go home things seemed pretty good. The parent dogs seem to both have excellent temperaments and appear in good health. The puppies and adults dogs were being kept inside a family home and having interaction with the family including kids.

My partner and I arranged to buy a puppy (deposit paid). We were of the understanding that we would be taking him home at 8 weeks of age. Then the owners changed their mind and arranged with all the other buyers for puppies to be picked up at 6 weeks. We objected as we've read so much about it being a critical time for the puppy to learn social skills which we hoped he'd learn from his mother and other puppies. The owners then agreed to keep him until 8 weeks of age, but have again changed their mind and told us to pick him up this weekend at 6 weeks of age. They say he is fully weaned and the vet says it's okay (completely missing/ignoring our point about socialisation). They've advised they can't keep him any longer as they're going away. I'm annoyed and frustrated but feel it is in the puppy's best interest that we pick him up this weekend (and the puppy's best interest is my focus now) as I don't know that he'd be properly cared for if we now backed out of the purchase (and obviously, we are already attached to the idea of bringing this puppy home even if dates have now changed). So, what I'm after now is advice on what I can do for this puppy to help compensate for being separated from his mother and litter early. I already know no puppy preschool in my area will take him before 8 weeks of age. I know some people with older dogs that are fully vaccinated and well cared for and am hoping my puppy can spend time with them. Can anyone advise when and how to do these introductions, and how much time he needs to spend with other dogs? I'm thinking maybe I should give him a few days or a week to adjust to a new home environment before putting him in the car and taking him to visit another dog in a different home environment. I would appreciate any thoughts on this, and especially advice from anyone else who's had a puppy come home younger than you would have liked.

Yes, I guess this is how we'll have to do it. We'll need to extend our credit limits though which is something we'd always avoided to ensure we couldn't unthinkingly get ourselves into debt problems. We can always have a little money aside for the puppy but probably not enough for worst-case-scenario. I know, ideally, every dog owner would have a spare $10,000 in the bank put aside just for their dog but in the real world many of us could never own a dog if we waited for the ideal scenario. Having read about people ending up with exclusions on their policy for pre-existing conditions I think you're right - insure immediately, then off to the vet for first health check up.

Thanks. Bungee cords sound like a good way to really lock the crate into position - although will probably still go for seatbelt and doggy seatbelt to anchor it down seeing as they are not stretch. Thanks for this. We will avoid foldable. I'm glad I started to think about how we'll use a crate before going out and buying one.

Thanks. Gotcha now. So, sounds like what I ended up describing anyway...

Thanks - that sounds about how I was thinking.

We haven't decided on crate size as yet. I don't think it would be advisable to put a crate on the floor between front and back seats as our car has no air-conditioning and I would want the puppy up near window level to be sure he is cool enough. Besides that, there really isn't much floorspace (small car) so I don't think we'd fit a crate down there anyway. However, maybe we should measure up the space when the front passenger seat is all the way back on it's track and perhaps we could choose a crate size that will wedge into the space between front and back car seats.

We're planning on getting a puppy soon so thinking about all the bits and pieces we need. We have a small 3 door hatchback. I think the whole of the boot would be a crumple zone so the puppy can't travel in the boot area. Whilst he is a puppy we'd like to put him in a crate secured to the back seat. I have read that plastic travel crates secured with a seatbelt through the designated top/handle area can explode if there is a high-speed impact. So, we would probably want to use a steel crate. I'm wondering if there is a standard procedure to secure a steel crate to the back car seat area? Or do you just have to get creative with it and do something like feeding straps through some bars on the crate and securing to baby seat anchor points?

My partner and I are looking at buying a puppy soon. I have been researching pet insurance, and reading about people's experience with it. Some people have mentioned that the vet requires to be paid cash upfront, and then you make a claim to the insurer. The reason we're looking at insurance is because we know we couldn't come up with more than $2000 cash for an emergency vet intervention. It's actually not the smaller costs of hundreds of dollars we're worried about as we could pay out of pocket if need be and it wouldn't cause too many problems. With that being the case, if our dog got hit by a car and we were informed it would cost $5000 to perform lifesaving surgery, what could we do? Even if we were on friendly terms with out vet and they agreed to let us pay $2000 now, and the rest when the claim goes through, there's always the risk that the claim gets denied (even if the PDS seems to indicate it won't). So, it seems to me a vet actually wouldn't take that risk. I'm sure we're not the only ones in the position of needing the insurance specifically for the big costs we couldn't possibly cover in cash, so, how does one get around this situation if it should come up?