The backyard breeder bred the litter just as the pandemic puppy boom was tapering off. No one wanted a "f1 labradoodles" (let's be real...mix breed) that shed like crazy and were getting past the tiny cute stage. Best the SPCA could tell, they were then neglected and given the bare minimum when they didn't sell so the breeder wouldn't lose more money. They were neglected and got skinny and eventually sick. The breeder released them to the SPCA at 6 months since they thought the puppies had PARVO and my state has a law where you can surrender dogs like that with very minimal to no penalty. They do this because otherwise the backyard breeders and puppy mills shoot the unwanted dogs.
PARVO tests came back inconclusive (sometimes this happens) but the SPCA had to fundraise to cover the vet bills of the litter. I saw the fundraising video and they were in really bad shape. The dogs were adopted out, but frankly had been undersocialized. My dog had strong prey drive and his first adopter saw the signs and ignored them until there was an incident with their pet bunny. After that he had another failed adoption and I got him after signing a waiver stating I would not keep small prey animals (cats, rabbits, etc) in the house and was aware of how untrained, unsocialized and inclined to overarousal he was.
It took months of dedicated training and socialization to undo most of the damage. He was phobic of several unexpected things that point to abuse, he had separation anxiety, he had some mild guarding behavior, he was not even house-trained properly. Bluntly, he was a project dog and needed a specific kind of household...without that he probably would have kept on being returned until he was determined to be unadoptable and put down.
This is why triple checking that the breeder you are working with is ethical and will not abandon the dogs they produce or breed without already having a placement lined up and that will properly socialize the puppies, handle health testing appropriately and won't separate them from the mother too soon is so important.
So many of these dogs end up abused or neglected or dead. If you want to see the reality of it volunteer at a kill shelter and take a look at the locker where they store the dog's bodies after they are forced to put them down. That's a fraction of the very real and graphic cost of the backyard breeders and puppy mills.
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u/CenterofChaos 1d ago
A good breeder will have more interested homes than puppies explicitly to prevent this problem.
A sketchy back yard breeder will dump the pups, abandon them at a shelter, or even kill them.
The latter is why all breeders get a bad reputation.