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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m going to re-post my own comment from a different thread because I had Amish breeders in mind, specifically, when I wrote it:

I think people have the wrong image in their head when they hear “puppy mill.” They’re thinking of the worst of the worst: dogs confined to dirty crates all day long, unsocialized, strictly viewed as a commodity, possibly even malnourished or mistreated. There are plenty of puppy mills that treat their dogs kindly, keep them clean and fed, and even socialize them. They’re not animal abusers, but they are not following breeding best practices. They’re breeding whatever dogs they have — not dogs that exemplify the breed standard. They’re not doing health testing or they’re doing the bare minimum and counting on customers not to know the right questions to ask. [b]They’re breeding dogs who are too closely related* and using the same few males to produce all their litters. [/b]They’re breeding females younger than they should be bred. They’re having females produce litters too close together for their bodies to recover fully and breeding them more times than is good for their health. Their puppies are clean and look adorable and the adult dogs really are their pets, so people think they’re good breeders, but they’re the ones producing the dogs who are most prone to cancer or heart problems or hip dysplasia. Sometimes you can get a perfectly lovely, healthy dog from them, but it’s purely by chance and not because of their expertise.

I will add that the Amish love their animals and generally don’t mistreat them, but make no mistake, they have a constant supply of puppies because it’s a form of income. I have visited a pet store in an Amish community in Ohio that has such a pipeline of puppies that every day of the year that they’re open, visitors can go cuddle a sample puppy from each of more than a dozen different breeds/mixes. Think about the kind of breeding required (in a closed community, no less!) to maintain a supply chain like this.[/quote]

Two questions: what's with the asterisk?  What's the problem with using the same few males to produce, assuming that the puppy contracts all say No breeding without our permission?

OP, I think this post summarizes Lancaster puppies and backyard breeders very well.  They love their dogs, take good care of them, but are not responsible breeders and could be selling you a genetically sick puppy.  [/quote]
The asterisk was just a mistake. There are two problems with using the same male to father many litters; as a previous poster noted, you end up with lots of dogs related to each other and the male ends up breeding with some of his own offspring or their pups, but also, if you haven’t done adequate health testing on the sire and he has a genetic issue, he’s passing it on to many litters. Some of these breeders have one male poodle who sires every single one of their “doodle” litters.

I adopted a retired racing greyhound. Both of his grandsires were extremely successful racers and, as a result, they  each sired over 4,000 offspring. One of these grandsires had Progressive Retinal Atrophy. A number of the male offspring who were whelped by the female offspring of this dog have inherited PRA, and my dog is one of them. He was completely blind by age 5 1/2 as a result. It’s tragic that one dog could pass on PRA to so many other dogs. Obviously, this is a different situation entirely from Amish breeders, but racing greyhounds are bred very selectively and every dog has an index score that indicates how many generations back his parents had a common ancestor. I can look up my dog’s pedigree going back 30 generations. Will an Amish breeder share their litters’ pedigrees going back even 3-4 generations?[/quote]

You want to use a breeder who offers the akc certification.  Ours gave us the paperwork and let us decide to register or not. [/quote]

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