Do NOT buy a dog from a backyard breeder | Animals | Forums

Wish we had listened to that advice. We bought our german shepard from a local guy. He showed me the papers on her lineage, all looked good to me. Paid 500 dollars for her, that should have been my warning sign right there.

Don't get me wrong, I love this dog, she is very protective of my daughter and has one of the best personalities I have ever seen in a dog. She will come up and just hug your leg looking for love.

But, the amount of health issues she has and vet bills we have paid is through the roof. She constantly gets ear infections, she can't get fixed because of a heart defect that when they start putting her under her heart goes crazy, so we have to deal with her being in heat. She got a skin irritation where it was thickening and gave off a horrible smell, been battling that for the last couple months. Since rufus passed she has seemed depressed and not her normal self, so I took her to the vet today.

He was concerned with lyme disease so we drew blood to check, everything came back clean except her cholesterol was high. Vet said I think I know what the issue is, I need to run another blood test.

10 minutes later he comes out and says I found the problem, she has no thyroid. What? How can a dog have no thyroid. She does he says, but it's just not producing anything. So he gave me pills that she is going to be on the rest of her life, which should clear up all her other problems, but for what we have paid and will pay for pills the rest of her life, we could have 2 or 3 dogs from top breeders in the US.

but I love her and wouldn't trade her for anything