PUPPY PRICES AS HIGH AS $6000, WHILE WAIT TIMES REACH TWO YEARS

Retrievers, dachshunds and spoodles have fallen victim to Covid’s supply and demand effects, seeing the price of puppies skyrocket – but it’s a case of buyer beware.

Dogs once fetching hundreds are now selling for thousands, and a quick search on Trade Me reveals the average asking price for a puppy ranges from $2000 to $4000, while the highest advertised price is $6500 for cavoodle puppies, and the most popular pups are retrievers.

Breeder and president of New Zealand’s Golden Retriever Club, Kat Jackson, said registered breeders couldn’t supply the high demand quickly enough, prompting keen wannabe puppy owners to shell out more to get the puppy “now” from unregistered breeders.

“We’ve been inundated with requests.”

Wait times for retriever puppies bred by a regulated Dogs New Zealand member were about one to two years, she said, due to bitches only coming into season every six months “and a bitch is not mated every season that they have”.

She said backyard breeders were charging “as much as they want”, as high as $6500, to hand over a puppy within months rather than years.

A new working-from-home society had seen more people realise, if they wanted a puppy, there was no time like the present, Jackson said.

She said a few years ago, registered retriever puppies were selling for between $1500 and $1800, but tight health regulations and supply and demand had pushed up prices to between $2500 and $3000.

The wait may be long, but when it comes to buying a healthy puppy, patience is a virtue.

Dogs New Zealand breeders gave their dogs and puppies full health clearance through specialists and vets, including checking for possible hip and elbow dysplasia, which could cost thousands to fix if discovered later, she said.

Nelson’s Victory Vets vet Brendan Hickman said it was “simple economics” that puppy prices had “gone through the roof”, whether the dog had papers or not.

He said Covid had been the catalyst for people realising how important a furry companion was. All kinds of domesticated animals were an important part of the family, and he said “people who have had pets, they realise how strong the bond is to them”.

But he said for people breeding dogs, it wasn’t easy money.

Raising a litter of puppies to home after eight weeks was a “full-time job”, Hickman said.

“A lot of these breeders, they spend a lot of time and effort with these pups.”

Dogs New Zealand director Steven Thompson said the price increase of puppies was “across the board” for pedigree and crossbreeds and while there was no price records kept, the evidence was anecdotal.

Dogs New Zealand South Island vice president, pekinese dog breeder Keith Brown of Picton, has been breeding pedigrees for decades.

Brown said crossbreeds had an asking price thousands of dollars more than purebreds and pedigrees and breeders were feeling “short-changed”, having to step up their prices in line with the fashionable designer dogs.

He said he was selling his pekinese for $1000 more than they were a number of years ago, but it was to cover costs “while sticking to the rules” rather than extra money in his pocket.
“There’s not a lot of money to be made in breeding dogs.

“I’ve been breeding pedigree dogs for 50 years and I have made nothing.”

He said to keep in line with more stringent breeding regulations introduced over the past few years, all pedigree breeders registered with Dogs NZ had to do health testing for the dog’s health and betterment and “costs associated with that are very large”.

Pedigree puppies from registered breeders were handed over no younger than eight-weeks-old and had thousands spent on them, including vaccinations, microchipping for $50, thousands of dollars on MRIs and x-rays to check for hip or elbow dysplasia, and the cost to raise a puppy until it left its mum, which went into the thousands, Brown said.