KENNEL TOURS

For the past couple years I have closed my kennel to home tours due to COVID. My nursery kennel is part of our home and located right off our dining room so access to our home is required to enter the kennels. For obvious reasons I stopped doing kennel tours during COVID in efforts to keep our family from being exposed but as Covid becomes less of an issue I am left thinking about moving forward into 2023.

As always I am just going to be 100% upfront about this and try to explain why I have come to this decision.

The after effects of the COVID lockdown has made me really think about past experiences I have had over the years. The biggest majority of my clients are amazing but I will say there have been a fair share of clients that if I had known what the visit was going to be like I would have never allowed them into my home. Over the years I have had many very uncomfortable situations in our home with kennel tours, far more then I like to think about. The biggest issues have always been poorly supervised/controlled children but I have even had adults being careless stepping on puppies and things of that nature.

More recently on 4/26/2024 I had a disgruntled client that I told I was refunding his money  show up completely unannounced and went to the back of my home and was trying to get into my back gate for what I believe was to steal a puppy and possibly more. After repeatedly telling him to get off my property I was forced to arm myself to protect myself and my puppies. Police were called and there is a complete police report on record of this invasion of my property. This was a completely terrifying experience and I really fear if I did not protect myself I feel he would have forced his way in to steal a puppy. This experience will forever change the way I allow people on my property and I will stress my property is now under 24/7 video surveillance and I will continue to protect myself and my dogs with whatever means are necessary when strangers show up unannounced!

The world today has become very violent and there have been many incidents where puppies/dogs are stolen, kennel owners are harmed or worse during kennel tours. For all of these reasons and more I have decided to stop kennel tours and all access to our home.

This has been an extremely hard decision for me but for the safety of myself/my family/ my dogs and puppies I have decided this is what needs to be done. I realize this will be a deal breaker for many and I am sorry for this but it is what I feel I have to do moving forward.

People don’t really think about this from our side but our home is not a business. Like you, our home is our safe place and being the kennel is really part of our home puts me in a very difficult position. I have always been very open and welcoming to clients and I do feel it is important to be able to see how my dogs and puppies live so I am still offering this just in a different way now.

I will compile pictures and video of my kennels, my dog yards, the outside covered kennels, and everywhere my dogs go. I will include pictures of them outside in the yards and pictures of them inside in the kennels so everyone can see how they live. I will do the same for the nursery with Mom’s and puppies. I do already have much of this information so I will start to compile this in an easy to access folder that I can share with clients. Once complete this will be posted in our private Facebook group and it will be shared with deposited clients as requested.

Due to obvious reasons I am not posting this publicly, this will be shared with anyone who wants to view it after they have deposited but I do ask that it is not shared publicly.

I feel my reputation and the fact there are literally dozens of reviews that speak of my kennel, who have previously toured it, over a period of 17 years now that it should be obvious of the care and commitment I put into breeding my puppies and the facilities they live in.

Picking up of puppies will still be at our home I will just meet you out front as I have been since COVID lockdown. Picking of puppies will also be done by pictures only, there will no longer be in person access to the puppies due to past experiences and carelessness of clients. When people come to the house to pick up puppies I will allow walking to the back, only when escorted by myself and seeing the dogs in the yards and getting a view of where they are kept but you will not be allowed entrance to any of the fenced in property or interactions with my dogs.

Please know this has been an extremely difficult decision to make but moving forward I feel this is the best decision for myself, my family and all my keeshonden.

As always I thank you for your support and understanding.