Brian's Boston's

I adopted a puppy from Brian’s Bostons. They forced me to take her at 6 weeks as well, saying the breeder’s mother was ill and she had to have me pick her up. I live across the country so this involved me getting a flight and a rental car over Labor Day weekend which was last minute. We met at a gas station and they dropped her off w a dirty blanket and some low budget food. However, she is now 5 years old and amazing. She is the greatest joy in my life. She does not bite (me or anyone else). She’s socialized and gets along well with other dogs and all humans. However, she did have some costly medical issues early in her young life. She had a cyst in her jaw that required surgery and also has a “trick knee”. She is the sweetest girl, but everything in the above review by Drew is true and I got the impression that they are only in it for the money and do not truly care for these dogs. I got lucky with my girl’s calm and carefree personality but I do not recommend this breeder.

My wife and I were carefully looking for Boston Terrier breeders and we came across the website for Brian's Bostons, which happened to have a little boy puppy available. I spoke to them via email and they seemed as though they genuinely loved their dogs, and took good care of their litters (feeding them good food, yogurt, etc). I dealt exclusively w/ Heidi and, again, everything sounded great. We put a deposit and committed to the little boy.

My wife and I were both very excited and started preparing for our new pup, of course - buying toys, food bowls, small dog crate, beds, food, etc. We prepared to arrange our schedules so the pup was never alone for more than a few hours as you should when you raise a young puppy. We brainstormed names. We did want both of us to have spoken to the breeder so it would be a joint decision, so at some point along the line as the adoption date drew nearer, my wife called to speak to them and validate the decision. She spoke to [redacted]. Again, everything sounded great. Although, my wife did raise the issue of adoption age - we thought ~6 weeks was too early to adopt based on our research. [redacted] said he would talk to his wife [redacted], but he didn't think she'd care because the pup we were adopting was her favorite so she wouldn't mind spending extra time with him.

The next day [redacted] began emailing my wife and resisting to keeping the puppy longer than 6 weeks. She said they have "never" held on to puppies longer than 6 weeks unless it was for the purposes of shipping it. She said it would be too traumatic for the puppy to adjust and stay with its mother for 2 additional weeks since the rest of the litter would be leaving at 6 weeks. She said it had to go home at 6 weeks and learn our schedules. She insinuated that we didn't know what we were doing and said she didn't want to force the puppy on us - which absolutely TOTALLY untrue; we were just trying to do what is best for a puppy – hopefully the reader can tell from this writing that we are very responsible, loving dog owners. We have a 4 year old dog already that we spoil and treat like a child of ours.

Later that day, after [redacted] resisted to holding on to the dog beyond 6 weeks of age, we received an abrupt one-sentence email saying they were giving us our money back and we couldn't adopt the puppy. The next day it was adopted to somebody else. We did not even receive a courtesy call.

Ultimately, in hindsight, we found that there were MANY red flags with Brian’s Bostons that potential buyers need to be aware of:

Main red flag being: Wisconsin actually has a STATE ANIMAL LAW in which it is ILLEGAL for breeders to adopt puppies less than 7 weeks old. As I stated above, Brian’s Bostons admitted they "never" keep a puppy longer than 6 weeks old - so long story short, they've been breaking state animal laws EVERY SINGLE TIME they have adopted a puppy or litter of puppies in the decade-plus they've been doing this. You should know what you're getting yourself into if you get a puppy at 6 weeks. Puppies learn bite inhibition in the 5-8 week timeframe so if you take one home at 6 weeks, it will not be properly socialized and it will bite you and your other pets. YOU, the human, will have to break the puppy of it's biting habits, when it SHOULD BE its mother and its littermates. You don't have to take my word on any of this – simply google things like “state puppy age sale laws”, “best age to adopt a puppy”, and “bite inhibition age” and you can read about all this for yourself (it's especially important to know your state puppy age sale laws – there are MANY states with 7-9 week adoption laws – obviously these laws are there for a reason!).

There were other subtle flags I picked up on in hindsight. When my wife asked about the CHIC number for the parents, [redacted] was very confused and said he wasn't exactly sure what she was referring to. This is Dog Health 101 so you either have to be incredibly ignorant or hiding something to not know this. More red flags: they accepted our adoption way too easy - didn't make us fill out an application. They accepted our money way too easily and have paypal payment set up directly on their site, and it’s non-refundable. Their puppy contracts is damningly simplistic, and it's actually just a few words on a web page, I never saw it in an attachment or word doc or anything of this nature. When I checked their website to see what happened with the little boy we had nearly adopted, he was already adopted elsewhere almost within 24 hours of suddenly backing out on us (they probably just moved on to the next "easy" sale since we apparently had too many questions or were too concerned with what was best for the puppy). Also, they had put the father up for sale and described him as about 6 years old, not fully potty trained, and easily frightened. These people clearly have zero clue what they’re doing, they can’t even train their own dogs. Read up on backyard breeder warning signs and many things you read will sound like Brian’s Bostons.

This was an all-around horrible experience. These "breeders" adopt their dogs way too early at an ILLEGAL AGE and I'm convinced they are only looking for easy sales that they don't have to invest much time or effort into. They had the audacity to tell us we weren't ready for a puppy when, and I hope it's clear based on this writing, I very much know what I'm doing, know what I'm talking about, and only want what's best for a puppy.

We have since adopted an 8 week old rescue. The experience with the rescue compared to Brian's Bostons was night and day. The VOLUNTEER foster of the rescue litter were far more caring, helpful, and accommodating than Brian's Bostons. The rescue would not even ALLOW US to adopt the puppy before 8 weeks old, and said we could pick him up at any age we wanted. It’s kind of sad when volunteers at a non-profit rescue are willing to put in more work, are more caring, do things that are better for the puppy. These contrasting experiences were eye-opening in terms of bad breeders. Make sure to do your research and ask A LOT of questions to breeders, if anything seems off, move on. And I'd suggest looking elsewhere than Brian's Bostons without even talking to them. (based on my experience).