In May 2018, we purchased a puppy from Cresthill Kennels after visiting with several breeders in the area and reading the reviews online. Receiving a healthy puppy with a great disposition was of the most importance to us,
The facility was very well kept and appeared much nicer than other facilities we visited. We met with the puppies they had available, and the kids picked out a nice 12 week old puppy to bring home.
For the first 2 months, life with our new puppy was amazing! He had the best temperament of any puppy we've met, he never chewed anything other than his toys, and he was house broken within 2 weeks. We were all in love and couldn't be happier.
Unfortunately, around 5 months of age, we noticed lameness in our puppies front right leg that came on out of nowhere. It would come and go for about a month, typically after playing fetch or when first waking up from naps. Our veterinarian recommended that we try to rest him to see if it cleared up however, felt that it was likely OCD (Osteocondritis Dissecans) of the elbows. Here is a link to this condition;
https://canna-pet.com/osteochondritis-dissecans-ocd-dogs/
I stayed in contact with Cresthill throughout the process to keep them up to date on our puppy's status and to see if they had any insight on what could be wrong with our puppy as we were very concerned at this point and just wanted to know why this was happening, and if there was anything we could do to reverse the condition. Wendy was very responsive while we were trying to figure out what was wrong with him and even said that if it was OCD of the elbows, that she would cover him under their guarantee. That said, she assured us that she's never had a puppy from her program have OCD and suggested that it could be something else like Lyme's disease, injury, brought on by his diet, Pano, etc. all of which our veterinarian ruled out and disagreed with.
After a few more weeks the problem only got worse, so we had x-rays taken which confirmed that he did suffer from OCD, but of the shoulder. This condition requires surgery to repair, it has a 80% - 90% success rate, almost guarantee's early arthritis will occur in your pet, and you have to neuter your pet to avoid passing the condition along as it is hereditary. The surgery, xrays, vet visits have cost us $3500,00 to date.
Costs aside, our puppy has been on full rest for 3 months now, with another 8 weeks to go while recovering from surgery. Literally only going outside on a leash to use the bathroom. As you can imagine, keeping a puppy kenneled around the clock is no fun for him or us. This is not the puppy experience that you hope for when spending over $2000.00. It has been brutal going through this for the past few months for the puppy and us. We are really hoping that after the recovery time that he'll be healthy and back to himself and we can get back to some normalcy.
When we reached back out to Cresthill to update them and asked for more information about the guarantee that Wendy mentioned in previous communications, we received no response. A few weeks later, after a few more phone calls, we were told that shoulders are not covered in their health guarantee. We asked them to reconsider given the seriousness of the condition which is hereditary, and the experience that we've had to go through, and costs incurred, and we were told that they would have to think about it and get back to us. That was the last we heard from Cresthill.
Not only do I find it concerning that a breeder would simply not bother to respond to notices that one of their puppies suffers from this condition,, but we also don't know if they have taken any action to update their breeding program since they now have a history of producing a puppy affected with OCD.
I would also highly recommend checking a breeders guarantee before spending this kind of money on a dog to see if shoulders are covered. The shoulder is the most common area for this condition to appear and some breeders will only cover it if it affects the hips or elbows. read more
