adopting a puppy from a puppy mill

Question
Hi, my name is Cathi and I am interested in adopting a rescued Lhasa Apso puppy who is 11 weeks old and has been seen by the Vet as a healthy puppy per the rescue group. However I am unsure about adopting a puppy who was rescued from a puppy mill.  Am I taking a huge risk?  Do puppies from puppy mills commonly have health problems? What questions can I ask in order to ensure I am not going to be sorry in the future?THANKS,
Cathi  

Answer
Hi, there are a lot of big issues when it comes to puppy mill dogs.  One is that they are very hard to house train because the enviornment they came from is normally very dirty.   Within the 1st 4 months of a puppy's life is the stage they call the imprinting stage.  this is where everything they learn is "imprinted" in their brains, like eating, sleeping, going to the bathroom etc.  So when they are raised during this stage in a dirty environment, they lose their natural instinct to keep their den clean and  just start going to the bathroom anywhere they please.  It is very hard to break that cycle if the dog has lost the natural instinct due to negative imprinting.  Also, they due tend to have health issues later on as they are not really bred to be quality animals, more for quantity to ship off to pet stores.   A lot of times the parents are related, or the mother is not cared for properly during the pregnancy which causes health problems for the puppies later on.  If you are getting this puppy from a rescue, they probably don't have a lot of information about the puppies past.  With Lhaso's, my concern would be if the parents had had any aggressive or fear tendencies which could make a biter out of the pup later on.   A lot of badly bred Lhaso's have this problem and it doesn't tend to show itself until 9-12 months of age.  It is always a big risk when you get a puppy from an unknown background who came from a puppy mill.  They in the long run do tend to be the more problematic dogs when it comes to behavior problems.  But then again, you could get lucky, this puppy could have been taken young enough to be re-imprinted, and posibly not have any future health problems.  There really is no way to predict it.  Hope this helps, &  Good Luck.

Dawn