My wife and I purchased a 10 week old male Bichon Frise from Jacks in October 2006. We named him Dexter. He was for most of his short life a happy and frisky puppy. About 4 weeks ago (June 2007) he started to get sick and could not old down any food and became listless. We took him to our vet and had tests done on him. Being so young we all thought he probably ate something bad that gave him some sort of infection. However, after about a month of not getting back to his happy, energic ways our vet recommended we have an ultra sound done on him to see if there was more to the illness. After 5 days in the hospital, an ultra sound, and chest tubes inserted to drain the fluid from his lungs, numerous antibiotics and other medicines our little puppy died July 19, 2007. He would have been 1 year old on August 8. We found out the next day from tests that we did earlier in the week that Dexter had cancer. Our vet indicated that this is extremely uncommon in puppies. She thought that it could be a fluke but we should contact the place we purchased and contact the breeders that Jack got our dog from to inform them of this. We called both places and have not heard back from either party for over 4 days now. I will be filing a complaint through the PA Attorney's Office under the Pet Lemon Law. We not only lost a member of our family but we are now faced with medical bills that could top about $5000. \r
We learned a valuable lesson that when you are in the market for a pet do some extra homework on breeders, the breed, what constitutes a good breeder, family trees, medical tests, etc. It may take more time and effort and you will probably pay more for your pet but you may avoid going through an ordeal like we did with our puppy.
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