Questions to Ask a Dog Breeder Before You Buy (a Canadian Buyer's Script)

A list of questions is easy to find. What almost no one tells you is what a good answer actually sounds like, and which replies should make you close the tab and keep your deposit in your pocket. A responsible breeder will not flinch at a single question below. A flipper, a puppy mill, or a scammer will deflect, rush you, or get defensive. This is the script a Canadian buyer can use on a call or a kennel visit, organized so you can tell the difference between a breeder protecting the breed and a seller protecting a sale.

Quick facts: vetting a breeder before you buy

Why these questions matter more in Canada

Most Canadian buyers find a breeder online, and the right breeder for your home is often several provinces away. That distance changes how you vet. You frequently cannot drop by unannounced, so the questions, the video calls, and the paperwork carry the weight an in-person visit would normally carry. It also means the answers about how the puppy will travel to you and who arranges it are part of the breeder conversation, not an afterthought.

Canada also has its own registry landscape. The Canadian Kennel Club registers many purebreds, individual breeds have their own recognized registries, and "registered" can mean very different things depending on who issued the papers. Knowing what a dog registry actually is before you ask lets you tell a meaningful registration from a meaningless certificate printed to look official. The questions below assume you will verify every claim independently rather than take a screenshot at face value.

Health and genetics

This is where a good breeder shines and a careless one stalls. Ask directly:

• What health tests did both parents pass, and can I see the results?
• Which conditions are common in this breed, and how does your program screen for them?
• Has the puppy seen a vet, and what is its current vaccination and deworming status?
• Have you ever produced a puppy with a hereditary problem, and what did you do about it?

A strong breeder names the specific tests without hesitation: hip and elbow evaluations, eye and cardiac clearances, and breed-relevant DNA panels. They will point you to results you can confirm yourself, such as an Orthopedic Foundation for Animals record or a DNA report, rather than just telling you the dogs are "vet checked." The phrase "vet checked" on its own means a vet looked at the puppy once. It is not health testing of the parents, and the difference is the whole point.

How to verify health testing yourself: the OFA lookup, step by step

"Look them up yourself" is easy advice to give and harder to act on, so here is the actual procedure. It takes about five minutes per parent dog and needs nothing but a browser. This matters more in Canada than most buyers realize. The Canadian Kennel Club keeps its dog records behind a member portal, and its own guidance on double-checking a breeder sends buyers to web searches and breed club referral lists rather than to a public record. The Orthopedic Foundation for Animals database is the one open, dog-by-dog file a Canadian buyer can search without anyone's permission.

Step 1: get the parents' names or numbers, not the puppy's

A puppy has nothing to look up. Hips and elbows are not certified until a dog is two years old, so the record you want belongs to the dam and the sire. Ask for both parents' registered names spelled exactly as they appear on their papers, or their registration numbers. If you have already been sent the puppy's registration certificate, the parents' names and registration numbers are printed on it. Canada's Animal Pedigree Act requires every certificate of registration to carry them.

Step 2: search ofa.org

Open the OFA search page. The search box takes a registration number, a litter number, an OFA number, a dog's name, or a kennel name. Registered names are long and easy to mistype, so if a name comes back empty, try the registration number before you conclude anything from the blank screen.

Searching by kennel name is the step almost nobody takes, and it tells you the most. Instead of checking the two dogs the breeder chose to tell you about, you see every dog from that kennel that has ever been entered. A program that tests as a matter of course comes back as a list. A program that tested one dog for one litter comes back as one dog.

Step 3: read the hip result

OFA reports hips on seven levels, and only the top three are passes.

Result	What it means for a buyer
Excellent	Within normal limits. Receives an OFA number and is published.
Good	Within normal limits. Receives an OFA number and is published.
Fair	Within normal limits. Receives an OFA number and is published. Fair is a pass, not a warning.
Borderline	Not a pass. No OFA number is issued.
Mild dysplasia	Dysplastic.
Moderate dysplasia	Dysplastic.
Severe dysplasia	Dysplastic.

The OFA states plainly that "the hip grades of excellent, good and fair are within normal limits and are given OFA numbers." Buyers regularly talk themselves out of a Fair-hipped parent because the word sounds like a C grade. It is not. It is a normal hip, and a breeder who explains that rather than hiding it is being straight with you. What you are looking for on the hip line is one of those three words and a number beside it.

A final hip evaluation requires the dog to be 24 months or older. Between 4 and 23 months the OFA offers a preliminary screening, and a prelim reaches the public database only if the dog is at least 12 months old, carries a microchip or tattoo, and the owner authorized release of all results. A parent bred at 18 months on a prelim is a conversation to have, not automatically a problem, but you should know which one you are looking at.

Step 4: read the elbow, eye, and cardiac lines

Elbows work backwards from hips, which trips up nearly everyone. The OFA does not grade a normal elbow at all. It simply records it as normal. The grades that exist, I, II and III, all describe abnormal joints with increasing degenerative change. So an elbow line reading Normal is the result you want, and a Roman numeral is not. Elbows are also not certified before two years of age.

Eye results come from a board-certified veterinary ophthalmologist and are meant to be repeated every year, so read the date and not just the presence of a line. A three-year-old eye clearance on a five-year-old dam is stale. A cardiac result will note whether it was done by a practitioner, a specialist, or a board-certified cardiologist, and the last of those carries the most weight. For what each of these tests actually screens for, our plain-English guide to health testing panels walks through hips, eyes, cardiac and DNA one at a time.

Step 5: decode the number

An OFA number is not a serial number, it is a compressed sentence about the dog. The OFA's own example for hips is LR-100E24M-C-PI, and it reads like this:

• LR is the breed code, here Labrador Retriever.
• 100 is the sequential number given to each dog of that breed evaluated as normal.
• E is the grade. E for Excellent, G for Good, F for Fair.
• 24 is the dog's age in months when the X-rays were taken.
• M is the sex.
• C is the restraint used, chemical in this case.
• PI means permanent identification. The dog carried a microchip or tattoo, so the X-rays are tied to that animal rather than to a name typed on a form.

The two characters worth your attention are the grade letter and PI. An elbow number carries EL after the breed code, as in GR-EL500F36-C-PI. The OFA publishes the full key to its numbering if you want to check a format you have not seen before.

What a CHIC number means, and what it does not

You will see breeders advertise a CHIC number, and it is worth having, but it is routinely oversold. The OFA is unambiguous: "The CHIC number itself does not imply normal test results, only that all the required breed specific tests were performed and the results made publicly available." A CHIC number is a transparency badge, not a health score. A dog can hold one while carrying a result you would want to know about, which is the entire point of the program. The list of required tests for each breed is set by that breed's parent club, so a CHIC number also tells you the breeder tested for the things that breed's own experts care about rather than a generic panel. Open the record and read the individual lines. The badge is the invitation, not the answer.

When the breeder says PennHIP instead

PennHIP is a legitimate hip screen. It measures joint laxity and scores a dog against others of its breed rather than assigning a phenotypic grade, and plenty of careful Canadian breeders prefer it. It is also not something you can look up. PennHIP reports go to the veterinarian and the owner, and they reach the public CHIC database only when the owner applies to have them recorded there, which the OFA charges a fee to do. If a breeder cites PennHIP, ask for the report. Coming up empty online is the expected outcome in that case and is not a red flag by itself. Coming up empty and then being told the report cannot be found is a different matter.

What this lookup cannot settle

The OFA verifies health testing. It does not verify registration, and it says nothing about how the puppies were raised. Registration is a separate check, and in Canada it has legal teeth: the Animal Pedigree Act makes it an offence to sell a dog as registered, as eligible to be registered, or as a purebred without giving the buyer the duly transferred certificate within six months of the sale. "Papers cost extra" is not a lawful option, it is a line. If you are unclear on what a registration actually certifies, start with what a dog registry is, and read how to spot a backyard breeder for the pattern where papers get quietly substituted for health testing altogether. Testing costs the breeder real money before a single puppy is sold, which is a large part of what a well-bred puppy costs in Canada.

The parents and the litter

• Can I meet the mother, or see her live on video with this litter?
• Who is the father, and do you own him or use an outside stud?
• How many litters do you produce in a year, and how often is this dam bred?
• How are the puppies being raised, in your home or in a separate building?

You want to see the dam interacting with the puppies, ideally on a live call you did not schedule a week in advance. A breeder who can only send still photos, or who has an excuse every time you ask to see the mother moving around, is a breeder you keep questioning. Puppies raised underfoot in a home are exposed to the household noise, handling, and routine that build a stable adult dog.

Registration, papers, and identity

• What registry are the puppies eligible for, and what will I receive and when?
• Will the puppy be microchipped or tattooed before it leaves you?
• Can I verify the parents' registration numbers myself?

Responsible breeders expect this and make verification easy. They give you registration numbers you can check against the issuing body, not a single blurry image of a certificate. If a breed has a dedicated registry, that registry's own breeder list is a far better starting point than an open marketplace. For the Olde English Bulldogge, for example, the breed's recognized registries publish their own member breeders, and a buyer is better served going there than to a general classifieds dump.

The contract, the guarantee, and the deposit

• Do you use a written contract, and may I read it before I pay anything?
• What does your health guarantee actually cover, and for how long?
• If I ever cannot keep this dog, will you take it back?
• How much is the deposit, what does it hold, and is any of it refundable?

A take-back clause is one of the clearest signals of a breeder who cares where their dogs end up for life. The contract should spell out the guarantee in plain terms. Be cautious with a deposit that holds a specific puppy before you have seen the litter or before the puppies are even born, and never wire money to hold a puppy you cannot confirm exists. If the purchase is happening entirely online, walk through our guide on how to safely buy a puppy online in Canada before you send a cent.

Green flags and red flags: decode the answers

The answers that should end the conversation

Some replies are not yellow flags to weigh, they are stop signs. End the conversation if a seller offers a puppy younger than eight weeks, refuses every attempt to see the mother alive, will not let you read the contract before paying, demands payment by wire or gift card with no buyer protection, or pressures you to decide immediately. A real breeder has waited months for this litter and will happily wait a few more days for the right home. Urgency is a sales tactic, not a sign of a good dog.

It is also worth remembering that the questions run both ways. A breeder who does not ask you anything, who will sell to the first person with the money, is telling you how much thought went into the breeding. The best breeders interview you as carefully as you interview them.

Frequently asked questions