Deborah Howington at Showboat Kennels has been sited on her most recent Georgia Department of Agriculture report for not having proper vaccination records for 93 out of her 102 listed dogs. She also keeps litters of puppies in wire and wooden crates in improperly ventilated shack in her back yard. Her third citation included a mice infestation.
Ms. Howington, per her own words on her own site, acquired most of her breeding dogs through unusual circumstances. She would prey upon people in bad situations and offer to take their dogs in and then would exploit those dogs by breeding them for her own profit. That's how she got her Shiba Inu, her Pappions and her Chins. Her daughter brought in the Bostons and left them with her mother and Deborah bred those too...
She generally champions out a couple of each of her breeds and then uses those dogs to advertise EVERY LITTER coming out of her kennel. For every dog that she or a professional handler showed, there are 10-30 more in her kennel that have never left her property or their dirt and gravel bottomed pen.
Ms. Howington advertises health testing that was never done on her breeding dogs. She has been cited by the websites she advertises on for this false advertising. It is very easy to check if a dog has been tested. The testing is listed on the ORthapedic Foundation for Animals website. She charges top dollar for "champion sired, health tested parents" and none of these claims can be substantiated.
When Deborah can't sell a litter, she hands them off to her kennel manager so that the kennel manager can sell them as "pets that needed homes because I was moving" or "my pet that I can't keep". The poor buyers of these pups expect dogs who have a background as PETS, not dogs who have spent their entire lives in a kennel.
She has multiple litters of mutts every year from improper supervision of her breeding dogs.
Ms. Howigton has a history of sending dogs out to their new homes with worms, coccidia, ear infections, giardia, eye infections and skin conditions. Her "health guarantee" specifically protects her from being responsible for the treatment of those conditions by the future owner. This allows her to apply minimum effort in trying to control disease, filth, and contagions in her kennel.
Mothers and babies are penned in approx. 14"x20" homemade wire enclosures in a shack where they are left in the dark to live out their lives in their own filth.
You will only see a dog being bathed or cleaned when someone is coming to look at puppies.
It has been reported that she does not allow puppy buyers to view the kennel and only shows them dogs brought in from the kennel to her home.
You DO NOT want a dog from this kennel, regardless of the pedigrees! This is not an ethical, responsible breeder. THis is, pure and simple, a puppy mill hiding behind a couple of show dogs.
This is a VERY profitable business where the bottom line is much more important than the care of the dogs involved.
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