Experiences with wondrous kennel in wanchai?

Hi all,

We've been thinking about getting a golden from different places, including the wondrous kennel shop on ship st. in wanchai. Does anyone have any specific experience and/or is anyone an owner of a dog from there? Would love to hear your thoughts on the specific dogs' temperament, trainability, and any other thoughts about service from the shop etc. they same like decent and reasonable people and the dogs that we've met for the short while we've spent with them also seem great but I don't think you can tell a lot from a line from just 30 min of interaction so any thoughts would be great in helping decide whether to go down this route.

Thanks all!

Please don't get a dog from a pet shop. Hong Kong petshops are notorious for sellling sick puppies. The mother and father will have been kept in horrendous conditions in some hideous puppy mill either in the New Territories or across the border - they will have lived in stinking, crowded cages their entire lives and are only let out to mate. Once the mothers are past their breeding prime they are simply chucked out, like garbage. Chances are the dogs are inbred far too much so the puppy will come with a range of genetic defects.


Puppies are taken away from their mother much too young, they will not have developed enough immunity and you will most likely be sold a sick puppy who even if it does not look or act sick, will almost certainly fall ill in the near future and will cost you thousands of dollars in vet bills. Is that what you really want?


There are some fantastic healthy puppies at the various rescue organisations in HK. Check out HKDR, SPCA, Lifelong Animal Protection, Kirsten's Zoo, HK Rescue Puppies, Lamma Animal Welfare Centre, Animal Village Association etc. If you are prepared to wait, you can put your name down on a waiting list for a golden, or something that looks like a golden may turn up.


Think about it - why not adopt a dog and instead help to put an end to the misery of petshop puppies and their parents?

Hi there, thanks for the reply and I agree with you completely. I'm not sure if I made it clear in my post but we are exploring many options and wih respect to breeders are brig especially careful. We are not considering puppy mills or shops. Please if you do know of the particular breeder I am referring I would love I hear ur thoughts, but if you just want to speak from principles I appreciate your thoughts but not necessary. This particular breeder we have checked for a while and seems to be pretty good but would like I hear if anyone has firsthand experience. We have met the potential parents and seen their OFA certificates (they are from the US) - and apparently the lines are very carefully chosen and the dames are only bred a few times, but we have no idea of verifying this type of information so that is what we are looking for. Thanks in advance.

Dude, the pets @ pet shops are not healthy

thanks...helpful....

let me clarify again, this is not a pet shop, it's a shop, yes, they do grooming and stuff in the store, but don't have pets otherwise in the store. if you want to look at the dogs, you contact the owners and they set up an appointment with you. they've shown me videos of dogs from the line in shows in the US and see press clippings about other shows. i think over the course of 10-20 years (?) there may be only handful of dogs in HK from this breeder, so i'm trying to find if any of those people (or anyone that knows them) are on here and can let me know about their experience and to confirm all of this isn't some elaborate guise and they are in fact responsible breeders.

anyway, if you have experience with the breeder, would be great to hear from you. if you do not, no need to reply saying something generic that i already know or is otherwise not helpful. appreciate it.

and to clarify further, the dogs they have are not ready to order dogs. because they only produce litters every once in a while after selecting parents from their line and some other parent - usually a show dog from the states, there is a waiting list for litters you need to get in - so who we've seen are the parents and other dogs part of the line. again, would be great to hear from you if you have one of these goldens.

If this outfit is legit and the litters come from show dogs in the states, then are the puppies born in the states and then shipped over to HK, or are they born here to parents way down the line?? If the former is the case, they should be able to provide you with a contact in the states to clarify where the pups are coming from, etc. If it's the latter, then I would be very wary ... It would be easy for anyone to show videos and press clippings, but if the puppies are coming from a reliable source then they should have documentation evidence/contacts to provide you with. My dog has an excellent pedigree, with her show champion grand parents and great grand parents featured in many books, but this wouldn't stop an unscrupulous breeder from breeding her with other, shall we say, less desirable dogs. Just be wary and insist on more proof from the breeder ... if they are legit it really shouldn't be a problem. Good luck!

Thank you both for your very helpful responses - definitely things i will look into and think about; much appreciate it.


With respect to your specific question about how the pups are brought here - actually i didn't realize it as strange at the time, but now i realize why it was done - but apparently what they do is select a father from the states, and then impregnate dames that they own here via artificial insemination, so it is in vitro.... i'm not sure if that says a lot about them or a little....

There is a bit of confusion in Hong Kong in this regard in my opinion, myths perpetuated and real life horrors.


In Hong Kong for all intensive purposes there are no "ethical" breeder set ups like we might know from our home countries. There are just pet shops, good better and completely atrocious that sell source and produce puppy dogs.


Every time someone pops up and asks about buying a puppy they are told to avoid pet shops like the plague, well listen up folks if you have your heart set on a pedigree mutt there are only two options, import yourself or buy from a pet shop.


Dogs are bred in apartments and it is considered ethical here to keep them in small wire cages. The dogs have to live on wire mesh like a mass produced chicken, even if they are well cared for but you will never know because pet shops wont tell you. Its not a particularly interesting selling point here.



I have attended dog show here for a few years and what I found is that 90% if not more of the dogs proudly on display are in fact imports. Its all a bit odd and meaningless because if you want to win and show a dog breed you simply buy your dog from abroad along with your trophy, that is to say the one with the biggest pocket wins and usually against zero competition as the groups are so thinly attended anyway.


This would be a red alert for anyone wanting a sound ethically bred dog bred for generations along working lines and in ethical conditions. A dog bred for the show ring anywhere is not at this moment in time what can be called an ethically bred dog, all its paper work and registrations and acronyms simply prove that unfortunately. So AKC, BOB, BIS and CH on a pedigree is meaningless when it comes to ethically bred dogs no matter how free range and well kept the parents are. But critically there aren't enough even of these so called "good" dogs to form a gene pool large enough to take that risk here in Hong Kong.


So for someone in Hong Kong who wants a recognisable breed ethically produced both in actual breeding and breeding conditions you have to import.


Before anyone jumps on me with accusations yes there are what you could count on your left hand number o breeders who have gone the extra mile in all of this but then thats five or so specific breeds to choose from and here as mentioned it must be doubtful that they can or do maintain the expensive and necessary business of importing suitable bloodlines all the time.


Everyone always advises people wanting a dog to contact the kennel club here but they are not a puppy service not even a breeder directory they are a registration authority for badly bred dogs and dog shows are organised under their name and nothing else.


Though they might if the breeder has given them permission be able to tell you when a litter is ever registered but this would be unorthodox and atypical, Im not condoning but a computer hacker might be a better bet.

Artificial insemination of dogs is a whole mine field of ethical considerations, but if no surgery is needed on the bitch and there are no ethical objections and questions left unanswered as to why its being done its perfectly acceptable. Biggest problem I can figure is the over use of a sire for profit at the expense of a particular breeds genetic pool, givn the nature of the beast on a truly global scale. If its not regulated strictly this is a real danger.

ooops spell check edit isn't perfect (blush). I love working breeds those chosen to be bred because they excel at something rather than for looks alone.


I had the biggest laugh of my life in this respect. While watching Crufts the American cocker spaniel was introduced amongst the other so called "sporting gun dog group".


The comments went something like this, "nice small dog so it can easily get through dense cover to flush out birds and isn't its movement magnificent etc etc" and in came the most ridiculously badly suited dog for the job I've ever seen. A floating carpet of fluff its ears alone (so long) would trip it up or strangle it as it attempted to get through the very first thicket.

I just saw this thread, and its a shame its been so long since the initial question regarding Wondrous Kennel was posed.

We purchased a Goldie puppy from Wondrous Kennel last year in March 2012. We had gotten an older Goldie from HKDR, and were hoping that with proper breeding we could side step some of the unfortunate problems we were having with our rescued Goldie health wise. (mainly horrible hip problems)

We were on a waiting list for a male puppy, and were told he was ready to be picked up. When we arrived, she told us that there was a mistake, and all of the boys were gone. We could either wait for another litter later in the year, or take the only girl left in the current one. She told us the puppy was her favorite one, and that she had planned to keep her to breed later on. But, she was willing to part with her due to the circumstances. We didn't care much if it was a boy or a girl, so happily took our new puppy home.

Immediately the puppy started dropping weight dramatically, most likely due to horrible diarrhea. We had initialy called the owner the next day, and were told to stop letting the puppy drink so much water. After 2 days of pedialite, she still wasn't better and we took her to our vet. She had Giardia- very contagious. But, we were happy we could get her fixed up. The owner of Wondrous Kennel, Man Yee Cheung, told us the puppy had to have caught it in our home somehow. Annoying response, but not the end of the world.

A few weeks down the road, after numerous incidents of seeing her fumble around, we found out she was over 80% blind due to cataracts. At only 3 months old!

A few months after that, after a lot of vomiting and sickness, we found she out she had a kidney that was to small. And a few months after that, she had to have her gall bladder removed. We've been told she'll have a short and unhealthy life, but love her to bits now- and are so sad to see all the suffering she goes through day to day.

The owner of Wondrous Kennel told us various stories on who our puppys parents were, complete with photos and documents. When we checked on the docs to verify medical history of both parents, they turned out to be fraudulent. It was unbelievable. We ended up having to take her to court for either medical expenses and/or our extremely high payment refunded. We won the case, and have spent much time and effort trying to chase her down for the repayment. We still have not received it, and most likely never will.

We very much hope that other people don't fall into this same scam, and along with it, all the grief its caused. We'd love to see her business license be taken away, but HK is not ready for that when it comes to pets yet, I think.

Its much sadder for all the puppies who are procured through Ms. Cheungs methods, though.

Obviously, I strongly advise against doing business with this woman.