Rightpaw Reviews 8

RightPaw made the experience of finding our puppy genuinely stress-free and joyful.

I felt supported every step of the way. The platform is easy to use, communication was fantastic, and I really appreciated the educational resources that helped me feel informed and confident. The Puppy Prep Program from Dr Imogen was fantastic!

We are now home with our beautiful girl and we couldn’t be happier. Thank you!!

After retiring as an expat aussie from the USA to Sydney, my wife and I wanted to find ourselves a dachshund. RightPaw made the process of finding a suitable dachshund breeder incredibly smooth and reassuring. The service is well thought out, informative, and genuinely focused on animal welfare and responsible breeding. The website is easy to navigate and provides clear, trustworthy information that helps you make informed decisions without feeling overwhelmed.

The breeder matching process was excellent — thoughtful, transparent, and tailored to our needs — and the breeders themselves were knowledgeable, professional, and clearly passionate about their dogs. What really stood out was the follow-through: communication didn’t stop once a match was made, and we felt supported every step of the way.

RightPaw takes the stress and uncertainty out of finding a breeder and replaces it with confidence and peace of mind. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a responsible, ethical, and well-supported path to finding their next dog.

My wife and I love our little Luigi!

I am in the process of looking for a labradoodle puppy to join our dog loving family and to replace our dear furry companion who has recently gone. Thinking Rightpaw would be a good place to start I’ve contacted quite a number of breeders in regards to obtaining a puppy in our chosen breed. I’ve annoyingly come up with the same issue time and time again - pay a deposit to be put onto a waiting list - (some won’t return it, others partly will return - if you don’t get a puppy from this breeder)
The problem I have is that none of the breeders when asked, will send a full sized photo of the parents of the puppy before you go onto this waiting list. I’ve been sent tiny headshots at the most. Labradoodles can vary hugely in size, colour and type of coat. It therefore makes perfect sense that you can see what the parents look like, before paying out money to put onto a waiting list. Buying a dog is no small decision, as we all hope to have them for 14-15yrs. The least thing we could hope for is at least some idea of what size, colour, coat type will be by seeing the parents and what the puppy is likely to look like.
Sadly, it seems like the practice of being able to see the puppies first, with their Mum, sit and watch them and play with them to observe their behaviour and how they interact with each other has now gone. It’s more of a potluck as to who the breeder decides to give you.
Not a great way to choose a life long furry friend. Hopefully Rightpaw will improve their standards to ensure full, authentic pictures are available and that people can have a better system of choice before putting down a hefty deposit.

Connected me with an ethical and careful breeder. We visited her farm/home to collect the puppy and he's been an absolute delight. Was toilet trained before coming home at 8 weeks. Mel was responsive and easy to deal with. RightPaw gave me confidence to source a dog online.

Received my offer from the breeder afternoon of Saturday 7 September 2024

tried to pay for hours evening of same day. it would not go past "continue to payment".

Sent email using the link to rightpaw. Auto reply that they will get back to me in 1-2 business days

Doesn't help when breeder is trying to arrange transport for Monday or Tuesday next week

Said they support ethical breeders but have mongrels listed. I'm deleting my account

One of the worst experiences we have ever had. We have an incontinent pup, we notified Rightpaw and the breeder as soon as we knew (which was a coincidence of having the pup at an independent vet. The breeder had a family member as a vet, who signed off), no paper work, no response. I have fostered through many organisations and I could not recommend you run far away from this lot any more. Horrendous

Streamlines the payment process and makes it easy to find reputable breeders, but the fees associated with payment are steep. To pay for a $3000 puppy, for instance, there is a “payment protection” fee of 63.66 if you pay by credit card or 12.77 if you pay by bank transfer. Paypal is not offered. This is really just RightPaw’s commission being passed onto the buyer as well rather than just the seller. I would be far more comfortable if Paypal was available given the large sums being paid to sellers.

RightPaw offers a Puppy Parent Club, but this is a payment of $99. The club has coupon offers - most require you to email RightPaw for a voucher code, a few have a code embedded and the rest are available for anyone, not just RP customers.

The club also includes a course for new puppy parents, but the website has some kinks, since clicking on it logs you out and tries to make you pay for it a second time. If you aren’t paying attention it would be quite easy to accidentally buy it twice.

The club includes a smart dog bowl from Purina. This probably was originally quite the boon, but Purina’s Petivity app does not work (new accounts can’t be created or logged in, so I think Purina has discontinued the bowl - try to find anything that mentions the bowl past 2021 that isn’t just reselling a used bowl). So, really, it’s just a plastic dog bowl. And I wouldn’t buy a plastic dog bowl because some dogs can be allergic, leading to pyoderma. There’s a puppy starter kit that’s part of the club too. It reportedly contains food as well as the bowl. I received the bowl separately when I paid my deposit weeks ago and no sign of the remaining starter kit yet. Since they’re all Purina products, it would make sense to ship them together.

The health reminders section redirects to your applications page so it could have bugs or is not yet complete, while ‘pet care advice’ opens up a chat window with RightPaw that is available in business hours. I note that the RightPaw support link tries to open a new app, but I don’t know what the app is since Chrome won’t open it.

I think the larger issue is one of naming – calling it a club implies a degree of community with other puppy parents, but there’s no opportunity to interact.

Outside the club, the site interface is straightforward and it allows you to find breeders, filtering by breed, state and puppies available. It’s really up to each breeder to populate their page, but the site allows multiple litters - current, planned and upcoming - to be listed by the same breeder, with images for puppies, sires and dams. The breeder profile page has room to include membership to the state dog registries as well as comprehensive information about breeding practices, vaccinations, health tests and transportation options. This is much more detailed than what tends to be available on social media or on sites like Dogs Victoria.

This site is certainly useful and fills a gap in the market given the propensity for breeders to be hard to find in Australia. Only a fraction of breeders have a real digital footprint, and there’s always a concern that you might unknowingly buy from a puppy mill because you’ve resorted to Gumtree or trusted the stock photos on any websites you have been able to find. RightPaw is still building itself as a registry, so it’s not uncommon for a breed search to come up empty, but this isn’t really a problem with popular breeds.

The application process allows breeders to ask detailed questions of potential puppy parents. It may seem annoying to some but to me this is a good thing. I am more confident that I am dealing with a breeder who cares about their animals if I need to answer questions that talk through my background, home and reasons for getting a puppy. It’s easy to apply to multiple breeders and the process to cancel an application is also simple and effective.

Breeders must also agree to RightPaw’s code of ethics, which improves comfort for would-be parents.

I think once RightPaw irons out some low-level kinks their services will be top-notch. It would be great to see them expand and gain a greater foothold in the market.