The red flags that should stop a sale
Avoid any Boerboel breeder who won't show you both parents' hip, elbow and heart results, won't let you meet the dam or see where the puppies live, sells "rare" colors at a premium, or wants a deposit by gift card before you've ever spoken face to face. Those five tells catch most of the breeders worth walking away from. Price belongs on the list too, but not the way most guides claim: a low price is only a warning when it travels with missing paperwork, and a high price guarantees nothing at all.
The rest of this page is the long version, organized by the questions buyers actually ask. Here is the short version first.
| Red flag | What a careful breeder does instead |
|---|---|
| "Vet checked" offered in place of testing | Shows OFA or PennHIP hips, OFA elbows and a cardiac echo for both parents |
| Waves a "DNA health panel" as proof of soundness | Knows DNA confirms breed and a few mutations, and screens hips and elbows by X-ray |
| Prices a "rare" black, tri-color or exotic-color pup at a markup | Prices on health, structure and temperament, never on coat color |
| Won't let you meet the dam or visit | Welcomes a visit, or at least a live video call showing dam and litter together |
| Litters available year-round, several breeds on offer | Breeds to a plan, keeps a waitlist, and often has no puppy ready right now |
| No written contract, no take-back clause | Puts a health guarantee and a lifetime return policy in writing |
| Wants a gift-card, wire or crypto deposit before you've met | Takes ordinary payment and expects you to verify them first |
| Treats "has papers" as a quality guarantee | Treats papers as a lineage record and shows you the parents' test results |
Why price is the most misleading red flag of all
Most checklists tell you a cheap Boerboel is the danger. That is half right. The more useful truth is that price does not track quality at either end. Across the kennels we track, we have watched poorly bred dogs sell for $5,000 and up on the strength of a viral social-media post, while excellent, fully health-tested dogs went home for around $2,500. The dollar figure by itself is close to meaningless.
Cheap does matter, but only in company. In the listings we watch, a puppy at $800 to $1,500 is usually one whose breeder skipped the expensive parts: no health testing, no appraisal, no contract, no registration you can verify. That is the red flag. Not the price, the missing documents that ride along with it. The same $1,200 from a breeder who X-rayed both parents and hands you a contract is a completely different animal. Our price guide sets out where the real US ranges sit; read anything near the bottom of them as a reason to ask harder questions, not an automatic no.
Is a "rare" color worth paying more for?
No, and a premium on color is one of the clearest red flags here, because it tells you what the breeder selected for. Color is easy to breed for and easy to charge for. Hips, elbows, heart and temperament are hard. A breeder chasing coat color is usually not chasing the traits that make a Boerboel sound and safe to live with. A color that photographs well tells you nothing about the hips, the heart or the head underneath it. Buy the dog, not the color.
"Health tested" is not the same as "healthy"
"Health tested" gets used as a magic phrase. It isn't one, and there are two specific traps behind it.
A DNA test is not hip and elbow screening. A consumer DNA panel confirms the dog is a Boerboel and flags a couple of known recessive mutations, CMR1 (an eye disease) and HUU (a urate-stone risk). It cannot tell you the hips are sound. The conditions that actually cripple giant dogs, hip and elbow dysplasia, are screened by X-ray, and the heart by ultrasound. No validated DNA test predicts dysplasia in this breed: it is polygenic and read off radiographs, not a cheek swab. A breeder who answers "are the parents' hips tested?" by holding up a DNA health panel is either confused or hoping you are. The SABBS DNA profile has the same limit. It proves parentage and identity, not health.
"Tested" is also not "passed." An OFA CHIC number certifies that the tests were done and the results published, not that the results were good. Read the actual grades. OFA grades hips Excellent, Good or Fair, then Borderline and three dysplastic grades below that, and you want the real result for both parents, not just the news that a test happened. Our health testing page walks through what each result means.
Know what one genuine Boerboel health signal looks like, so you can tell an informed breeder from a fluent one. The breed carries the highest relative risk of cranial cruciate ligament rupture among all 181 breeds in a large Swedish insurance study, roughly eleven times the baseline. That is a relative risk drawn from few cases, not a prophecy that your dog will tear a knee, but it is the sort of specific, sourced fact a serious breeder can discuss. The reverse is just as telling: a breeder who quotes you a scary "65% of Boerboels have hip dysplasia," or promises a "dysplasia-free" puppy, is repeating something they shouldn't. That 65% traces to a single 20-dog clinic sample of dogs brought in because something was already wrong. Nobody can promise a dysplasia-free puppy. A good breeder stacks the odds by screening; they don't guarantee an outcome no one can.
Do registration papers prove a good breeder?
No. Papers certify lineage in one registry's studbook, and nothing more. A registry can record a dog's ancestry; it cannot make a breeder trustworthy. And not every "registered" means the same thing. In the American systems, AKC or UKC "registered" records only that the parents were registered, with no dog appraised. In the South African system that owns the breed, SABBS "registered" on the breeding registers means the dog was physically appraised and scored at least 75%, temperament included, before it was allowed to reproduce. Same word, different guarantees.
Be wary of the registries with the weakest checks. Some, ARBA among them, will record a dog with no DNA or microchip verification behind the paperwork. And a marketplace listing is advertising, not vetting: AKC Marketplace only confirms that the parents are AKC-registered, and Lancaster Puppies, Craigslist or a Facebook post confirm even less. If you want the full map of who recognizes what, we wrote a registries explainer. For spotting a bad breeder, the short version is this: a seller who treats "has papers" as the whole answer is telling you they think lineage is a quality test. It isn't.
How do you avoid a Boerboel puppy scam?
Verify the breeder is a real person with real dogs before any money moves. The most effective single move is a live video call: ask to see the specific puppy with its dam, in the place they live, right now. Most scams die on that request, because there is no puppy. Then do the boring checks. Look the registration up with the registry directly, ask for a vet reference and actually call it, and read reviews that have some history behind them.
On payment, one hard rule: never pay by gift card, wire transfer or cryptocurrency. Those are the payment types you cannot claw back, which is exactly why a scammer insists on them. Two patterns are worth recognizing on sight. The "$800, registered, ready to ship today" post is built to make a rock-bottom price and instant availability feel like luck; it is bait. And the shipping-fee ransom, where a sudden "crate deposit" or "insurance fee" appears after your deposit and has to be paid immediately, is a scam every time. A real breeder's costs are set before you pay, not invented afterward. We keep a longer field guide at how to spot a Boerboel scam.
The transparency and volume tells
The oldest red flags are still the reliable ones. A breeder who won't let you meet the dam, or won't show you where the puppies are raised, is hiding the conditions, and the reluctance is the answer. Litters available all year, or several breeds on one site, points to a volume operation rather than a program. No written contract and no take-back policy means the breeder has no plan to stand behind the dog after your money clears; an ethical one puts a health guarantee in writing and takes a dog back at any point in its life. A breeder who asks you nothing, who doesn't care where a 150-pound guardian is going to live, is not screening homes.
One quieter tell is how they handle a two-dog household. If you already own a large dog and the breeder cheerfully sells you a same-sex littermate, that is a knowledge gap. Same-sex pairs of intact Boerboels frequently fail as housemates, sometimes after years of peace, so a breeder who knows the breed steers a multi-dog buyer toward the opposite sex. If they never raise it, you should.
What a good breeder does instead
Take the red flags away and the profile that remains is easy to describe and hard to fake. They test both parents and show you the results. They welcome a visit or a video call. They interview you at least as hard as you interview them, work from a written contract, and take a dog back for life. For the positive version of this checklist, read how to choose the right Boerboel breeder. When you're ready to compare real programs, our directory lists breeders with their sources on the page.