Chicago Dog Breeder

We had recently moved to Chicago and were fixed on getting ourselves a puppy. We needed to find a good Chicago Dog Breeder but realized we didn't know exactly how this should be done here. We figured it would probably be a good idea to get ahold of a good veterinarian, but again, how do you know whom is a good veterinarian? Well, one thing for sure, we decided from the start we were going to take it easy and not rush into it although we wanted a puppy now. We read about certain things we could do in order to get a feel off of a dog breeder one of which was to first interview the breeder without seeing the puppies at first as this seems to be a distraction for a lot of people and their judgment becomes fogged up by the adorable little creatures in front of them. So we talked to several different ones without the puppies in sight. One thing we had read about was to observe the temperament of the dog breeder and that if he or she seemed too overly protective or like a fearful person, to not get a puppy there. We also asked the dog breeders about genetic disease that affect the breed we wanted to get; we were of course able to get a great amount of information on this before hand as we did our research and read up on the subject (which was actually very interesting, we never knew how many things can affect different breeds!). In our case we wanted to get a German shepherd and since we had read that medium to larger size dogs sometimes have hip dysphasia problems, we also asked to see x rays and certify that that dog was free of that condition.