How to Pick Out Your Puppy

Okay, so you've checked the rescues.

Then you've done all the checking on breeders. There's so much on the net about that, that I'll skip that too. But READ at least TEN SITES about how to select a good breeder!

Now you're headed to the breeder to look at the puppies and maybe commit to one.

Here are the instructions I got from my professional trainer, and I followed these exactly.

1. Find out from the breeder when is naptime and do NOT look at puppies who have been awakened from a nap. Their true personalities won't show through. Try to arrive during playtime.

2. When you get there (I'm skipping all the questions you're supposed to ask the breeder, because you can get those from the net, too), immediately observe the puppies, what they do the instant you walk into the room. If the breeder is talking to you, you can talk to her, but keep your eyes on the puppies to see what they do when a stranger walks in.

3. The puppies should WALK TOWARD YOU and immediately touch you with their front paws and kiss you if you lean down to them. If they do not walk toward you, that is a potentially bad sign. It is almost enough to reject the puppy altogether, unless there is a very good reason it didn't walk toward you at that moment, like a huge noise, or distraction or some such intervening cause. The best pups will approach you immediately.

4. It is very bad if the puppies hang back and seem fearful. It is really bad if they growl or act aggressive.

5. If you interact with them and they behave fearfully or aggressively, this is pretty much a deal killer.

5a. If they act hyper or bullying or rush at you like they're on speed, this is not great.

6. Our breeder, who is just excellent, allowed us to test all this. Jack, the black puppy, and all of his litter mates passed every test immediately. They ALL walked up to us, kissed us, were happy to be handled, never shy or fearful.

Eventually, they all went to sleep, morphing into a pile of curls :) and the breeder helped us even further to realize how calm these puppies were. She banged really loudly on the table above them. One slept on, and two looked up only mildly interested. After they fell asleep again, she did it again. Once more, the pups gave just a casual look toward the noise. None of the pups jumped or were disturbed by the sudden banging. EXCELLENT.

So, having spent a lot of time talking with this breeder and getting to know her over the past few weeks (that's another story), I knew that Jack was our guy. He was not the runt. I believe the trainer said never to pick the runt. In this litter, there was no runt.

So we brought him home.

How old should a puppy be when you bring him home?

Our trainer said to wait until 7 weeks to the day. No sooner. Many writers argue that 12 weeks is the soonest. Our trainer disagrees, obviously. But 6 weeks is too early because in that 7th week, the mother teaches the puppy a very important lesson about not biting, and if you get a 6 week puppy, they will never have learned this.

In our situation, the trainer said it was a good thing we didn't wait until 8 weeks on this particular pup because the situation in his sleeping arrangements was that the pups were in a huge long cage with a bed on one end and paper on the other end. They would walk from their bed to the other end to go potty.

This is BAD unless you get the dog out of that habit very early. Otherwise the pups learn that it is okay to potty INSIDE the place where they sleep, even tho it's at the other end.

Also, our trainer said you should NEVER use paper, even in the beginning, to allow a pup to go on the paper--not if you plan to train it to outside. You must begin with outside from day one. If you try to "cross train", the pup will NEVER go back and re-learn that it is bad to potty INSIDE the house.

My daughter's Yorkipoo is an exception. She has him successfully cross trained. He will use potty pads inside, but not make accidents elsewhere inside. AND he will potty outside. But he is a freak genius dog, and not ALL dogs can figure this out. Some can.

I had a Yorkie, may he rest in peace, and I trained him on newspapers and wee wee pads inside the house, so that he would never go outside (we lived in Wisconsin, and winters are just insane, and we had no fence. I wasn't about to walk a dog in arctic conditions 6 months out of the year). He learned just fine, but the trouble was, I started changing my mind about where the papers should be, and I'd move them. It would take him like a YEAR to learn not to potty where the papers once were. In fact, he never did learn not to potty in a few of the places, so i was pretty screwed up.

Next, a little about sleeping situation with new puppies.