Our Selection Process
So many cute white balls of fluff... how to decide? We've all seen the Hollywood moment of a little boy walking into a room full of puppies and locking eyes with the one in the corner, or the one that ran into his lap, while the others chased a ball. Later that puppy became the boy's soulmate and they lived happily ever after.
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In reality, puppy selection doesn't work best like this. The 15 minutes a buyer would spend with a litter of puppies wouldn't tell them much about the puppies when compared with the last 8 weeks of their life. Someone may look at the sleepy one in the corner and think she is the calmest of the bunch, but she is only sleeping because she has been running in circles for an hour while the others slept. To spend such a limited amount of time with them and have to pick a puppy will not be an informed decision. This is why we don't offer any sort of pick of the litter or allow our buyers to meet the puppies before selections are made. Instead we put in the work of evaluating each puppy and working with you to decide which one meets the desires of your family. We promise you will come home with a cute puppy, but we want to make sure that that puppy grows up to be the dog of your dreams as well.
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Each puppy has a unique personality, which begins to show more fully around 4 weeks old. Each puppy has a colored collar that enables us to track their development as they grow. All of our puppies are raised in the same way, with the same socialization and training. No dog is better or worse than another but they each have their individual traits that suit some families better than others. Between 4-6 weeks we take extensive notes on each puppy's personality creating a profile on each dog. We observe how they react to their littermates, new environments, and new and unfamiliar people. We are watching to see their maturity, assertiveness, and independence.
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At Seven weeks old the puppies will undergo a temperament test. While this is the climax of our selection process, we do not look at the results independent of the other notes. In the test we are looking for specific behaviors that have been shown to develop over time into specific tendencies. One of the things this test looks for is their social attraction, if they are confident toward a new person or dependent on the person they know. While you might think you a want a dog who is always confident in new situations, this isn't quite true. A dog that is super confident at this young age might become overly confident toward you later down the road in obedience training. A puppy on the other hand who is extremely timid may react negatively in fear toward all new situations. The ideal puppy is in the middle of the road. ​This test also looks at how they react toward new objects, their desire to follow, how they react to levels of dominance from a person, as well as a desire to preform for a person. Thus far all of our puppies averaged scores have been pretty close to the middle, in range for an ideal puppy. But they each score slightly higher or lower on certain aspects of the test. This shows us some of their tendencies, that helps us understand what their ideal family would be.
The other part of our selection process is conversations with our buyers on exactly what they are looking for. To make sure we cover all the bases of our buyer's homes and desires, we ask our buyers to fill out a survey to help us get the full picture. With the survey, the test, and the notes on each puppy, we make our selections. A couple days after the puppies turn 7 weeks we send out a full profile to our buyers. Our process has been instrumental in matching puppies with the best family for them. We put considerable effort into matching our buyers with the best puppies, however after the puppy goes to its new home, it is the responsibility of the buyer to ensure that the puppy gets the proper exercise, training, and nutrition to thrive.
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