New Puppy Checklist – Finding Fido in the Whelping Box
Buying a new puppy use to involve newspaper classifieds, shopping center parking lots, pet shops, pounds, and viewing signs on the side of the road and pulling over for a rather impulse purchase of a new family member.
It involved face licking, ball throwing, and puppy hugs around a perfect strangers home, or the back of a pickup truck in the case of the box store pet acquirement.
These type of purchases have created stories of beloved lifelong family members and horror stories of the worst kind when it comes to a new four legged family member.
Now the puppy purchase method has changed and probably 80% of pets are found online, found on fancy kennel websites, or extravagant puppy headhunter sites, and a larger percentage are shipped sight unseen.
With the change, how does a future puppy buyer protect themselves and what are some of the good and bad signs when purchasing a new puppy from the web. The purchase of puppies actually hasn’t changed much in regards to the good and bad it’s just that hiding the bad signs has become a little easier!
First and foremost even though people have found great pets in front of their favorite grocery store, it doesn’t mean that it’s a great place to find your next pet! Let’s create a small yet thorough new puppy checklist, a bare minimum sort of thing.
The New Puppy Checklist
-environment
-parents
-health
-nutrition
-socialization
Remember these are just some bare minimum items on the new puppy checklist we can look at in trying to find the puppy that will have the best chance of adapting to your home environment.
Environment
Our first stop on the new puppy checklist is if you are able to visit a litter at it’s home always do so! I am a stickler for seeing how 8-12 week old pups have spent their early weeks! It’s not because I want to see how clean the person is (I could care less as I’m not planning on living there, or hugging them often), but because regardless of how they live, how they keep the puppies is important to me.
Is it covered in flies, is their fresh water, has it been picked up, are the puppies in a $10 swimming pool enclosed with chicken wire. The environment goes a long way as we examine other things on our new puppy checklist so even if it’s not the greatest place in the world for puppies, it will help in the total evaluation once you fall in love with the blue eyed couch chewer that has been licking you feverishly since you picked it up!
Parents
Now this is tricky as often times a home may only have the mother present. If both parents are present then GREAT, but in the end the mother is the KEY social parent. Was this a planned breeding, or did the neighbors snicker doodle climb the fence and impregnate their prized American Bully?
What to look for. Is she healthy, happy, and display qualities you want in your pet. Most times if the mother is super friendly her pups will be as well. If she is standoffish, the pups may be wary of strangers. The same if she is timid or aggressive, puppies will feed off of their mother, especially in situation where they have been with her the entire.
8 weeks of her life. Let’s not think though that if the mother is a ten time obedience champion that you just automatically can grab any pup off of her and have the next American Idol of the dog world! It’s just potential to be good, or bad for that matter. If you like her move forward, if you totally hate her perhaps falling for her progeny is not such a great plan on your new puppy checklist.
Health
This seems like it would be easy enough. After all puppy ads for dog food, BullyMax supplements, or cleaning supplies never show a Bully pup with runny eyes, crusty noses, or exposed rib cages, so who would buy one?
Uhhh, the bleeding hearts that would adopt breathing road kill, and the slick puppy pusher that says it’s perfectly normal and the mama had the same thing, now look at her!
Overall health is key a sickly puppy is not setting it’s family up for a winning match! We want to see healthy, happy pups that the breeder is proud of and has a hard time letting go of.
We don’t want the scroungy, diseased, scared pup that the breeder just refers to as “Runty”, not because it won’t turn into a great pup, but you want to start out on the best foot possible.
A very important part of the new puppy checklist.
Nutrition
Nutrition is important on the new puppy checklist! What are the pups being fed, what about the dam? Is it a quality kibble, has she been giving supplements and is her health a result of nutrition? Have the pups been weaned or are the razor teeth having puppies still feasting on mom after 8-9 weeks!
Pups should and are often weaned at about 4 weeks so when you arrive at 8-12 weeks mama dog should returned close to her pre-63-day pregnancy look. At least close! If the pups are not being fed quality or are not weaned at this point you most likely will have an uphill battle. Feeding schedules are also good when it comes to potty training you future bully pup!
Socialization
Now this ties in just about everything else on the new puppy checklist! You may have gotten lucky and visited the little old lady in the shoe and her 100 kids may have played with the pups with, balls, sticks, umbrellas, gunfire and bubble wrap! If that happens your pup may be ready for the world!
If not find out what all the breeder has done to socialize the pup. Different environments, objects in the yard, interaction with other humans, dogs, cats, bikes, skateboards and loud noises. A confident, well adjusted puppy is a great puppy. Scratch that…
A confident, well adjusted, healthy, well fed, from a great planned breeding, in a solid home, is potentially a GREAT puppy! Of course what happens once it leaves…. Well that’s on you and your new four legged family member!
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