Choosing Your Puppy

 We care about our new owners and puppies alike, therefore when selling a puppy we listen first to what the prospective owner is purchasing it for. After we have determined the  persons needs we try to match the best puppy to meet their needs. We are here after the purchase for support day or night to answer any questions or concerns you may have, and if we don’t know the answer to your question or concern we will find it for you as quickly as possible. 

We do not allow people to select their own pups. We know it seems hard to not get to choose your own puppies however, we do not feel that doing so would be in the best interest of our puppies OR our clients. No one, no matter what experience level, can visit a litter a few times and get as complete and thorough an understanding of each pup's individual personality as we can after living with them for several weeks.  We do allow your input into the process, in that we allow you to tell us if you have a preference of a puppy you have seen on the website or a color preference, but we still will give your our opinion on which puppy we feel best meets your needs.  You can give us your 1st, 2nd or 3rd choice and then we will best determine which puppy meets your needs from that choice.  We want this to be a pleasant experience for everyone and a perfect match between the new owner and the puppy.   

Beginning at birth, we spend a significant amount of time each day handling the pups, and as they grow we carefully observe their behaviors and social interactions to gain an understanding of their individual personalities. As time goes on, tug playing and ball playing and the many additional socialization experiences we provide to our pups also serve as important parts of our evaluation process. We keep careful eye on each pup's reaction to new environments and situations, as this provides great additional insight into that pup's inherent personality.

We also do not sell pups on a "first come, first served" basis with regards to the order in which deposits are received. Prior to accepting a deposit we spend a significant amount of time getting to know our clients and learning about their experience, personality and goals. We then carefully select the pup in the litter that is the most suitable. If the litter does not contain a pup that we feel is a good match, we will offer the client his/her choice of either a refund of deposit, or to transfer the deposit to a different litter.

We absolutely will not sell a pup if we are not confident that pup and owner will both be happy with the arrangement. Essentially, each person gets the "pick of the litter" in the sense that each pup is carefully matched to each individual customer. In this way, we ensure that each client receives the pup most suited to his/her lifestyle and aspirations, and each pup is placed in the home that will best meet it's needs and realize it's potential.  We have had great success in this method and feel that this is the best method to best serve both our puppies and clients.

Below you will find general information on how we raise our puppies and why we feel we can confidently choose the correct puppy to meet your needs. 

Raising and Socialization:

Our pups are handled several times a day, every day, from birth until they go to their new homes.

Our pups are also exposed to just about every possible facet of normal household activity. The puppy gate placed in the doorway of the puppy room allows them observe the world beyond their enclosure and watch the general goings on around here. This means that from the time their senses develop enough to allow them to do so, they see, hear and smell people, dogs, lawn mowers, the TV and stereo, the vacuum, pots and pans banging around in the kitchen at dinner time. Mom yelling at whichever dog is currently in trouble! 

Once the pups are fully mobile and aware, they begin taking forays outdoors and throughout the rest of our house on a daily basis. Inside they get to run around on a variety of flooring surfaces (vinyl, hardwood, carpet) and play tag and peek-a-boo over and under the furniture. They raid closets and carry off mom’s shoes that she forgot to put away. Drag the small throw rug out of the bathroom, pull the blanket off the couch and the clothes out of the laundry baskets, and confront large, noisy things like the dishwashers and the blow dryer up close and personal.

Outside they go exploring on the training field and have their own personal play area set up so they can be left outside to play without getting run over by the larger dogs.

Soon after the puppies are born they are fitted with a collar that is helps us to identify the puppies and gives us the opportunity to evaluate them individually. 

Much of the evaluation process is simple observation of how the pups behave and react as they begin to explore the world and we expose them to a wide variety of new sights, smells, sounds, objects and environments. It's amazing how much information about each pup's personality can be gleaned by just sitting back and watching as they experience new things, interact with one another and with other people and dogs, and adjust to the changing dynamics within the litter that occurs as they work out their own pecking order. Both in their puppy enclosure and strewn throughout the house they have access to a plethora of balls, kongs, stuffy toys, squeaky toys, nylabones, tug ropes and most every other dog toy imaginable. Watching them play together is not only enjoyable, but insightful as well. As they chew and carry and shake toys, run and chase and scuffle with one another, we are able to observe additional valuable information about each pup's drive and temperament.

Of course, we don't just sit back to watch them play. We interact and play with them often too, both together in groups and individually. As they continue to grow and their drives, senses and coordination continue to develop, this play becomes more intense and purposeful, and also more structured using specific training toys such as tugs, leather and burlap rags and balls on string. This play serves not only to continue to foster drive development and imprint the pups with basic skills that will prove useful later in their training careers, but it also serves as an important part of our evaluation process of the puppies. We are able to discern differences in pups between when they play together with their littermates verses playing with us one-on-one, and how the presence of littermates affects their behavior.

Formal Puppy Tests

Like many breeders, we also do formal puppy aptitude testing at 7 weeks.  The puppy test is conducted in a location where the pups have never been, by a person they do not know. We observe the tests, but have no involvement and keep ourselves hidden as it is important that the pups are unaware of our presence, lest it influence their behavior and thus skew the test results. Our puppy tester then puts them through a series of exercises designed to assess a wide range of different aspects of drive, nerve, resiliency and various other temperament characteristics. While this puppy testing is a part of the evaluation and home placement process, it is actually only a very small part. Through everything else we have done with the pups over the previous weeks, we already have a very comprehensive understanding of each individual pup's temperament and potential working ability. By this point we even have a pretty good idea of which pup is most suitable for which customer on our reservation list. What we do gain from the puppy tests is the opportunity to see if the behaviors and responses that each pup has consistently shown over the proceeding weeks, and thus our expectations of how each pup will act during each phase of the tests, will hold true in the testing environment. It is very insightful to see how the pups react when they are removed from the safe, comfortable environment where they have spent their entire lives thus far and are placed with a strange person in a completely foreign location where everything looks, sounds and smells strange and where there are no littermates or familiar, trusted people around to provide support and reassurance. Are the pups rattled by this experience, or do they confidently approach it as an exciting new adventure? Do the pups maintain the same sort of drive levels and general behavioral patterns we are used to seeing at home, or does the whole testing environment cause inhibition or change in what is their normal behavior? How the pups act under these circumstances compared to what we are used to seeing from them is one of the final pieces to the puzzle of assessing temperament and working potential. This, combined with the extensive knowledge we already have of the many facets of each pup's personality, helps us consistently make successful matches of pups to new owners.

For more information on choosing a working puppy check out this link to Service dogs of America's article on choosing a working puppy.

   Angie Young

German Shepherd Breeder

Chattanooga, Tennessee

423-595-8317

camelotshepherds@comcast.net

 

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