Puppy Buyer expectations - Page 3

A puppy doesn't need "good grounding" whatever that is before 8 weeks of age and before it goes out to its new home. Simple obedience can be taught by most people very quickly as long as the dog has the natural genetic drives to eat or play, really the only thing that a breeder should do is play with toys and do a little food work just to gauge which dogs in the litter have the higher drives.

I forget that when speaking on forums we only discuss the extremes. The idea that breeders don't handle the puppies or just let the mother raise them for 8 weeks is a joke. If some of you would even consider those types of breeders (if any even exist) you have no idea what you're looking at in the first place. Those that use that mythical breeder who doesn't do anything from whelp to sale, are just using a radical argument to try to prove a non-existent point.

Many breeders still have to help the dam clean the whelping box and then later the area they hold the puppies. That means handling the puppies and giving them human contact. Most are human and will have visitors over the 8 week period the puppies are there, so they'll meet other people. Something like a car? Leash? That's stuff the dog will have to get over anyways. Doesn't matter if they do it at 5 weeks or at 8. Again, any breeder that makes a big point to their customers about that kind of stuff is using it as marketing to make people feel warm and fuzzy and believe this breeder is better than some other one that doesn't tell those stories. Breeders that breed dogs with solid nerves, don't worry about something like socializing to a car...they just know their dogs will do fine with it.

As a "buyer" of 8 weeks old puppies I only want to see healthy pups, not shy, having a lot of space to move, play, and to learn by themseves to "go potty" outside. Not raised in a "cotton ball", but raised like dogs. I hate unclean dogs, and a puppy able to leave its whelping box on its own mostly is a "clean" dog...

I don´t need "collar- and leash training", I am not interested in "crate training" ( I don´t use crates ), and - honestly - I am glad in case nobody started any "obedience training" with "my" dog. I want to make my own faults...

They should have seen a couple of people ( over here mostly family, friends, the breedwarden, and potential buyers ), but for me they don´t need to have been outside of their own area during the first 8 weeks of their life.

I even don´t really like a ride to the vet - a lot of pups are sick after leaving the vet - because of that the vets tend to visit the litters, not the litters the vet.

A genetically sound pup will be just fine.

Love the way you acknowledge that most breeders are humans, BW ! Yeah, you would think everyone who breeds a litter of pups keeps them clean and gets them used to being handled, wouldn't you ? But unfortunately we live in the age of the puppy farmer who wants to make a quick buck as easily as possible, and the new owner who must have a dog, now, whether they know anything about dogs or not.  Recipe for difficulties from the get-go.  (Obviously, not every breeder or every customer).  And lots  of those buyers - and many amateur breeders  just starting out - are reading this site. So sure, there is an element of exageration;  we have found  it has some value.

Guess you didn't read the OP or the type of breeder that is being discussed. Just need to add made up assumptions to the discussion so that you could be right.

Oh, I read it. Didn't have to believe everything in it, though.

Besides, all discussions spread a little, once they get over one
page in length... wider audiences, and all that. ;)

Happy new year to you.

Susie, thumbs up!