Almost everybody picks wrong on their first visit, and almost everybody picks wrong in the same direction. They choose the puppy who comes to them first.
That puppy is not necessarily the best puppy for you. It is the boldest puppy in the litter, which is useful information, and which means something quite specific: this is a dog who will be confident, forward, and busy, and who will need somebody willing to do the work that a confident, forward, busy dog requires. If that is you, wonderful. If you were hoping for a calm dog to lie by the fire, you have just chosen the opposite of what you wanted, on the basis of thirty seconds.
What to actually watch
Sit on the floor and do nothing for ten minutes. That is the whole technique. Puppies that have been ignored for ten minutes stop performing and start behaving normally, and normal is what you are trying to see.
Then watch for these things.
- Recovery, not absence of fear. Something startles the litter. What you want is not the puppy who did not react, you want the puppy who reacted and then went back to investigate a few seconds later. Recovery is the trait that predicts a resilient adult dog. A puppy who never reacts to anything is often simply shut down.
- Willingness to be handled. Pick a puppy up and hold it gently on its back for a few seconds. Some wriggling is normal and healthy. Total rigid panic, or complete limpness, are both worth asking the breeder about.
- Interest in people over interest in the other puppies. A puppy who breaks off from the litter to come and check on the human is showing you the trait that makes training easy for twelve years.
- How the puppy sounds and moves. Clear eyes, clean ears, no persistent cough, an even gait with no favouring of a leg. This is your vet’s job, not yours, but you can notice.
What to ignore
Colour. Sex, mostly, since temperament varies far more within a sex than between them. Which puppy is biggest at eight weeks, since that predicts almost nothing about adult size. And whether the puppy looked cute in the photographs, since they all do.
The thing almost nobody does
Ask the breeder which puppy they would give you.
A breeder who has spent eight weeks on the floor with this litter knows things about these puppies that you cannot possibly learn in an hour. Which one settles first. Which one is loud but soft underneath. Which one will struggle if the house is empty all day. If they are any good, they have been quietly matching puppies to the families on their list since about week five.
And if a breeder has no opinion about which puppy suits you, or is happy for you to take whichever one you point at, that tells you they have not been watching. That is a bigger red flag than anything you will see in the puppies themselves.
Questions worth asking on the visit
- Can I see the mother, with the puppies, now?
- Where have these puppies spent their first eight weeks? Can I see the room?
- What has this litter already met? Vacuum cleaner, doorbell, visitors, car, other dogs?
- Which of these puppies is the most confident, and which is the least?
- What would you do if I chose one you thought was wrong for me?
That last question is the one that matters. The answer tells you what kind of breeder you are dealing with, and it costs nothing to ask.