How to Pick a Puppy From a Litter

Pick the puppy in the middle. Not the one that barrels over its littermates to reach you, and not the one pressed into the back corner. In fifteen years and three thousand dogs, the boldest puppy in the litter and the shyest puppy in the litter are the two I meet again at eighteen months for behavior problems, and the middle puppy is the one whose owners I never hear from.

That is not a comment on your ability. Bold puppies grow into dogs with high arousal and low frustration tolerance, and they need a handler who trains daily and never gets lazy. Shy puppies grow into dogs who need careful, patient socialization on a schedule, and they often carry a fear response for life. Both are workable. Neither is what most families are actually signing up for.

Visit at seven weeks, and visit twice

Seven to eight weeks is the window where temperament is visible and not yet buried under whatever the environment has done to it. Before six weeks you are looking at noise. After ten weeks in a barren kennel, you are looking at the kennel.

Go twice, on different days, at different times. A puppy that just woke up and a puppy that has been playing for forty minutes are two different animals, and one visit gives you one snapshot. If a breeder will not let you visit twice, or will not let you see the mother, that is your answer about the breeder.

Watch the mother closely. She matters more than any test you run on the puppies. If she is friendly, settled, and willing to come to you, that is a good sign for the litter. If she is frantic, cowering, or crated out of sight with an excuse, walk.

Five tests worth running

Do these one at a time, with a single puppy, away from the litter, in a quiet room. The whole thing takes four minutes per puppy.

1. Approach. Set the puppy down six feet away and crouch. You want a puppy that comes over within about ten seconds, tail up, and makes contact. A puppy that sprints in and climbs your face is high drive. A puppy that will not close the gap in thirty seconds is a project.
2. Follow. Stand up and walk away. Most well socialized puppies follow. One that does not even notice you left is more independent than a first time owner wants.
3. Restraint. Roll the puppy gently onto its side and hold with one hand for fifteen seconds. Expect a few seconds of struggle, then settling. A puppy that struggles for the whole fifteen seconds and then screams has a low tolerance for handling. A puppy that goes completely limp instantly is on the shut down end.
4. Noise. Drop a set of keys onto a hard floor about six feet away. You want a startle, then recovery and investigation within five seconds. A puppy that startles and does not come back to look is a puppy that will be harder to socialize.
5. Retrieve. Crumple paper into a ball and toss it a few feet. A puppy that chases it and brings it anywhere near you is showing you cooperation, which is the single trait that makes the next two years easier.

Run all five, then pick the puppy that scored in the middle across the set. Not the one that aced everything.

What does not predict anything

• Coat color and markings. No relationship to temperament within a litter. Pick the color you like last, after you have picked the temperament.
• Which puppy picks you. This is the most repeated advice in dog ownership and it is worthless. The puppy that picks you is usually the one with the least impulse control, because it got to you first.
• Biggest or smallest. Weight at seven weeks tells you almost nothing about adult size or personality.
• Which one is quietest in the pen. Quiet in a group can mean settled, and it can mean overwhelmed. That is why you test individually.

Questions to ask before you hand over money

• What have these puppies stood on? You want grass, gravel, tile, metal, and something wobbly. Surface variety before eight weeks is one of the strongest predictors of a confident adult.
• How many people have handled them? Fewer than ten different humans is thin.
• Have they heard household noise? Vacuum, dishwasher, television, doorbell. Litters raised in a garage or a barn miss all of it.
• What do the parents do all day? A working line dog bred from two dogs who compete in bite sports is not a couch dog, no matter how cute the puppy is.
• What is your take back policy? Any breeder worth buying from will take the dog back at any age. If they will not, they are not standing behind their breeding.

Picking from a rescue litter

Same tests, lower confidence. You usually will not have the mother, the history, or a reliable age. What you can still do is the individual testing, and you should weight the noise test and the restraint test heavily, because those two catch the puppies who will need the most careful handling.

With a rescue litter I would also budget for the possibility that the dog is not the breed on the paperwork. Size and drive can both land well outside what you were told, and you want to be honest with yourself about whether you can live with that.

Once you have picked

The first week decides more than the breeder did. Crate placement, feeding schedule, potty timing, and how much freedom the puppy gets are all things you either set up correctly on day one or spend three months undoing. I put the whole first week plan into a free blueprint here. Download the First 7 Days blueprint Read it before the puppy comes home, not after.

Ready to train your dog?

Every drill in this article comes from the WorldWide K9 Academy course library. If you want the full step by step system, start with the $5 intro course.