Visiting the Puppies Before 8 Weeks
Can We Visit the Puppies Before They Are Ready to Leave?
We completely understand how exciting it is to be waiting for your new puppy and how much families would love the opportunity to meet, play, cuddle and spend time with them before they are ready to come home.
However, we do not allow in-person visits with our litters between birth and 8 weeks of age.
This policy has developed through many years of breeding experience and exists for several important reasons, with the health, wellbeing and security of our dogs and puppies always coming first.
Protecting Mum & Her Puppies
The first weeks of a puppy’s life are incredibly important, and we want our mums to be able to raise their babies in a calm, familiar environment without unnecessary disruption.
Although one visit may seem harmless, a litter can have many families eagerly waiting to meet their puppies. Allowing every family and others who simply want to meet the babies to visit would mean a constant stream of unfamiliar people, scents and activity around mum and her litter.
Every mother is different, but we believe this period should be as peaceful and stress-free as possible.
Biosecurity & Disease Prevention
Young puppies are particularly vulnerable to infectious disease while their immune systems are still developing and before they have completed their vaccinations.
Viruses, bacteria, fungal infections and parasites can be unknowingly carried into an environment on shoes, clothing, hands and vehicles without someone ever realising they have been exposed.
Unfortunately, many years ago we experienced contagious illnesses enter our environment following well-intentioned visits in the past. Those experiences reinforced just how important strict biosecurity is when raising young puppies.
For this reason, our puppies are raised in a carefully managed environment with their mum, our family and appropriate members of our own pack while we minimise unnecessary outside traffic.
It may seem overly cautious, but when the health of an entire litter could potentially be affected, it simply isn’t a risk we are prepared to take.
How Will We See Our Puppy Grow?
Not being able to visit certainly doesn’t mean you won’t get to watch your puppy grow!
We love sharing their development with our families and provide regular photos and videos, at least twice each week, so you can follow their journey, watch their personalities emerge and see the environment in which they are being raised.
We are also more than happy to FaceTime with our puppy families, giving you the opportunity to see the puppies interacting and playing in their home environment and, of course, ask us any questions along the way.
We are transparent about our breeding program and welcome questions from our puppy families throughout the entire process.
Why Doesn’t a Visit Tell You Everything About a Puppy?
Another reason we don’t believe families need to visit a litter in order to get to know the puppies is that a single visit provides only a very small snapshot of who each puppy actually is.
Puppies have active periods, sleepy periods, confident moments and quieter moments throughout every day. The puppy who is normally the most energetic and outgoing in the litter may have just finished a big play session and sleep through your entire visit, while a puppy who is usually more relaxed may happen to be full of energy at that particular moment.
You could easily spend an hour with a litter and walk away with a completely different impression of a puppy than someone visiting only a few hours later.
Their personalities also continue to develop significantly throughout those early weeks. We have the advantage of living with our puppies and observing them every day from birth. We see how they interact with their littermates, new experiences and environments over time - not just how they behave during one particular moment.
This gives us a much more complete picture of each puppy’s individual personality, confidence, energy levels and characteristics, which we can openly discuss with their prospective families.
We absolutely take each family’s preferences into consideration and want you to feel excited and comfortable about the puppy joining your family. Our role is simply to help you understand the whole puppy, rather than forming an impression based on a single interaction.
Security & Privacy
There is also another important consideration - security.
Our dogs have developed a significant following, and their unusual, unique appearance naturally attracts interest. Unfortunately, breeders can be targets for puppy theft, and inviting people we do not personally know into our home and around young litters creates a risk we are simply no longer comfortable taking. While we have security cameras throughout our rural property, we have unfortunately seen situations within the wider breeding community where security footage has done little to prevent an incident or provide meaningful recourse afterwards. For us, prevention and limiting unnecessary access to our puppies and property is the safest approach.
While the overwhelming majority of people who contact us have completely genuine intentions, we cannot assume this will always be the case.
This doesn’t mean families can never meet our
dogs. Where appropriate, we are happy to organise meet-and-greets with members of our adult pack in a safe public environment, such as joining us for a pack walk at the river or the beach.
Their Safety Comes First
We understand that waiting eight weeks can feel like forever when you’re excited to welcome your puppy home.
Until the day your puppy leaves with you, however, their health, safety and wellbeing are our responsibility. Every decision we make during those first eight weeks is made with that responsibility in mind.
Keeping our young litters protected from unnecessary stress, disease exposure and security risks is one of those decisions.
Thank you for respecting our policy and trusting us to give your puppy the safest and best possible start to life. We promise - they are worth the wait. 🐾