Episode 12 - What’s the Best Age to Place Puppies?

2/13/2024

This week’s question is about when puppies should go to their new homes:

“I've known breeders who keep their pups till 8 weeks, and some till 10 weeks. Some even until 12. What are the deciding factors in how long pups stay with the breeder? Does it depend on breed, the specific litter, or does it just come down to breeder preference?”

In this episode, I talk about:

Optimal age for placing puppies.
Factors that go into determining what that optimal age is.
Extenuating circumstances that influence the decision when to place puppies.

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

EPISODE 12 - TRanscript

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist, and this is a Puppy Culture potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

This week's question is about optimal age for placing puppies. And here it goes. This is the question.

I'm not a breeder, but I have a good friend who is and uses Puppy Culture. And I've helped her whelp and raise a couple of litters.

So I like to learn all I can. I have my own Puppy Culture raised pup and I love him. But I have an honestly curious question. I've known breeders who keep their puppies till eight weeks and some till ten weeks, some even until 12. What are the deciding factors for how long pups stay with the breeder? Does it depend on breed, the specific litter, or does it just come down to breeder preference?

I'm honestly just curious. And to me, there is no wrong answer. My dog's breeder keeps them till ten. But my good friend that I've worked with on her pups keeps them till eight. Two different breeds. So I'm just curious what other breeders thoughts are on this.

Great question. And it hits all the high points. I'm going to zoom out. Okay, and give you the big picture direct answer, which is that if you are a Puppy Culture breeder or doing a program similar to Puppy Culture, where you're really working with the puppies as a breeder, the optimal time to place those puppies splits the last part of the critical socialization period so that the breeder has two weeks and the puppy owner has two weeks, so the last month of the critical socialization period is split between the breeder and the puppy owner.

So just taking it as the, let's just say, very average breed. That would probably mean the critical socialization period, best practice figure, it ends at 12 weeks old. And that means that the breeder would be sending the puppy home at ten weeks. So that puppy owner has that last two weeks in the critical socialization period to customize the socialization experience.

But why do we recommend this? We recommend this because in our experience, and this is what Puppy Culture is, advocates, I should say, breeders being more experienced are generally in a better position to navigate the puppy through all those firsts in the socialization period. So first outing away from home, first playdates with outside dogs, first vet visits, first walk in an urban area, walk in a country area, first intros to livestock, first anything.

You know, there's just a lot of ways that you can go wrong. Okay. With all these first experiences and again, the breeders being more experienced are going to be quicker to read the puppies, quicker to know, you know, when to go and when to hold, and if the breeder can just lay in those first impressions with the puppies.

It just paves the way for the puppy owner. Similarly, there's a lot of things like house training and crate and confinement training that puppy owners just really struggle with. And we breeders can do this like breathing air. Okay, so the difference between placing an eight week old completely on house trained and never been introduced to a crate or confinement away from its littermates.

The difference between and placing a puppy like that and placing a puppy at ten weeks that has had two weeks of learning to sleep in its own crate and learning to be in a room by itself and with its other litter mates. It's night and day, okay, Night and day and again, breeders just it's easy for us and it's hard for the puppy owners.

Things like grooming, leash walking, you know, there are things that puppy owners just struggle with and we find second nature. So when you're looking at this end of the critical socialization period, you know, as a breeder, you don't want to hold them for the whole thing because then, you know, if the puppy owner, let's say, has a boat and you don't have access to a boat, that the puppy is not going to be acclimated and customized, the socialization is not going to be customized to what the puppy owner's lifestyle is.

So I do think it's very important that the puppy owner has the puppy for some of the critical socialization period. So splitting those last four weeks to me is the best of both worlds. Another reason I like to keep my puppies until ten weeks old is that typically my puppies are going to have a fear period somewhere between eight and nine and a half weeks, sometimes as early as seven and a half.

So let's say seven and a half to nine and a half weeks. It's you know, it's a pretty big range. And again, as a breeder, I'm experienced. I can see it. I recognize the signs. I know what to do. Okay. I think it's asking the puppy owner a lot to recognize the fear period and to recognize how to shepherd the puppy through that.

So, again, I think that the puppy is probably going to do better in an experienced breeders, or at least a motivated breeders hands during a fear period.

Now. I'm going to circle back a little bit because again, I touched on, well, why not just have the breeder keep the puppies through the entire, you know, critical socialization period?

And, you know, the answer is, first of all, the customization of the socialization experience, but also those last four weeks, I mean, they're really changing from babies who are almost don't really have an identity. Okay? They're they're just part of this litter. And a litter is an organism and they're really morphing from that to individuals that really need one on one individual attention and a lot of it.

And so it comes to a point, especially if you have a large litter where you have to start making decisions about physically, how many hours, you know, do you actually have in a day as a breeder to spend individually with each puppy? And it becomes a point of diminishing returns as as the puppies get older. And at some point, especially if you have an experienced home or, and also a home, I should say, with a good, what we call a lead pony, an adult dog that can act as sort of a role model, something for the puppy to model on.

You know, I mean, that can be a good bet if you have a large litter to start moving some of those puppies maybe a little bit earlier than others, but in any event, it does reach a critical point where you just literally as a breeder, don't have the hours in a day to devote to a nine puppy litter to really do them justice.

And again, so at that point, the puppies really need to go to their homes. Now. That sounds great. And you may all be thinking, “Well, there it is, you keep the puppies until ten weeks.” But it's not that easy. Not that easy at all, because a couple of things. First of all, developmentally, you know, puppies are at least two weeks different average by breed.

And I talk about that study all the time where they found a sixteen day difference in average time between breeds that the puppies showed an initial fear response. So that would be around the five week fear response. And at the risk of being boring, I'm also going to mention the study that showed that 95% of German Shepherd puppies had a fear response at five weeks and only 5% of Labradors.

So you have to take into account breeder expertise here. Like my my friend that breeds Norwich Terriers at 12 weeks old, they're still nursing, whereas my friends that breed German Shepherds at nine weeks old, they are seriously taking on their other littermates and starting to mistrust novelty. So those puppies are approaching the end of their critical socialization period, you know, at nine, ten weeks, whereas the Norwich Terriers are still very neotenous, they're still babies at 12 weeks.

So you so there's just no answer to the question. Okay. Except for your expertise as a breeder to clear the fear period and then split that time between you and the puppy owner in those last four weeks of the critical socialization period. So the puppy owner gets a crack at customizing critical social socialization and also gets the puppy when it's in need of intense individual training and attention.

And you have already had a chance to lay in all those foundations and first experiences that can be stumbling blocks for the average puppy owner.

Now, all that having been said, I just want to pause here and say there is no magic in warehousing puppies for an extended period of time. Okay. So if if you're a breeder that for whatever reason, you're either unable or unwilling to do active socialization of the puppies and you know, it happens.

We have crises in our community where, you know, some a breeder will fall ill or a breeder spouse will fall ill or there's some other calamity and the breeder just can't do the work, just holding on to the puppies for, you know, two more weeks than you normally would is it's not doing the puppies any service.

Okay. So I'm not going to lie to you, keeping the puppies for me from, you know, 8 to 10 weeks, there are times really where you just feel like, okay, I'm broken, I can't do this anymore. It's intense. It's a lot. You get up every day. I mean, keeping those puppies on a schedule, doing things, enrichment, training, it's it's like a full time job. But it is so fantastic at the same., by the same token, it is such an exhilarating, wonderful time.

But it is nerve wracking and you always feel like you're not getting enough done. So, you know, that's a different conversation. But the bigger point is if for any reason you can't do that, okay, or you don't want to, or you just you just sure you can't. Even if it's just like, I don't know, I don't have the expertise. I can't do it.

The puppies, you know, are probably going to be better off going to their homes a little bit earlier where at least they're going to get some individual attention and puppy class and training.

So looking at this from a slightly different perspective, from the puppy buyer's perspective. So you're a puppy buyer and you're looking at this breeder and you're wondering, you know, what is the responsible age to place puppies?

What's the best age to place puppies? And is this breeder following that responsible ethical placement age? And the operant question is not so much specifically what age the breeder is placing the puppies as what is the breeder doing with the puppies while they have them? Are they keeping them long enough to complete important protocols, or are they just warehousing them?

Are they actually doing the work or are they just throwing toys in a pen and leaving them to be? Are they being careful to keep them through their fear, period? So these are the kinds of questions that as a puppy owner, when you're looking at a breeder, you want to ask yourself basically, what are they doing with these puppies while they have them?

Okay. Now, there are some outside limits to this. I think it's safe to say that a breeder who's looking to place puppies at six weeks old is not doing what needs to be done with those puppies, at least in terms of what we at Puppy Culture believe should be done with puppies. And when I say Puppy Culture, I just always hasten to add, listen, there's lots of good breeders, great breeders who don't do Puppy Culture or never heard of Puppy Culture, but they do essentially similar protocols.

It's not that I made up the protocols and Puppy Culture. I mean, there are things that breeders have been doing, you know, forever that were taught to me by other breeders. So the point is six weeks. I'm just saying you can't be responsibly placing those puppies because you could not possibly have been doing what you need to do with those puppies in that amount of time.

So all that having been said, there are occasions where I would place a puppy at a younger age than ten weeks. For instance, if I had a giant breed puppy, okay, If I was breeding giant breed puppies and I was sending a puppy home with someone that had to fly the puppy home and the puppy at seven weeks was small enough to fit in to a Sherpa that could fit under the seat in the airplane so the owner could take the puppy home in the cabin.

But if we waited till ten weeks, the puppy would be too big and would have to go in cargo in a crate. I mean, I'm sending the puppy home at seven weeks. I'm not waiting until ten weeks. I'm not giving a puppy that experience at ten weeks old. Again, you know, then it comes down to ethically placing the puppy right?

So I'm not going to send a seven week old puppy home to a first time puppy owner that doesn't have another puppy in the house or a dog in the house, rather. But, you know, an experienced dog owner, maybe even a professional dog trainer that has, you know, two really good lead pony, shaper dogs at home, heck, yeah, I'm going to send that puppy home in seven weeks, over ten weeks to save it that experience of going in cargo and, you know, it comes up frequently that people say, well, they shouldn't be separated from their littermates so young. And it is true that I would not separate six weeks old. I wouldn't place a six week old puppies, but just, you know, breeders, we do split the litters up frequently when we co-breed litters.

If we have a big litter, we frequently will split litters at six weeks old. So it's not like they have to stay with their mother. I mean, normally, again, for us the dams are done with them at five weeks. So by six weeks we do some cut times, share the workload just so that we can do more with the puppies.

Because if you split them between two breeders, you know, if there's just that many more hands to work with the puppies. And the reason I mention it is because I want to distinguish being placed as an individual puppy, like taken out of the litter and just that one puppy taken away and put in a home versus splitting up litters, which we do all the time.

You know, as a closing statement on this, I'm just going to say I get I get how frustrating this is. Okay. As as a puppy seeker, I understand you have a specific breed in mind and you're looking for a breeder that's doing all these best practices as far as you know, what they're doing with the puppies. And when they're placing the puppies, it it's frustrating because it's hard to find it all in one package.

You know, it's it's hard to find a breeder that has puppies available that's in the breed that you want, that's doing all the right things. And I have experienced this myself recently. I was trying to help my sister find a kitten of a certain breed and, you know, finding one that of that breed, that all the correct health testing was being done, that they appeared to have good temperaments and that the breeder was doing more than just warehousing the kittens and then shipping them off at a certain date.

I mean, it's not easy. So unless you're flexible about breed, in which case I recommend you just get on the Puppy Culture discussion group and look at what people are posting and go for those breeders and or rescue foster people that are really doing a good job in doing the work and showing you they're doing a good job and doing the work in the group.

You know, it's difficult. I get it. It's difficult. Also, as a breeder, I understand how frustrating this answer is because, you know, we all just want to be told what to do, right? I mean, we all want to be told, you place the puppies at ten, you know, place puppies at ten weeks. That's what you do. And this is your list of things that you do each day going up to ten weeks.

And this is how you do it. But, you know, I'm just telling you it's it's not that easy. I mean, you can certainly how shall I say, you can put together a program and do it that way and do it the same way every time. Right? You can put together a program and say, I don't care, This is how you do it.

You know, if you have X breed, this is how you do it. And you do it this way and you do it every time. Or you could just come up with a universal program and hand out sheets and say, This is what you do on day 27. That's what you do on day 28. And you know what I mean?

You'll be right probably 80% of the time. But you know that other 20% of the time, if you don't use your judgment and if you're not nimble about switching it up and flexible, you know, you can wind up doing damage to those puppies. You know, to the point I just had this situation recently where I was placing a puppy with someone who was going to have to fly the puppy.

And I told her she needed to buy a flexible ticket because things can change. You just don't know when that puppy is going to go in or out of a fear period or what's going to happen. And it's so happens with this particular puppy. He wound up growing so fast, so early, like way bigger, and it was a repeat breeding and these puppies in this litter were like 25% bigger than the puppies in the first breeding for no reason at all.

So I called her and I said, You're going to have to change your ticket and come five days earlier because this puppy is going to outgrow his Sherpa. He's not going to be able to fly in the cabin. If we wait until, you know, when we were going to do it, which was ten and a half weeks old. So there you go. That's a final tip, not necessarily about when to place your puppies, but if you're ever having people fly in to get puppies, make sure they get a flexible ticket.

If you like this podcast, you'll love our puppy course available at madcapuniversity.com. Breeders, we have a course for you too at madcapuniversity.com com and if you're interested in sending home a copy of our puppy course with your puppy owners, we offer a nice breeder discount on four or more copies of the course.

Well, that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.