How do you pick the pick of the litter

From the last litter we have 1 female for ourselves (well me actually), to bred when she´s ready for it. I have chosen her on the first day she was the fattest, most independend one around. First day would try to get out of the whelping box. She´s now 9 mo. and a medium height, very heavy built girl with a good grip, stabile. She´s just my little girl


bragging I know, Anne at 7 mo.

I did one of Battaglia's short seminars. He really does know dog breeding and had some great ideas on improving a breeding program. I think everyone left the seminar having learned something. Not sure about his videos but I think any material is going to make some contribution to what you know.

Both the breeder and I picked my bitch the day I saw the litter (day 2). She said \"That mauve puppy just screams bloody murder\" .... mauve was first born girl .... I said THATS THE PUPPY. I could've picked her the day they were born.

Obviously we watched the litter grow up but as they did, she remained the pushiest, most dominant female in the litter. She was the first to explore the puppy pen when they moved from the whelping box, the first to explore the yard when we let them in the yard .... she was always crawling over things or under things .... 10 feet from the rest of the littermates .... and later when they'd all go exploring together, she was the one knocking potted plants over on her brothers!

One breeder once told me that they pick the puppy before its even dry because its the one that chooses the best nipple on the bitch. I also believe that is true.

Well I'm not an expert but that sounds like the right puppy. The best nipples are the two at the end (caudal) .... they have the most milk and you will usually find your fattest puppies are hogging those nipples. This is usually where my bitch was (under one her gigantic brothers). An old time breeder told me that the puppy he saw go to that nipple the first day was always the pick puppy. From there on, the puppies on those nipples (IMO) shows who's dominant in the litter. The fact that this pups willing to move away from the group shows confidence and security. All puppies eventually want to get out and explore. This puppy just is ahead of the game. One of the boys in our litter was \"red boy\" .... he was twice the size of everyone at birth and first born. He was absolutely gigantic! Eventually the size evened out but he always remained the puppy that slept on the other side of the pen. Very independent. He is now a big impressive young man (2 years old) going through dominance issues because the owner didn't realize how much dog he would become.

Interesting thing my breeder did when transfering the puppies from the whelping box to the puppy pen (8 X 8). She put all the puppies in a makeshift tote (lid on so it was dark) with an opening for the puppies to crawl out. Funny thing with my puppies uncle....it was the only litter of puppies she ever had where she had to PULL him out of the tote. He was the \"cowardly lion\" of the litter and always remained that way through adult hood. I can't remember but I think my mauve puppy and red puppy were the first two to head out of the tote and explore the puppy pen. These are the kinds of things you'll want to make notes on. For some reason, the drive to explore translates well to a good working dog later on.


Keep watching those puppies grow. I was lucky that my breeder liked me and had a spare bedroom. I helped her with the litter at various stages and stayed with her for a few weeks as they developed. Its priceless information to just sit and watch the puppies interact with eachother. I would sit and watch for hours, taking in their temperaments. The only thing I wish I had done was shoot more video and take notes. Particularly video of their first time in the pen, first time outdoors, and then typical play sessions outside.

Hope this helps!

Picking pups

Last summer I went through all of this for my current puppy. I had \"pick of the litter\" and wanted to carefully evaluate the litter to ensure there was a nice working prospect in the bunch, and if so, which pup. Here is some stuff that I found useful:

The Puppy Puzzle video by Pat Hastings - basically shows how to evaluate puppies conformationally - goes into signs of potential problems later on in the pup's life. While I know you are more concerned about temperament, bad front and/or rear angulation will kill you in this sport. Can't do the wall if you don't have the structure to handle it ;-)

Another Piece of the Puzzle book by Pat Hastings - Has a series of articles in it written about evaluating puppies for temperament etc.

Peak Performance book by Chris Zink - Good all around book by a sports med vet. Fantastic seminar if she is ever in your area.

I combined two puppy evaluation tests for the litter I was looking at:

The Volhard Puppy Aptitude Test -

http://www.volhard.com/puppy/pat.htm

The PAWS Working Dog Evaluation -

http://www.malinut.com/write/paws.shtml

I lived about 350 miles away from the breeder of the litter so I went and saw the pups at 5.5 weeks and than for the final evaluation at 7.5 weeks. I had a local friend check out the pups at 3 weeks as well. At 5.5 weeks I did stacked photos, head shots, and brought a bunch of fun stuff like chamois tugs, plastic balls in a tub (like the ones you see at McDonald Playlands) among other things. I watched how the pups interacted with humans as well as their littermates, whether they would tug and fetch, and what their response was to being put in the tub of balls.

I did as many environmental things as I could as I knew that the breeder did not know about the \"Rule of Sevens\":

http://www.katwala.com/sevens.html

This is something that I recommend any breeder doing.

At 7.5 weeks, I had a Malinois breeder friend of mine do the final evaluation. Interestingly enough, the pup I had liked in pictures at 3 weeks and continued to like at 5.5 weeks was the final choice. He just had that *something* special.... I did up a binder with a section for each of the 5 pups with photos at 1, 3, 5.5, and 7.5 weeks as well as my written evaluations at 5.5 and 7.5 weeks. I could send you a email copy of a pup's written evaluation if you would like to see what I did.

For the pup I kept, I put up a photo page that shows the \"structure\" progression of the pup so you can kind of see what I did in the first few weeks (and months for that matter ):

http://www.pbase.com/cattledog/growing_boy

One of the things that I wanted to ensure with the pup I got was that he had good rear angulation as his sire and uncle did not have great rear angulation. Luckily, this pup is an improvement on both his sire and uncle.

Re: Picking pups

Ingrid Rosenquist said:

... I did up a binder with a section for each of the 5 pups with photos at 1, 3, 5.5, and 7.5 weeks as well as my written evaluations at 5.5 and 7.5 weeks. I could send you a email copy of a pup's written evaluation if you would like to see what I did...

Click to expand...

Ingrid,

That was absolutely the most amazing response. :lol: Thank you so very much. I mean that was as thorough as anything I have read to date… including a 200 page book. I know what book I will be ordering today :wink:

You are a gem. If you don’t mind emailing the binder to me that would be awesome

Do you mind telling me what you saw in the 3 week old pup that made him stand out as special? At that age they are still so young… but if you have an inside secret I would love to hear it.

And Bob, you too :lol: - From birth to 3 weeks when they are stills so boring are there any little clues I should watch for?

My pups are only 13 days old but one puppy seems really independent she seems to prefer to sleep off by herself. Then I have another pup that mouths everything already. He’ll try to suck on your face or the floor. It funny to watch him.

Ingrid thanks again for all time you put into that post.

Ingrid's post reminded me of something a top breeder friend of mine did (she has 40+ years experience and her breeding program is known all over the world for the impact she has on her breed).....


She is a real stickler about puppy diaries. She did videos of every litter she bred .... each puppy stacked and movement as well as just playing.

She also took polariod photographs of each puppy stacked front/rear/side and labeled them on the back of the photo. (polariods, BTW are great because I took regular photos and when I developed them a week later I realized how bad certain photos were and it was too late to take new ones of that particular week!)

Anyways she said she laid all the photos out for each puppy for each week (1 wk, 2 wk, 3 wk). Then picked her favorite puppy from each set of photos.

She said she knew her Pick of Litter because when she flipped over the photograph, it was the same puppy throughout the weeks. This, of course, was a conformation breeder but it was not only valuable documentation of the puppies progress but was great to compare later on when she had bred her first multi BISS winning (breeder/owner/handled) dog, she had photos of him and later picked other pick puppies by comparing him at those ages to the current pups.

While I'm thinking about it, \"Winning with Purebred Dogs\" by Alvin and Beverly Grossman has a great chapter on picking puppies, that includes their own documantion of a Cocker Spanial litter. Again, conformation but its the documation that is important. The more you record, the better. Especially as they develop and start offering up more behaviors and responses to their environment.