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.