How does picking out your new puppy work in our program?

So let’s talk puppy picking, and how we do it.  
People reserve their puppies, up to 15 months in advance.   Most often the litters are booked to 8th pick puppy prior to birth, but sometimes we have a few extra spots available after birth too!

Choosing the Sex of your puppy:

People reserve up to 4 {hopeful female} spots, and up to 4 {hopeful male} spots pre birth. 

If extra’s are born in a different sex they are welcome to switch sexes after birth.  No one picks their actual puppy until 7 to 7.5 weeks old, when we can tell them much more about each puppy, and who they are starting to become.   If say only 2 girls, and 7 boys were born.   The girl reservations have the choice to stay in their litter, and switch sexes, or move to the next available litter, and stay in their sex choice.  This has only happened 2 or 3 times, but it can happen as we do not get to pick which sexes are born, and how many puppies arrive, and survive.    We know from lots of experience the numbers that usually arrive, and we work off of that! 

Temperament and Personalities:

For a couple of years we did temperament and personality testing on every litter before puppy picking.  However it was a very long 4 day process and each test required 4 people to do the different parts of each test.   2 days to complete the testing and 2 days to write up all of the findings.   We studied closely for 12 litters straight and came up with the conclusion that there was just not a correlation to how a puppy completed the testing on who they truly had the potential to become.   Their little personalities are just barely starting to emerge at 7 weeks old.   So much of who they become in the end comes down to all of the training, love, boundaries and rules, ect... that they get from their family once they get home.    Almost every single OES if properly bred has the potential to be a therapy or service dog, if they had the right set of training and right socialization start from their breeder.   

So now instead of doing the testing that took so much time and just really did not tell you much of where they would be in a year.    We now closely pay attention daily to who they are becoming what they excel at what they might have fears of, who is the bravest, who needs encouragement to try new things, ect.... ect....  And then at 7 weeks old we do a little write up on each puppy and tell you what we have observed about each of them so far.   This helps you know more about them before choosing the perfect puppy for you. 

The Order of puppy picking:

Puppy picking happens in order of how the reservations came in.  1st reservation to come in has first pick overall puppy spot.  8th reservation to come in has 8th pick overall puppy spot.

Your puppy's tail:

Because we allow something special that most breeders don’t allow the choice of full tail, or a docked tail pup.   Then it goes litter to litter on exactly how we decide which tails to keep, and which tails to dock.  OES owners are very passionate about tail choice, so we feel it is only fair to let them pick the tail option that they want to!  Breed standard in America is still docked tail for OES, however all of Europe and Canada and other countries started banning tail docks on dogs in the late 1990's and they no longer have the option to dock a tail.   Probably almost half of our puppy homes want to keep their tail, and half want to dock their tail.

Some litters there ends up being a set of docked tail boys, docked tail girls, tailed boys and tailed girls to choose from in the end.  Some litters 7 choose to keep tails and 2 want docked tails.  Some litters 6 wanted docked tails and 3 want tails.  So that all changes up a bit each litter in how final puppy picking ends up.  

If we have a big mix of tail choices then before day 3 everyone picks an early favorite puppy that no one under them can dock or keep a tail on so their early favorite puppy will end up in their tail choice at the 7 week puppy picking, but that does not have to be the puppy they pick.  Everyone just stays in their tail choice group for picking, which could be the bulk of the litter all wanting that tail choice, or it could be a few pups if only a few wanted that tail choice.  

What happens if you are lower on the puppy picking order list?: 

We have never had it not work out perfect in the end, and we always say the puppies always seem to end up in the perfect home that they were always meant to go to.  

Last pick puppies more often than not end up being who we would have picked as our top pick puppy.  So it rarely ends up how we predict it will go!

People are always very excited in the puppy that they picked in the end!  

Last pick puppy is never the worst pick puppy when dealing with reputable, responsible, ethical breeders.   Who breed for amazing temperaments, personality, and health.  

Of all of the OES in our program about half of them we had 1st or 2nd pick puppy spot.  The other half we entered the litter they were in late and had last or close to last pick puppy.   There is not one of them we would change anything about.  We hit the jackpot with each and every one of them, because they were all very well bred.

What happens if I reserve a puppy, and then I need to change the timing of the litter I reserved for?:

Once a puppy reservation is in, then that person has the availability to switch to earlier, or later litters within 2 years of their original litter, if a need arises to do that!   Or if an extra spot opens sooner, and they want to move up and grab it.  We will honor your reservation for up to 2 years.