The most common question that new owners, who are captivated by their puppies, ask the breeder is: How can you give up the puppies? The answer, at least from more experienced breeders, if they are honest, is easily. In fact, most look forward to the handover day like the rising sun.
There is a very good reason why handovers start at 7 weeks of age (this is the age generally accepted as suitable for moving to a new home, although there are individual differences; we released our Russells at 8 weeks).
One could argue that reaching the 7-week milestone is roughly the same change as between a sixth-grade child and a seventh-grade junior high student. The developing lovely offspring turns overnight into a troublesome teenager who frays the nerves of others, especially humans, plus regresses into some strange creature.
At six weeks old, puppies are curious, exploring their surroundings, and have learned to play (and fight) with their siblings. When they reach seven weeks, the fights turn into full-blown wars, and exploring the environment turns into escaping and finding places they shouldn’t find.
A pack of 7-week-olds can completely mess up a household and break things. A single day of their antics is more work than the entire puppyhood combined.
People sometimes sigh about how laborious and active their own puppy is. Multiply that by six, or ten, with those little rascals who haven’t yet learned self-preservation or the word no. That’s the life of a breeder, which people wonder how they can give up.
There’s another side to it.
After 7 weeks, the puppies’ own personalities strengthen every day. They transform from a pack into individuals within the pack. Previously, contact was more about security and curiosity, but on the verge of the handover age, it turns into a desire to actively make contact – except for when they test boundaries by teasing and running away.
For a few weeks now, our puppies have been happy digging under the porch, crawling through the Virginia creeper bushes, or hunting butterflies by stalking them from under a stack of pallets. Now, at the magical seven-week mark, they suddenly realized that the world continues beyond the yard, and since they don’t know about something called a fence, they can run through it onto the road.
So there I was, shooing the pack away from the main road, one was running on the village road, and the mother was trying to show another escape route to her offspring. When finally all were safe and sound, and the mother was reprimanded, I wiped my sweat and counted the hours until the handover.
A week earlier, the puppies would always join in whatever the mother was doing. Look, a rag – let’s fight over it. This is the mop head – let’s dismantle it. This is how you climb the stairs – come along. And the entire puppy pack was always fully engaged.
Today, the mother tried to play with the puppies with her beloved toy. She waved it around, bopped the puppies on the head with it – but those pre-teens weren’t interested, they had their own projects. Like trying to break into the dish cabinet. Or attempting to climb into the washing machine. In the end, the mother, looking somewhat dejected, picked up the toy, tossed it ahead, picked it up, tossed it again. A week earlier, such antics would have excited all the puppies, but now the mother had to play alone until she came sulking to my feet.
For the first time, I felt a little sorry for her.
All this means that puppies learn new things faster than ever before in their lives. They are building boundaries and seeking experiences. This is the time when the fundamental contact between owner and dog is established. And it can never be achieved in a puppy pack because another dog is always more enticing than a human.
In fact, to the puppies, we are just a pair of shoes next to which food occasionally drops. The understanding that the legs continue and continue and continue until somewhere high above is the thing they learn as something called a human, is only now beginning to develop.
In fact, it’s quite amazing how quickly puppies learn to speak human. For humans, learning dog language doesn’t always succeed even in 30+ years.
That’s why puppies are handed over around 7 weeks. And also so that the breeder doesn’t end up in a mental institution.
