My brother and sister had just arrive from
Ireland for a 3 week holiday and in time to take the journey down to Crookwell
with us to pick out our puppy. Beforehand I read about 50 articles and snippets
about what you should look out for in the puppy, how to know if they are
healthy and what traits to look out for that you should avoid. I think I
overloaded myself too much with information but it made me feel prepared.
We had an awful time leaving Sydney with
the traffic. We hadn’t anticipated how long it would actually take. I was
thinking 2.5hrs but it actually was a good 3-hour drive… so we missed the time
slot we were given to pick our puppy and they let us join the people at 3pm.
They were very nice and understandable about it.
So I decided that I wanted a male. No real
reason why. I think it was just based on the fact that my dog growing up was
male and so I couldn’t shake the idea. Mark didn’t mind. He was angling towards
a girl for the same reason; his dog growing up was female. He was happy to go
with a male.
We had the 2nd pick of the
males. As someone specifically asked for a longhaired German Shepard and he
turned out to be a male that brought the count of boys down to 4. Then as we
had 2nd we had the pick of 1 out of 3.
The breeders put different coloured collars
on the pups as soon as they were born to tell them apart. We had the choice of
either the green, blue or brown (yellow in pics).
We arrived at the breeders which was a lovely
country house, on a large plot of land with horses and a large shed with at
least 3-4 adult GSDs in there own pens. All the puppies were in a caged off
area by the back door of the house under a verandah with plenty of space to
play and run about. They were pretty active and playing with each other a lot.
One or two were sleeping in the corner on top of each other.
We got to meet Plato first, the dad of the
pups. He was younger than I expected, almost 2 I believe. He was beautiful.
Long temperament, his coat was shiny and silky smooth and generally a very
happy dog. You could tell the breeders looked after them all very well.
We went inside to the sitting room where a
blanket had been placed on the floor. We sat down and Shirley brought in the
puppies. The green and blue puppy came in first. The brown (yellow collar in
photos) one came in a few minutes later. I guessed that he was one of the sleeping
ones and she didn’t want to wake him and drop him in to a lot of people
straight away.
The green collar pup was the most active.
Attacking my toes straight away. He then went over to Mark and started pulling
on his shirt and then went over to the side of the blanket we were sitting on
and started pulling that. Mark and myself looked at each other and pretty much
thought in unison “Not that one”. He was gorgeous and healthy but the display
of nipping and not being too interested in us ruled we weren’t a good mix for
each other. The blue pup was much quieter in comparison. He was sweet, enjoyed
getting petted and was quite calm however he still wasn’t too interested in us.
He went off to the corner and went to sleep. The brown pup was now in and he was
playing with Mark. He seemed more keen on playing with toys and not with our
toes and he stayed with us longer so we sort of felt like he picked us. He also
didn’t mind being on his back and when you tickled his belly his back paw did
that typical shaking thing dogs do so that was it. That sealed the deal.
A note from the breeder was that all the
pups at 4 weeks of age are all the same pretty much it’s just the mood they are
in on the day. So who knows what he will be like at 8 weeks when we pick him? My
personal opinion is that you pick based on how the dog reacts to you and how
you like him/her then you can never say you picked the wrong dog for you. I
tried out a few little things from the Internet that I read but really I didn’t
bother. I think the most important points to look out for is how healthy they
look, what conditions are they being kept in and what they’re parents are like.
We didn’t meet the mother of the puppies as she was a bit stressed from feeding
all 8 puppies now that they have teeth and she was given some alone time to
rest up. We were both happy with that answer and we didn’t press to see her.
On the road trip home the 4 of us tried to
come up with a name… six were short listed but one stuck with us over the next couple
of days…Murphy!!!
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