We don't have visits to our homes before your puppy pick-up day. 

 

You should always want to make sure you are getting your puppy from a reputable breeder.  We are happy to provide references and do impromptu FaceTime with you so that we can help assure you that our puppies are in-fact raised the way that we claim they are.  You are also welcome to call our vet. This should give you the confidence to know you’re working with a good breeder.

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We sometimes get asked why we don’t allow families with or without deposits to visit our pups. This is not surprising given the number of ‘what to do when buying a dog’ websites that advocate for visiting the breeder and meeting the pup’s parents first. The problem with these sites is their priority is the buyer, not the pups’ or breeders’ health and safety.    Below are some reasons we don’t allow visits until the day you bring your puppy home.

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1. Pups immune systems are very immature. Many unsuspecting visitors have brought disease (parvovirus, distemper, etc) with them when visiting pups, the result of which is the death of the entire litter. I personally know several breeders that have lost entire litters to parvovirus brought in by visitors. Once your home has been contaminated by parvovirus it is very difficult to get rid of.  It can live in the ground for up to 7 years.  While we do have visitors in our home for our every day family lives, we try to limit the amount of traffic around our puppies so that we can be less at risk.

 

2. Stressed out Moms create stressed out pups. A new mother is emotionally charged and in hyper-protective mode. When a stranger comes to visit, Mom becomes stressed causing her body to create cortisol, which goes into the milk. The puppies consume this cortisol rich milk and become stressed themselves.

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3. Panicked Moms hurt pups. When a stranger comes to visit, Mom’s state of mind changes rapidly. Our brand new moms usually feel threatened when a stranger comes into their nest area when they have newborns and they often move very quickly to assess the threat. Many Moms have unintentionally stepped on or crushed a pup in their urgency to get out of the whelping box to protect her babies. We've also had moms try to move their entire litters outside or to another location if they feel threatened by too many visitors.  We have literally spent hours digging a mom and her puppies out from under the shed in our back yard after she moved her puppies following a day with too many strangers.  We just can't put our moms through that kind of stress. Mom's with older puppies generally don't mind visitors so much and we make a lot of effort to expose puppies to children and our other extended family members.  Most of our moms were born and raised in our homes so the familiar family visitors are not threatening to them in the same way that new visitors are. 

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4. We are not a petting zoo. 

Please remember that our pups are home raised – that means that they actually live in the middle of our houses. You can’t come visit the adult dogs or me, without also ‘visiting’ all of our puppies and their their Mommas or interrupting our everyday "normal" family life.

 

We have people request to come into our homes to meet us and/or our dogs almost every day. We know that visiting pups is a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and that people really just want to see their puppy, but, if we catered to every visit request we receive we would have no free time to spend with our families on the weekends or during the week for that matter. It just isn't feasible to add constant visitors to our already busy lives.  Inviting strangers into our home is stressful for our kids.  We both have large families and there are a lot of going-ons at our homes. Life for us is not neat and tidy and can get fairly hectic sometimes (we wouldn't want it any other way!).  Puppy pick-up days when we have lots of families coming into our homes is time consuming and can be exhausting for all of us.  We are happy to do it and actually LOVE and prefer that you come meet us in person to see where your puppy has been living, but we need to limit this to puppy pick-up day only.  

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5. Time spent with visitors is time not spent with our pups, dogs, and family.

Raising puppies, dogs, and a large family is a very demanding 24/7 job. Every minute we spend with visitors is time not spent caring and working on these responsibilities.

 

 So, how can we help you have confidence we aren’t a puppy mill or a fake website asking for your $200 reservation fee? We are very happy to provide references of adoptive families as well as our Vet (who knows us VERY well). We have families that have our dogs that have agreed to meet with or talk to prospective families that want an idea of what our doodles look like.  We are happy to put you in contact with one of them. 

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We thank you for your understanding that we will not compromise on the health and safety of our pups and the sanity of our families and hope you see this as a positive quality of a reputable breeder.