Just saw an advert for amazing sounding pups but mum won't be there - it's a red flag isn't it

[DoggyNewbie]

As title. Gutted, was making arrangements to view the litter and on checking that mum will be there was told no, only dad as mum was getting upset with the pups so has gone to stay with a friend. Pups are 12 weeks so not tiny but still, it's a red flag is it not?

You won’t usually see the dad as many people find a suitable stud dog rather than owning the stud .

Call the rspca: police or something to report too.

Drove from Devon to Yorkshire twice for ours. Once at 5 weeks and then to pick up at 8 weeks. Champ dogs. Great health scores, lovely mum, pups raised in the home, no red flags. Worth every mile...

We drove 200 miles (but would have travelled further!)
You can sign up to champdogs I think the annual fee is £10, you can set up alerts for particular search criteria and also get early access to the litters as some will be snapped up quickly.
Another thing to note is they often don't include pricing on champdogs. The idea being that the home is more important than the price. If doesn't mean they are any more expensive than other litters just that it shouldn't be the most important thing to a prospective buyer - therefore if you ask the price you may be discounted as suitable by the breeder. Just fyi.

If for some reason a good breeder had a 16 week old lab puppy to re-home I'd be expecting it to be mostly toilet trained, to have been introduced to a collar and lead, and be given lots of information about what socialisation had been done, i.e. sights and sounds and places it had been. Not being walked as it might slip it's lead sounds like garbage to me, that and the lack of toilet training sounds like someone who's put no effort in whatsoever. I wouldn't consider either of those pups.

Absolutely don't consider a 16 week old puppy who has never been for a walk yet. The puppy won't have seen or experienced enough in the critical period of socialisation and habituation and you could end up later down the line with a fearful/reactive dog. I would strongly advise to walk away from this one!!

Further to what @Swimbius said, my puppy (collected at 12 weeks) was wearing a collar, had been introduced to harness and lead, had started house-training, had been in a car several times, had visited a few other people's houses (different sights, smells, surfaces), been introduced to noises (yes, the hoover) and cats and chickens. She was mostly cooperative for having her claws clipped and for grooming, and was fine with having her ears handled/examined.

She'd not yet been out for a walk, because of vax status, but being that bit older was good to go by collection age. So on the day we picked her up, before we left we took her for her first ever walkies (with her mum) and she was positively prancing with excitement!

She goes back to the breeder's for holiday boarding, and is immediately at home again there.

The 16 week old has missed a huge chunk of a vital socialisation window. I’d avoid they would have the potential to be very difficult.

The issue with really popular breeds is they are very popular with puppy farms and BYBs.
Champ dogs also has a section where you can see breeders, I’d rather wait a year, or travel 200 miles for a puppy than pick up the nearest one that sounds like a potential disaster

Yes pup was vaccinated (I saw the record). I was wary about how excitable mum was, there didn't seem to have been any training? And she was 6 (the mum).

Isn't 6 considered too old for breeding?

The 16 week old has missed a huge chunk of a vital socialisation window. I’d avoid they would have the potential to be very difficult

This is what I'm nervous about. On the one hand he's still very young and we'd get on the training immediately* *but on the other hand is it too late in terms of puppy/dog development?

@AnotherQuandary I don't know? The breeder said it was her second litter and that she wouldn't be having any more

Yeah, I wouldn’t go for a puppy that hadn’t even been walked at 16 weeks. If the breeder hasn’t even bothered to get them used to a collar and lead, they’re unlikely to have done any socialisation. The toilet training wouldn’t bother me, that can be learnt relatively easily. But a 16 week old puppy that’s just been left to its own devices with no training or socialisation at all, is a sign of a v poor dog owner, let alone breeder! Keep looking, you’ll find the right dog for you, but it’s not either of these. Do you know any doggy people, anywhere in the country, that you can ask for recommendations of breeders from?

I would go and see the ones without the mother. Yes it isn't ideal but pups often end up in rescues without the chance to see a mother. Just check them out, see how they are being kept, ask lots of questions see the paperwork. See what the breeders are like do they seem professional and experienced? I wouldn't rule it out.

I completely disagree, getting a dog from a rescue without its mother is completely different to getting a pup from a breeder without its mother. There’s loads of reasons why a pup would be without its mother in a rescue, but I can’t think of any genuine reasons why a pup would be without it’s mother from a breeder. Maybe there are some reasons that I haven’t considered (such as?), but the likely reason is that it’s a puppy farm, and it’s just not worth the risk of getting a puppy farmed dog. Why take that risk when you don’t have to?

You could be lucky but you could end up with a whole heap of trouble.

'We actually saw a 16 week old puppy today (last of the litter) who did have mum present. However, pup has not been walked at all yet and has been trained to use puppy mats rather than going outside'

This would put me off far more than no mother present. At 16wks it should be very nearly house trained and certainly should've been out walking or at least outside.

Because the environment they've been brought up in is just as important imo. We got a puppy once from a licensed breeder, lived outdoors they were filthy, weren't used to household noises, people. Yes all the paper work and 'scores' were fantastic but seeing a puppy, where it'd been living and who has been caring from them can be just as important as a breeder piping on about dams sires, ftch etc etc.

Yes, we also got our puppy from a breeder where her dogs were outside, in kennels, as they were working dogs. But we still saw the mum at the breeders house, we knew the breeder owned the mum, and that the dogs weren’t puppy farm dogs. But why would you get a dog from someone who won’t let you meet the mum? The dogs being outside/inside/ in kennels/wherever, isn’t relevant. It’s actually being able to meet mum that’s important. I can’t think of any reasons why you shouldn’t be able to do that, other than dodgy ones.

As a lab owner I would avoid the 16 week
One. Lots learnt between 8-16 weeks, toilet training, sleep, walking off lead, working out socialisation issues (my lab was very enthusiastic with other dogs).
Where are you based? In Kent I often meet lynsted labs.
I also got my lab (shock horror) off pets 4 homes. However I had a very specific list and lots of flags to look for. In a week I found only about 3 litters that passed my test.
Included kennel club, hip scores, pictures with mum and not just ones with adults holding 1 puppy and a long description written in good English!
Owner also interviewed me!
I ended up with a lovely dog, turns out lots of her family are champion dogs and still keep in contact with breeder and other siblings.

@DoggyNewbie neither of those are good options.
We got our pup at 10.5 weeks old - she stayed with breeder a little longer as she'd had a hernia operation and they wanted to ensure she was fully recovered before coming to us.
When we collected her, her mum was there and happy to see us - well behaved tho! And one sibling was still there as the new owners were picking her up at the weekend.
Both the pups left were almost fully toilet trained and used to all household noises, kids and a variety of people. They were wearing collars and had first lot of jabs so no walks at that point.
I think pup had a handful of accidents in the first week at our house and then was fully house trained - so long before 16 weeks! So personally I think not bothering to start toilet training or socialising a puppy well before 16 weeks is extremely poor and lazy, there is no excuse really and that is not a good breeder. Also 6 is rather old for the mum to have a litter - and I don't believe it's only her 2nd litter at that age it's likely she's had several and been used for puppy farming. Very sad. Do not buy. Wait for the right dog.

I mean meeting mum is important for making sure you haven’t got a puppy farm dog. If having a puppy that was raised inside is important to you, that’s fair enough. Ours wasn’t and he’s fine, but I can see how why you’d want that. But that shouldn’t be instead of meeting mum, it should be as well as meeting mum. Not being able to meet mum is a major red flag of a puppy farmed pup. Surely whenever other criteria you have, avoiding a farmed pup is number 1?

In terms of compromises, location is definitely the best thing to compromise on. We travelled a few hours for our pup.

We found our first pup via champdogs paying for priority access. 2 pups from a litter of 9 advertised when pups were 2 weeks old (the others all having homes already). I'd signed up probably about a month beforehand having found out we weren't going to get a pup from a litter we'd been on the waiting list for.

For you, not the poor puppy. I think it's cruel to take them away from their homes and litter mates and stick them in a car for hours.

Ours was 45mins away and it cried and yelped the whole way back, it was so distressed. I'd hate to put them through hours of it just for the ftch doc, kennel club and scores.

Both our pups slept all the way home, no crying, no accidents, no sickness and have always been great car travellers.

And of course the breeders had raised happy, healthy confident pups who'd already been introduced to car travel, so there was no cruelty involved!

The first 18 weeks are so important and they’ve missed nearly all of that.
Even if they’ve not had jabs they can be carried about to see things and practice being neutral to cars/other dogs/noisy kids etc.
You could get lucky but I do think it heightens the risk of a massively reactive dog