Good morning. Does anyone have advice on what to look for when picking your lab puppy from the litter? We are getting our girl next Friday. It’s a small litter of 5 puppies... 2 females 3 males.
If you can watch them play together it should tell you a lot about each puppy. Some are aggressive, so meek, etc. we recently got the runt of an eleven puppy litter and she holds her own with our male 14-week puppy that weighs double her weight.
Be aware that the size of the puppy does not necessarily indicate the size of the dog. We think Cooper was the runt, since she was quite a bit smaller than the other pup we saw from her litter. She is 75+ lbs, and is taller than the breed standard now. We picked her because of her personality, just like we did with Tilly before her.
Odin picked us. As soon as we walked in, he hopped straight on my lap and when I played with his litter mates, he kept trying to butt in He had a very large littermate and although Odin not the smallest puppy, I think the big brother used to eat all the food Odin takes after his sire in build - stocky - and he is currently approx 75lb at 6.5 months. The vet is very happy with his condition (lean!).
We're going to be getting a second Lab puppy in a few weeks. Our current dog is from the same breefer. Due to Covid restrictions in Toronto we haven't been able to visit the puppies this time around so I'm leaving it up to our breeder to choose for us. It's a large litter of 12...they all look adorable ( and very similar) from their photos. Still, I miss being able to visit the litter