How Puppy Open Days Help Breeders

Puppy Open Days are great for breeders at all stages of the development of their breeding business.  For un-established breeders without a strong list, they help to sell leftover puppies quickly. And they are a short-cut means established breeders with a strong list can use to get dozens of buyer visits over in a few hours.

For those at the bottom of the market:  Move LEFTOVER PUPPIES!

You might be a new breeder for example and at the bottom of the market.

For you, puppy open days are a really good way to help you sell leftover puppies quickly.

And when you’re ready to MOVE UP in the market, watch the Free Marketing for Breeders class.

For those at the top of the market: STREAMLINE Buyer Visits!

When you’re dealing with buyers at the top of the market, they are the kind who really want to meet you.  [In our last posts we talked about how to attract top-end buyers and how different they are to people buying at the bottom and middle of the market]. These “top-level buyers see buying a puppy as adopting a new “child” into their family [their fur kid].  And naturally, they want to meet the previous parents – that’s you, the breeder – before they make a decision about whether or not they’re going to go with you.

Puppy open days: what are they?

Puppy open days are basically just showing people your puppies.  They allow you to do a two  or three hour session what could otherwise take you many, many hours over many, many weekends of your precious time to achieve.

On puppy open days you introduce people to your dogs, answer their questions, and basically let them see how you actually operate as a breeder.  That puts buyers’ minds at rest.

Puppy open days are also an opportunity for buyers to meet your previous owners.  If you’ve just had a litter of puppies recently homed, you can invite them back as a socialization experience so they can meet lots of people.  This is a benefit to the people who come to your open day as well because they can meet your previous owners and some of your older puppies.

When to hold puppy open days

I hold a puppy open day, whenever I have a litter of puppies that are seven weeks old. And I do it at that time because it always comes hot on the heels of me doing my personality matching with my pups and allocating them to the new owners.

The new owners are going to be coming up anyway to meet the puppy I selected for them based on our special testing regime that we use.  Seeing as we’re going to have those people up, anyhow, we may as well have everybody up.   So I invite everyone on the waiting list to visit, plus anyone else who’s interested to come to an open day.  I email the invites to my list.

What if you don’t have a list?

Another way of doing it is to have a Facebook event and put it out to different Facebook communities that are enthusiasts of your breed.  This is a powerful way to place any puppies that you might have leftover.  I know in the states at the moment, that’s a very real problem for a lot of breeders! Don’t publicize your actual street address.  Only PM it to folks who confirm they are attending.

How to run puppy open days

I really love doing puppy open days because it saves me from having to have people up at random, wanting to meet you and taking up your precious time. We can just get them all coming up in one session on a Sunday afternoon, [which is a good time to do it].

Now in the days of COVID, I allocate people in batches to facilitate social distancing, so I don’t have too many people coming at once.  We do 45-minute sessions for each batch with a 15-minute changeover so we can get the car park empty before the next people come up.

I make all kids sit before being allowed to play with puppies so there’s no chance of them being dropped!

And you can also have a diluted bleach foot bath (1 part bleach to 30 parts water) and hand sanitizer at the entrance to protect your puppies from the risk of Parvovirus.

What if people can’t make it to your puppy open day?

Puppy open days are a very good way of increasing your ability to service the desire of those top buyers to meet you without taking over your life. And if people can’t make it to a puppy open day, well guess what? They can meet me for an early morning walk in the forest with my dogs.

If they’re that motivated to come and meet me and they can’t make it to an open day, then they may as well get themselves out of bed, nice and early in the morning and come and meet me and the dogs for a run in the bush.

So, that’s how you keep control of your visits and your visitors and make yourself look good as a breeder without it taking over your life. I hope you’ve enjoyed that and we’ll speak again soon!

Dr Meg Howe

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