Puppy Personality Matching: The Do’s and Don’ts

Now there’s one easy thing most breeders overlook that adds a lot of value to puppies.  And that’s personality matching.

Top buyers are happy to pay more for a personality matched puppy.  They’re careful and discerning about getting a puppy and appreciate the great assurance they get when you – a puppy professional – take control of the puppy selection process.

Just imagine if you’re such a buyer and you come across a breeder who will personality-match the puppy to you and your family so there’s the best possible chance that they’re compatible?

That really does make a very desirable pup. But there are dos and don’ts with it. So I just want to go ahead and have a bit of a chat about the dos and don’ts.

But Don’t Think You Can Just “Wing It”

Now some breeders tell me, “Look, I do that already.  I watch the puppies when they’re playing and I interacting with me.  From that I can tell which ones are dominant, which ones are less dominant – and match the puppies that way.”

But unfortunately, puppies behave very, very differently when they’re outside their familiar nursery environment and familiar people.

And this is what we want to actually assess: We need to see how the puppy responds to novel situations.

To achieve that you need someone the puppy doesn’t know, and you also need an environment the puppy hasn’t been in before, as your very bare minimum to assessing its personality traits.

My Favorite Puppy Personality Test

I’ll give you my favorite test right now that I use, and it’s called the “stranger in a strange room” test.

We test the puppies one at a time, and observe how that puppy interacts with the room with both myself and a stranger present:  How much time does it spend exploring and how quickly does it move around? Is it’s tail up or down?  How confident is it?  How active is it? Does it chew on the toys and things we’ve scattered around? Does it go and greet the stranger, bite them, or lick them?

In this way, we can actually see what sort of personality it has and give the puppy a score between one and six.  It is one of the most revealing tests that we do of the eight tests that we put every puppy through in the Elite Breeder Formula.

How Formal Puppy Personality Testing Benefits the Breeder, the Owner and the Puppy!

Here’s one really big benefit to yourself when you start doing puppy formal testing like this.

You not only get an accurate assessment on the puppy but also it saves you a lot of time!

Before I started doing puppy personality testing, I used to have the buyers come up one at a time (in their order of joining my list) and give them an hour each to pick which puppy they want.  After choosing their puppy they would go home and the next person would come.

So if I had a litter of five puppies, then that would be five hours of my time spent just watching these people use the most trivial and unimportant traits to help them decide. For example, they might say, “Oh, what do you think kids, should we get the one with the little white star on his chest or the one with the curly hair?” I mean, neither of those things have any impact on how they’re going to experience that puppy as a pet.

What you need to do is take control and say, “I am the expert here, I’m a dog breeder, I’m a professional person with dealing with and assessing puppies, and I will choose the right puppy for you.”

So instead of spending an hour with each owner, you can just spend 10 minutes assessing each puppy and then do your allocation at the end.  That might take you 1 ½ hours instead of 5.  Plus result in more money in your pocket from the higher price personality matched puppies attract.  Plus result in a better fit between your pups and the families they go to.

What you are doing is making sure the most rambunctious, energetic, “in your face” cheeky puppies with high personalities don’t end up with someone who’s never owned a dog before, never even grew up with a dog, has small children or a disabled person in the family, or is quite inactive themselves.  It’s just not going to work.

Given that more than half dogs given up by their owners to shelters are there for behavioral reasons, this is one way breeders help ensure forever homes for our babies.

So don’t leave it to chance.  Try to ensure your puppies go to the most compatible homes possible, so that every single puppy and owner relationship that you set up, is a match made in heaven for the owner and the pup.

Puppy personality testing and matching is just one way Elite Breeders add massive value to their puppies.

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