A question always comes up about the age to get a pup. 8 weeks, or 12 weeks or 16 weeks, are all fairly common ages for pups here at Kamia Kennels. Over the last 10 years lets say, a very good portion were 8 week old pups and about 40% were 16 week old. We don’t see as many 12 week old pups going out. My thoughts are that if the breeder and the breeding dogs are stable and skilled, 16 week old pup are better to get than 8 week pups. At Kamia Kennels the mentor dogs that surround the pups are all highly skilled dogs with impeccable behavior. A breeding operation like ours has some of the very best dogs found for mentoring pups.

When a pup is exposed to this mentoring, especially mentoring from other adult dogs outside the parent, or parents this increases the ability for the pup to grow and develop exceptional skills at an early age. Most people don’t have “mentor” dogs, so they bring a pup in at 8 weeks and have to train all aspects of the pups development and this includes trying to find suitable “mentor dogs” to work with the pup. At Kamia Kennels we have seen over the years the 16 week old pups went home with extremely good skills and behaviors by the association of being around the older dogs and modeling the behavior of these highly stable and skilled adults.

My “Desna Program” was designed to allow 8 week old pups to remain till they were 16 weeks and they were exposed to all ranges of interaction with the adult dogs and included a great emphasis on off leash capabilities and training, using “Mentor Dogs”. This early stability, mentoring, adjustment and training by adult dogs is extremely good to balance out the pup and allow the pup to learn very fast. Remember Pups learn from adult dogs at lightspeed compared to people or, unskilled non mentor dogs.

Most 8 week old pups are not in constant contact and association with good mentor dogs, unless of course the individual has an existing good dog. But, that is not the case for a large portion. In many cases the existing dog is poorly trained with bad habits, as it of course was not associated with good mentors to start with, or the new owner does not have an existing dog. Therefore has to rely on other dogs, which come and go sporadic and if the dog is not really used to mentoring, then it serves really no purpose other than to be a bit social without over exuberance or over play, but not really teaching much of anything.

There is little to no information on 16 week old pups versus 8 week old and the reason for it is that breeders don’t want the work to keep pups to 16 weeks, they don’t have mentor dogs and or any adult dogs outside of the mother, so want the pups gone at 8 weeks. So many articles are “based” around 8 week adoption from a very slanted one sided argument really.

I have place a lot of 16 week old pups, the folks that get them are so thrilled so overjoyed at the skill level, the behavior the competence of the pup they really can’t believe it.

I can expand on the concept further in the coming publications but definitely look into the development of some of the pups I placed into the Desna program and watch how those pups behave out near that 16 week mark. It will be fascinating for you I think.