When do you have available puppies?
I am on your waiting list, can you tell me when I will receive my puppy?
I absolutely understand why these questions are so important, after all we like to be prepared and to have a timescale to work too, and a month to look forward to.
Let me explain why it can be tricky for me to be exact, and why it really is down to Mother Nature.
The biology bit....
A female dog can only be mated during a season.
She can be reliably in-season every 6 months, or every 10 months, or somewhere in-between and also unreliably fluctuate between being early and late.
Once mated, we do not not know for four weeks if she is pregnant, as we need to reliably scan.
Then litter sizes can fluctuate, the average is 6-8 puppies, but it is not unusual to have a litter of 2-4 pups, just as it is to have a litter of 8-10 pups.
Lets take my little red head Margot as an example.
Margot's last litter consisted of 2 pups, and she came into season a month later than we anticipated.
Margot has now just been mated in Nov21, we did not expect her season until Jan22, so she is two months early. This means that her pups will be ready for homes in Feb/Mar22.
For one family who have been waiting for a puppy, and who would have taken a puppy had she been mated in Jan22 as planned, now cannot take a puppy due to a timing conflict of her pups being ready too early.
Bess; her first litter had 5 pups, her second litter had 10 pups. So homes who were not expecting to take a puppy just yet, had a happy surprise of more puppy availability and an earlier family member.
Then from being successfully mated to a puppy leaving for their home is just over 4months.
So a female dog mated in Spring/May will have her puppies born in Summer/July, and leaving for homes in Autumn/September.
Any variable of an early season or a later season will mean puppies could be ready for homes in August or October.
This is why I am not being evasive when I cannot be exact with puppy timings. I would much prefer to give you a guide than explicitly state a month only to be wrong and have to disappoint well-laid plans and children's hopes.
I am basing my litter plans on my girls having 6 pups each. My average litter is actually 7-8 pups, so if all my girls had 7-8 pups, then my waiting list will rapidly decrease and there will be earlier availability....this is entirely down to the girls eggs, the males semen quality, the timing of the mating and Mother Nature.
I hope this explanation helps.