0 - 6 Weeks

Garth's dog-mommy and litter-mates, only a couple weeks old.

A litter of six puppies had just been born to a malnourished Weimaraner, who had only recently been rescued. As a shelter volunteer myself, my heart went out to this little canine family. We could only assume that the father was the black lab who had also been rescued from the same abusive home.  (The one black pup was a good indicator!)

We chose Garth, who was the only pup with milk-chocolate brown fur.  At the time, he hadn't even opened his little eyes yet and couldn't do anything but snuggle.  If only those days lasted longer!

Garth @ 3 weeks old

In retrospect, we did a "bad" thing by choosing a pup based purely on appearance.  The babies had no personality at that point, so the selection was really a lottery in regard to temperament.  Six weeks later, Garth grew to be the largest and most rambunctious of the litter.

LESSON: If circumstances allow, wait to choose your puppy until about 4-5 weeks of age or older.  This will let their personalities develop first.

At three weeks, we got a hint of Garth's beautiful blue puppy eyes.  Many puppies have blue eyes as babies, but we secretly hoped that he inherited that famous Weimaraner eye color from his mom. We visited Garth once a week while he was still with his litter-mates.  The changes from week-to-week were amazing.  We got to see the clumsy pups learn to walk, eat solid food, and play with each other.  They even tried to play with a 9 month old pit bull being fostered there, who was amazingly gentle with them.

All of the "experts" recommend leaving a puppy with his doggy-family as long as possible, for socialization purposes and to learn life lessons.  Although they are weaned at 6 weeks, waiting until 8 weeks of age (or more) is better.  Unfortunately for Garth, his options at 6 weeks old were to come home with us or move into a metal cage in a shelter.  So we decided he was better off with his human-mommy than no mommy at all, and on December 13th we brought him home.