I know it goes against most people, but I bought a dog from a breeder. Basically just to see its parents and how it acted around its litter.
My wife and I adopted a Lab two years earlier from a humane society. When she went through puberty, she started acting "off". As in she'd be playing, stop, have no depth in her eyes, and bite you if you got near her. 40 seconds later she was fine and she didn't even know what happened. She even bit the last trainer when she had one of her "seizures." The rest of the time she did every trick and voice command perfectly. After we that, we decided we had to put her down. We spent probably $2000 on training in the year-ish we had her not including the hours calling universities and whatnot for advice.
After many hours of researching, we found out her dad "might have been" a German Shepherd used in dog fighting that had other issues. That dog was shot like a coyote because it kept on tormenting cattle. Would have been nice to know that ahead of time.
We didn't want to go through that again. So we paid the $800, drove 6 hours, saw our new dog get corrected by its father, and be genuinely rambunctious. Now when we go on vacation people argue for the rights to take care of him instead of saying no way.
It's amazing what knowing the family history can do to your stress levels.
I agree with that too. Seeing the temperament of other dogs in the family can be a good indicator of how the puppy will (can?) turn out.
I've had four Brittany spaniels, two from early puppy stage, and two from adult stage. The two that I had from a puppy were wonderful dogs for me and my family. The two that were adopted as adults had acquired a variety of odd behaviors; one of them we were able to put up with, the other one was too destructive and eventually we had to relocate to a farm with more space than we had in the suburbs.
I now have an almost 2-year-old border collie that I first saw when she was 5 weeks old. Border collies in general have some particular tendencies that I'm still working on with her, but in general her temperament is very good.
For what it's worth, I did peruse the local shelter for a while before adopting a puppy from a farm.
My wife and I adopted a Lab two years earlier from a humane society. When she went through puberty, she started acting "off". As in she'd be playing, stop, have no depth in her eyes, and bite you if you got near her. 40 seconds later she was fine and she didn't even know what happened. She even bit the last trainer when she had one of her "seizures." The rest of the time she did every trick and voice command perfectly. After we that, we decided we had to put her down. We spent probably $2000 on training in the year-ish we had her not including the hours calling universities and whatnot for advice.
After many hours of researching, we found out her dad "might have been" a German Shepherd used in dog fighting that had other issues. That dog was shot like a coyote because it kept on tormenting cattle. Would have been nice to know that ahead of time.
We didn't want to go through that again. So we paid the $800, drove 6 hours, saw our new dog get corrected by its father, and be genuinely rambunctious. Now when we go on vacation people argue for the rights to take care of him instead of saying no way.
It's amazing what knowing the family history can do to your stress levels.