My name is Nora. I have one household, three mothers, and usually two litters a year. That is the whole operation and it is not going to grow, because the thing that makes these puppies worth having is the amount of time each one gets, and time is the one input you cannot scale.
The whelping box is in the room we live in. It is not in a shed, an outbuilding or a purpose built kennel block, and there is no separate puppy building to be shown around. What you would see if you came here is a kitchen with a litter in the corner of it, which is exactly the point.
Why the first eight weeks decide most of it
Almost everything people ask me about, whether a dog will be nervous of strangers, whether it will cope with being left, whether it will mind the vacuum, is settled long before the puppy gets to them. A puppy raised in a quiet outbuilding meets a handful of things a day. A puppy raised in a kitchen meets a hundred. By the time it leaves here, an ordinary house holds no surprises.
That is the argument for the way we do it, and it is also the reason I am uninterested in producing more puppies than one household can properly raise.
How I choose who gets one
Not first come, first served, and not highest bidder. I ask everybody the same questions about an ordinary week: how long the dog would be alone, who does the walk in February, what happens when you go away, and who takes the dog if your circumstances change.
Nobody fails those questions by giving the wrong answer. People only fail by giving an answer that does not match the puppy they have picked. A soft puppy in a loud house and a bold puppy in a quiet one are both mistakes I would rather make on paper than in somebody’s living room. I have talked plenty of people into waiting six months, and nobody has yet written to say they wished I had not.
What I will not do
I will not let a puppy go before 8 weeks, whatever is offered and however convenient the date would be. I will not sell a puppy to somebody who has not asked me a single question. I will not claim registry papers or formal health testing I do not have. And I will not take money through a website, which is why this one cannot take any.
Talking to me
Email is the only way to reach me, and that is deliberate. It gives both of us a written record of everything we agreed, which protects you at least as much as it protects me. Write to info@homesteadgoldenretrievers.com and you will get a real answer from me, within one working day.