Any advice on where to get Papillon puppies?

FAisms

Hi all..

Just wondering if anyone knows of Papillon dog breeders in Ireland? I'm finding it tough to find any of this breed for sale!

We are looking at getting two puppies. Any advice on whether to go dog/bitch or dog/dog or bitch/bitch??

Thanks everyone!!

4th horsemen

Not to sure where you'd get them, but I'd go with Bitch and Dog, less chance of dominance issues etc.
But once got at puppy stage and reared right they'll be grand
Get them neutered

FAisms

Thanks, yes I have had dog/bitch before. She was a dominant alpha female and he was very submissive to her. Corrected it after a while though! Looking for papillons as they are highly trainable, small but intelligent!

odckdo

I thought it wasn't a good idea in general to get 2 pups at the same time, whether they are siblings or not?

kylith

It's generally recommended to get one pup and wait a year before getting a second one because otherwise they focus too much on each other rather that whoever's training them.

FAisms

Thanks for the responses, I am now reconsidering two at the same time after reading more on training two pups. So one for now followed by a second papillon sounds ideal for dealing with successful training.
Still finding it a hard breed to find for sale in Ireland, anyone know anywhere at all? Thanks! :-)

Worth emailing these guys

www.papillons.ie/

FAisms

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Worth emailing these guys

www.papillons.ie/

Thanks I sent an email :-)

VonVix

I have two males and I've never had any domination issues between them, they are two peas in a pod. However, I would suggest against getting two puppies of the same age at the same time. My two are brothers but I got them about 4 months apart, but still one is quite confident and the other is more prone to fearful behaviour, they are VERY attached to each other and that's not a good thing really. Check out littermate syndrome if you want to learn more.

If you're adamant on getting two at the same time, you absolutely 100% need to dedicate time to them separately and as individuals for the first year of their lives. That largely means separate walks, sleeping arrangements, etc. they need to grow as individuals and not feel the need to rely on each other too much particularly if they are in the process of growing and learning a huge amount of their behaviour and gaining experiences.

borderlinemeath

FAisms wrote: »

Thanks, yes I have had dog/bitch before. She was a dominant alpha female and he was very submissive to her. Corrected it after a while though! Looking for papillons as they are highly trainable, small but intelligent!

As has been said, it's a particularly bad idea to get littermates. They are less likely to bond with their humans as they have each other, and training is extra tough as they will find it hard to focus. You have to separate for training, but if they are littermates they could be inseparable and again have focus issues during training even when apart.

Also please have a good read on why using terms such as 'dominance'/'alpha' etc is not such a good thing. While you haven't mentioned any training techniques, the fact that you describe your old dogs as such, leads me to think you may be 'old school' when it comes to training. You also mentioned that you 'corrected' the behaviour of what you considered your female dog to be displaying, rather than 'trained' or 'modified' the behaviour makes me wonder what you might have done to 'correct' it!

'Dominance theory' is an overused and outdated phrase in terms of dog training, it was based on a captive wolf study and while dogs are closely related to wolves, they are not, never will be, nor will they ever behave just like a wolf - wild or captive. There's about 15,000 years of domestication between the two species and dogs have long since adapted to a human lifestyle, yet the study and the theories behind it grew legs and a whole training ethos sprung up and told people that if they let a dog be 'dominant' or 'alpha' like a wolf, it would try and take over! While it was all disproven by scientific studies, the phraseology and some of the training techniques persist in hanging about, no thanks to unqualified tv 'personalities' like Cesar Milan - who has even said himself that he got the whole 'dominance' thing wrong. But there's books and tv reruns that help back up the outdated rubbish.

DBB

And just to add to what borderlinemeath says, wolves don't do dominance either, no more than human parents dominate their children. The social structures in wolf families and human families are remarkably similar, and I think it makes it easier for us to understand how the relationships work between family members by comparing the two.
Mammy wolf and daddy wolf run the show, but they are not motivated to do so by dominance. They are motivated to do so by securing the best resources they can for their cubs. Some of their children are pushy, some aren't, but neither are the relationships between them dictated by dominance... like human children, squabbles between wolf kids happen over who wants the scrap of food, or branch of a tree to play with, or whatever, more than the other. It's not much more complicated than that.
The study which labelled wolves as forming dominance hierarchies was carried out on unrelated wolves forced to live together in captivity. It is now known that using this model as representative of true wolf society is about as accurate as studying human prisoners in a jail, and using your findings to assume that their behaviours and relationships are representative of all of human society.