# Shih Tzu pup sold at 5 weeks



## atsilvers27 (Jul 5, 2011)

I know this is the wrong forum, but I thought I'd throw this out to the experienced breeders here. A new client walks into the salon with a brand spankin' new 8 week old puppy. Perfect! Great chance to inform (lecture hehe) owners about the importance of bringing puppy in every month for a bath, nails and eye trim to get off to a good start with grooming. So now it's later in the conversation and of course it goes into all aspects of the puppy's life, which is fine, and then the owners, (a mother and teenage daughter) are talking about where the puppy should sleep, and that it's been a few weeks and the puppy still cries every once in a while. (Insert that sound where the record player comes to an abrupt stop). So I asked, well, how long have you had the puppy for? Apparantly, they bought the puppy from a "breeder" at just 5 weeks old, and apparentley the teenager was having 2nd thoughts and the "breeder" told the girl they were going to sell the puppy to someone else if she didn't buy it (had to break it gentley to them that that wasn't a breeder, that's a BYB). So obviously I had to tell them that the puppy had to be with mother and siblings until at least 8 weeks to finish weaning and for socialization/bite inhibition. They had been feeding canned food (no teeth or barely starting to erupt on this puppy). The mother became very concerned and wanted to buy puppy formula on the spot but my gut instinct was to tell them to bring the puppy to the vet to ask, but that at this point there was probably no point in starting the puppy on formula. 

So my question is, what are the chances this puppy will suffer long term problems, physically, socially and emotionally? Very sad, apparantly the poor baby was trying to nurse on their other dog.


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