Choosing a puppy well starts long before you pick one out — it starts with how the litter itself was raised and matched to families. Here’s what we looked for and practiced in our own breeding program, and what we’d encourage anyone to look for in a responsible breeder today.
We no longer breed, so this guide is about how to think about choosing a puppy, from our years on the breeder’s side. If you’re still at the stage of finding a breeder, start with our guide to finding a responsible breeder: questions to ask, health tests to check, and red flags.
Bred for family life, not for work
Some breeds are bred to be working dogs — security, service, hunting. Goldendoodles are bred to be pets. The criteria a good breeder looks for in puppies and their prospective homes should be about matching personality and temperament for a great family pet, especially where children are involved.
What about families who want to choose their own puppy?
A family’s preferences matter and should be taken into account — color, gender, and coat type (especially where allergies are a concern). But a responsible breeder is also weighing a responsibility to each puppy: ensuring it goes to the home best suited for it, not simply the first family that asks. Breeders who back their puppies with real guarantees — an initial adjustment period, a multi-year health guarantee, ongoing support as the family raises the dog — are, in our experience, also the ones taking selection seriously in the first place; it’s hard to support a family long-term in a placement you didn’t help get right.
Flexibility on the family’s side matters too. Think honestly about what kind of dog fits your lifestyle, and share as much of that as you can with the breeder — the more you communicate, the better the match.
What is temperament testing?
Temperament testing is a tool used by many kennels (and some home breeders) to quantify a puppy’s character traits, typically around seven weeks of age — a set of simple tests gauging things like submissiveness, aggression, and sensitivity. In a kennel setting with too many puppies to spend hours individually with each one, it’s a practical way to gather results to pass on to new owners.
Some breeds benefit from this testing more than others, since different breeds carry different inherent temperament ranges — some naturally more dominant, others more submissive and loyal. In our experience Goldendoodles were a fairly consistent breed on this front: most of the puppies we raised fell within a narrow, easygoing band, with few extremes of dominance or timidity. Every litter still has individuals, though, and genetics, the mother’s temperament, early rearing and socialization all play a part. Real aggression was very rare in the puppies we raised; when it shows up in any breed, poor choice of parents and a lack of early socialization are common contributors. That’s one more reason to ask how a litter’s parents were chosen and how the puppies were raised.
It also helps to know the limits. Research on seven-week temperament tests has found that they are a poor predictor of adult behavior: puppies are still maturing quickly, and what happens in the months after going home matters a great deal. We treated test-style observations as one input alongside hundreds of hours spent with the litter, never as a verdict.
Simple or thorough — it’s your choice
Choosing a puppy can be as simple or as involved as you want it to be. On one end, a family visits a litter, picks whichever puppy looks cutest or that the kids like best, and leaves within the hour. On the other end, a committed breeder invests real hours matching puppies and families — working from both directions to find the best possible fit. Neither approach is wrong, but the second is far more likely to produce a dog that fits your family for the long run.
The traits we actually looked at
We spent hundreds of hours with our puppies starting the day they were born, and by around five weeks we knew each one well. In the meantime, we thought just as hard about the waiting families — their dynamics, lifestyle, and preferences — so the match went both directions. These weren’t in any fixed order of importance; which traits mattered most depended on the specific family and puppy.
- Vocal. Some puppies narrate their whole day; others barely make a sound. A house with a sleeping baby needs a quiet dog; an acreage owner might want one who barks when someone comes down the driveway.
- Strength of character vs. dominance. These are easy to confuse but aren’t the same thing. Dominance is a puppy’s desire to be top dog; strength of character is how hard it will be to establish that the dog is not, in fact, top dog. Counterintuitively, a submissive puppy with a strong character, poorly trained, can become a more dangerous fearful leader than a puppy that actually wants the job — a reluctant leader who doesn’t enjoy the position is prone to fear-biting.
- Energy. A laid-back puppy suits a busy young family happy with yard time and Saturday park trips; a high-energy puppy is a better match for owners who run for hours and hike every weekend.
- Color and coat. Families have their own preferences here, for all kinds of reasons, and coat type matters especially for allergy or shedding concerns.
- Sensitivity. How a puppy responds to touch, noise, and surprise. Goldendoodles as a breed tend to be cheerful and rarely oversensitive, but any puppy that did respond poorly to sensitivity testing was never placed with children.
- Curiosity. Most Goldendoodle puppies are naturally curious; an occasional timid one isn’t a fearful one, but a timid puppy handled poorly can become fearful. Timid puppies went to gentle, patient families who understood that distinction.
Free: the Goldendoodle Puppy First-Week Checklist
A printable checklist of what to buy, what to book and what to do in the first seven days, from our years raising English Goldendoodle litters. We will also send a few short emails with our best puppy-care guides. No sales, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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