I'm hoping that size is not your primary consideration in searching for a puppy!!
With this breed health is really the primary concern:
Health clearances (eg cardiologist, NEVER only vet heart certs (generally meaningless), from within a year of the breeding, cardiology clearances for all four grandparents at age 5 as well; at least one of the parents should have a grade A on an MRI cert and both parents should be scanned if at all possible; ophthalmologist clearances on eyes, and hip scores. I'd want to know the dog had good patellas as well. Both parents should be at LEAST 2.5 years old, both with parents at LEAST age 5. (those are the most basic requirements of the MVD protocol
). You want to see the physical pieces of paper.
www.roycroftcavaliers.com has images of what certs look like as does
www.cavaliercampaign.com.
Have a look in the Cavalier Information library on the board here.
There are some good questions to ask any breeder (and what to expect in reply) here
http://www.phouka.com/dogs//bdr_questions.html
With regards to size, much depends on the size of the grandparents as well as the parents, how many puppies there are in the litter, and how they are fed both before and after they come to live with you. The smallest puppy at 8 weeks DOES NOT always end up the smallest. Cavaliers should not be being deliberately bred for small size as this just exacerbates many of the health problems they sadly already suffer with.
I have figures for a litter of 7 puppies, at four weeks they ranged between smallest bitch 957g {2lb} and largest dog 1362g {3lb} - and as adults, ended up between 13.7lb and 20lb.
4lb is a good weight for a 4 week old from a small litter - it's hard to judge without seeing the puppies, and without knowing if she is a fat puppy! The very tiny puppy would worry me - they should be of an fairly even size - obviously the dogs being larger than the bitches.
Please feel free to ask lots of questions - it is very important that you thoroughly research the breed and the breeder, as you are making a huge commitment to care for a precious dog throughout their hopefully long and health life.
