First to Maxxs Mummy: Be careful what you wish for :lol: . My wife and I have 9 and it's a LOT of work.
As for coping with letting the puppies go, where can I begin??? First off, taking care of the puppies for 3 months til they're ready to go is plenty of time to get attached, and we definately do get attached! That's why we are very picky about who we sell a puppy to. It's so much fun to see the personalities go from basically a lump when they are born to a full-fledged cavalier.
To help cope with letting them go, we do everything we can to be sure the puppies will be well taken care of annd loved.
We start by "requiring" that the local people we sell to start visitting their puppy at about 4 weeks old. That means the puppy begins to get to know their future family. It also gives us a chance to talk to them about the proper care of their puppy, what to watch for with the health issues, etc., etc. We encourage them to call us with any questions at all after the puppy is home; and we make it very clear to them that this is like us giving up one of our children.
All our puppies are microchipped (included in our puppy cost) when they leave, with us listed as the second contact. Our contract also requires that the people contact us at least once a year with a photo and a short note on how the puppy is doing. The puppies go home with a "care package" that has food, toys, a DVD on training, and just a lot of miscellaneous stuff that we know the puppy will like. The last week that we have the puppy, we ask that the puppies crate be dropped off at our house with bedding so we can start the puppy out with crate training in it's own crate. That way puppy has something familiar to go to when it gets to it's new home.
Having said all that, how do we cope? Sometimes good, sometimes not as well. I have always said that the day the puppies leave is both the best and worst part of breeding. The best because of the happy, excited people who are finally getting to take their puppy home and the worst because the puppy is leaving us. It's seldom that there is a dry eye in our house when they go. The one thing that helps is when we decide to keep a puppy out of one of our litters.
One of the things we really hope for is that the families will contact us for dog-sitting or a play date. We dog-sit as much as possible for our puppy buyers and a lot of them call for that. It's so much fun seeing the puppies grow into adults.
I guess this got a little long winded, Fuzzie Bear, you hit on something that my wife and I have to deal with every time we have a litter.
Bruce
MysticKnight Cavaliers