Welcome and what an exciting time!
A good health testing breeder will be breeding (and rearing puppies carefully) for consistent temperament. At only two weeks, the puppies will change quite a bit in appearance by the time they’re ready for adoption. I’d agree with Nicki — a breeder will know her puppies’ personalities best
and can advise. Many I’ve worked with across breeds actually don’t make the decisions as to where puppies will be placed (if there are any specific desires, like a calm puppy over an extremely active one that may end up quite a handful without an experienced owner… I’ve had a couple of these!!
) until around 6-7 weeks. Also often a breeder allows buyers to choose in order in which they contacted them or were placed on their waiting list. I’ve told breeders the personality traits I’d value in the puppy I ultimately take but I’ve had far more rescues over the years than puppies from breeders as I ran a breed rescue. But really, for 99% of people the individual personality of the puppy will be fine, cavaliers are consistently all very sweet and friendly unless there were breeding, heath or socialising issues.
The key issues, and something to consider still for any red flags, is the breeders approach to heath testing, how they engage with you on this and whether they produce meaningful test certs for parents in particular. A vet check by their vet is NOT heath testing in this breed, which has many potentially serious endemic breed health issues. Both cavaliermatters.org and cavalierhealth.org have lots of info. Cavalier Matters is a little bit more pet owner friendly, Cavalier Health more detailed. Just as a general point, buyers should always be very wary of anyone selling and shipping puppies site unseen online, who isn’t a member of their national breed club, and doesn’t have national registration for puppies, and who has a constant stream of puppy availability. Online breeders are often just fronts for puppy farmers but can be very slick at appearing like breeders (til you ask for health info or ask other questions when many get angry and aggressive). Sadly it’s all a bit of a minefield for buyers of any breed.
As Nicky notes, pink noses are normal in puppies and almost always completely fill in as the puppy matures. A pink nose (called a dudley nose) is considered a fault in show dogs but of course is merely a cosmetic issue.
Hope that helps!
