🐾 How Our Puppy Purchase Process Works
At PAWSitive Cheeky Chihuahua LLC, finding the right home for each of our puppies is very important to us. We want the process to feel personal, transparent, and comfortable for both our families and us. Our puppies are raised as part of our family, and we put a great deal of time, love, and care into them from birth until the day they leave our home.
1. Complete Our Puppy Application
The first step is completing our Puppy Application. This helps us learn more about you, your household, your experience with dogs, and what you are looking for in your future Chihuahua.
Completing an application does not obligate you to purchase a puppy, nor does it guarantee approval. Our goal is simply to make sure our puppies are being placed in homes where they will be loved, understood, and cared for throughout their lives.
2. Video Meet & Greet
Once we review your application and feel we may be a good fit for one another, we will schedule a video meet-and-greet.
This gives us an opportunity to meet face-to-face, answer your questions, talk more about our breeding program, and discuss the puppy or dog you are interested in. It also gives you an opportunity to get to know us and feel comfortable with who you are purchasing your puppy from. For the health and safety of our dogs and puppies, we do not offer visits inside our home.
3. Choosing Your Puppy
Once you are approved, we can discuss the puppy you are interested in and whether we believe that puppy is an appropriate fit for your family. We are always happy to discuss personality, temperament, current weight, development, and estimated adult size. However, adult weight can never be guaranteed. Chihuahua puppies can develop differently, and any projected adult weight is only an estimate.
4. Securing Your Puppy
If you decide you have found your baby, a $500 non-refundable holding fee is required to officially reserve the puppy. We do not hold puppies without a holding fee, and we do not make exceptions to this policy. Until the holding fee has been received, the puppy remains available to other approved families. The holding fee is applied toward the puppy's total purchase price.
5. Watching Your Puppy Grow
Once your puppy is officially reserved, the exciting part begins! 💕
We stay in communication with you while your puppy continues growing and preparing to go home. We love sharing photos, videos, milestones, personality updates, and other important information along the way. Our puppies are raised right in our home and are provided with age-appropriate early stimulation and socialization. They experience everyday household sounds, different textures and surfaces, gentle handling, people, and normal family life. We also begin litter-box training at approximately four weeks of age.
6. Veterinary Care & Preparing for Home
We do not rush our puppies out the door simply because they have reached a certain age. Our puppies generally leave us around 10–12+ weeks, depending on their individual size, maturity, eating habits, development, and overall readiness.
Tiny puppies may remain with us longer. Their health and safety will always come before a go-home date.
Before leaving us, puppies receive appropriate veterinary care based on their age and size, which may include:
• Veterinary examination
• Age-appropriate vaccinations
• Deworming
• Fecal testing
• Microchip
• Health records
Our breeding adults are also Embark health tested, and we continue working toward/completing appropriate OFA/CHIC health testing within our breeding program.
7. Contract & Final Payment
Before your puppy goes home, you will receive our purchase contract to review and sign, and the remaining balance will be due according to the terms provided.
Our puppies are placed as PET ONLY and go home with a spay/neuter agreement.
We normally do not provide registration paperwork with pet placements. However, if registration paperwork is important to you, we can provide the applicable paperwork after we receive veterinary confirmation that your puppy has been spayed or neutered.
8. Bringing Your Baby Home 🏡
When your puppy is ready, we will coordinate their go-home arrangements with you.
Depending on your location, options may include local pickup, an agreed-upon meeting location, ground transportation, or flight nanny service.
Our flight nanny service is based on the actual cost of the flight, the airline's pet fee, and a $600 flight nanny service fee. Because airfare varies, the total transportation cost will depend on the specific travel arrangements.
9. What Your Puppy Goes Home With
We want you to feel prepared and confident when you bring your new baby home. Your puppy will go home with their health information and everything outlined in your individual agreement, including our one-year health guarantee, microchip information, age-appropriate veterinary records, feeding and care information, and 30 days of Trupanion pet insurance eligibility. Your puppy comes home with a generous puppy pack for a smooth transition to his/her new home.
Most importantly, you aren't simply purchasing a puppy and never hearing from us again.
10. Welcome to the PAWSitive Cheeky Family 💕
Our relationship with our puppy families doesn't end on go-home day.
We offer lifetime breeder support and are always happy to answer questions, celebrate milestones, and help our families navigate life with their Chihuahua.
We also have a "womb-to-tomb" return policy. If circumstances ever arise where you are no longer able to care for one of our dogs, we want them to come back to us rather than end up in an uncertain situation.
When you choose a PAWSitive Cheeky Chihuahua, our hope is that you don't just feel like you purchased a puppy—you become part of our extended PAWSitive Cheeky family. 🐾💕
