Pomeranian Puppies

The dog that shrank inside one lifetime

Pomerania was a stretch of the Baltic coast across what is now northern Poland and northeastern Germany, and the dog that took its name from the region had been working there long before anyone wrote the name down. The Pomeranian belongs to the Spitz family, and the equipment is unmistakable: a wedge-shaped head, small pricked ears set high, a heavy standing coat and a plumed tail carried flat along the back. All of it was built for hauling and herding in cold weather rather than for sitting on a cushion.

The Poms that first reached Britain would surprise anyone who only knows the modern dog. Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, brought a pair to England in 1767, and Gainsborough painted them: substantial white dogs nearer in size to a small farm collie than to anything that fits in a coat pocket. For most of the century that followed, a British Pomeranian weighed twenty pounds or more.

Then Queen Victoria went to Italy. In 1888 she saw a Pomeranian at Florence, brought him home and showed him. His name was Marco, he weighed around twelve pounds, and he was conspicuously smaller than the British dogs of the day. Victoria bred from her own kennel and exhibited under her own name, and the small red Pom became the dog to have. Fashion followed the queen the way it usually did, breeders selected for the smaller end of every litter, and within a few decades the breed had come down to roughly half the size it started at. Not many breeds can point to one dog and one owner and say that is where the modern outline came from. The Pomeranian can, and the American Kennel Club recognized the breed the same year Marco came home.

Every colour the standard allows

Most breed standards are strict about colour. The Pomeranian standard goes the other way and opens the door to every colour, pattern and variation there is, which gives the breed one of the widest palettes in dogs.

Orange is the shade most people picture, running from a light apricot through to a deep marmalade. Beyond it there is red, cream, black, chocolate, blue, beaver and white, along with black and tan and its chocolate and blue equivalents, each carrying neat rust points above the eyes. Then the patterns: sable, where each hair is tipped darker than its base so the whole coat shifts as the dog moves; wolf sable, a grey-based version that gives an adult a genuinely wild look; brindle; and parti-colour, a white ground broken by patches of anything else.

Colour is not settled at nine weeks, either. The puppy coat gives way to the adult coat across the first year, and the shade very often travels with it: a dark sable puppy lightening as the tipped hairs grow through, a cream deepening toward apricot. Take one home young and you get to watch the whole thing happen.

The coat, and the week it asks for

Underneath the colour is a double coat doing two jobs. The undercoat is short, soft and dense; the outer coat is long, straight and harsh to the touch, and it stands away from the body instead of lying against it. That is what gives the breed its round outline and the deep frill across the chest and shoulders. An adult stands about six or seven inches at the shoulder and weighs somewhere between three and seven pounds, so a good deal of what you are looking at is coat.

Keeping it in order is a routine rather than a project. Two or three sessions a week with a pin brush and a steel comb, worked in sections from the skin outward rather than skated across the top, keeps the coat standing the way it should. The places that repay attention are behind the ears, through the frill, under the front legs and down the back legs. Most Poms roll onto their side and doze once the rhythm starts.

Twice a year the undercoat turns over with the seasons. For a fortnight the comb comes out daily, and then the routine goes back to normal. Beyond that, most owners settle into an appointment with a groomer every couple of months. Ask for a tidy rather than a close trim, since that standing outer coat keeps sun off the skin and is worth leaving in place through a Florida or Tennessee summer.

The rest belongs in the same session: nails a little and often, ears wiped while you are already brushing, and teeth brushed from the first week.

Five pounds with a full personality

The Pomeranian’s reputation is for being considerably larger on the inside than the outside, and it is deserved. This is a bold, busy, extroverted little dog that takes an interest in everything happening in the house and expects to be included in it. A Pom does not sit quietly in another room while something is going on.

They attach hard to their household and are affectionate in a very direct way: on the arm of the chair, along a thigh, on the back of the sofa where the whole room is visible. They are funny, too, in the way confident small dogs usually are, and most of them work out a party trick nobody taught them.

They have a voice, and they use it when someone comes up the path, so you will always know when a delivery has arrived. Teach a puppy from the first week that reporting is followed by a thank-you and an end, and the business stays brief.

A Pom is excellent company for adults, for older children who enjoy a dog with opinions, and for anyone in an apartment who wants a real dog rather than an ornament. They get on well with other small dogs and with cats they grow up alongside, and they would rather walk over to a new person in their own time than be scooped up by one.

Socialization through the first year turns all of that into a settled adult: different floors, lifts, umbrellas, hats, wheeled bins, calm grown dogs going about their business.

Training a fast learner

Poms are quick. Sit, down, a recall, a settle on a mat and a surprising number of tricks all come inside a few weeks, and the limit is never whether the dog understands. It is whether the dog has decided the exercise is worth its time, which it always is if you pay properly.

Keep the sessions to three or four minutes and stop while the dog still wants another go. Two minutes before dinner and two more while the kettle boils gets you further than twenty minutes on a Sunday afternoon. Use small, soft treats, mark the behaviour the moment it happens, and make sure everyone in the house uses the same word for the same thing.

House-training runs on the clock rather than on a signal. Small dog, short intervals: out first thing, after meals, after naps and after play, out with the puppy so the right thing can be paid for in the right place, and a crate with a soft bed to make the schedule easy to keep.

Two lessons pay off for the next fifteen years. The first is teaching a Pom to be lifted on cue rather than swept off the floor. A word, a hand signal and a treat, and you end up with a dog that asks to be picked up. The second is setting the furniture up for a light dog: steps or a ramp to the sofa, a harness rather than a collar on the lead, and a habit of putting the puppy down to walk rather than carrying it from room to room.

Around the house and out on the pavement

Exercise needs are modest and the enthusiasm for going out is not. Two short walks a day suit a Pomeranian well, and the walk is more about the news than the distance, so let the dog read the hedge. In a Florida or Tennessee summer, walk early and late and choose grass over hot pavement.

The rest of what a Pom wants is mental, and all of it happens indoors: a handful of kibble scattered through a folded towel, a food puzzle that has to be nudged around the floor, a two-minute recall game down the hallway with someone at each end. A Pomeranian that has used its head is a Pomeranian asleep on your knee by eight o’clock.

Coming to meet the Pomeranian puppies

Photographs flatten a Pomeranian into a ball of coat, which is the least interesting thing about it. What you notice standing over the pen is the speed, the way a puppy fixes on your face, and how completely something that weighs less than a bag of sugar can take charge of a room. Colour is worth seeing in person too, since the shade in front of you is only halfway to the adult one.

Our Pomeranian puppies come from our network of licensed breeders, and our team can tell you what a particular puppy’s coat has been doing and how it has been getting on with people. We have a store in Orlando and one in Nashville, and you are welcome to sit on the floor and let a puppy come to you before deciding anything. Find directions and hours, and ask about financing while you are here. Every puppy here goes home with its vet records, its vaccination history and a health warranty, and our team will walk you through what those cover.