Papillons - what are they like?

Snowy Celandine

Snowy Celandine

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Does anyone own a Papillon? My daughter wants a dog and likes both Pugs and Papillons. We know a lady who breeds Pugs but not sure about Papillons. My concerns are regarding housetraining and yapping. We've got (and always had) whippets and they are not the world's brightest dogs but are generally ok to housetrain (although I have had varying degrees of difficulty with recall depending on the dog concerned :rolleyes: :p ) and virtually never bark.

Can anyone reassure me or put me off altogether please? I'm not planning on getting a puppy just yet because I am too busy to give it my full attention at present and I have no idea how hard they are to obtain either?
 
There's a girl at our training club who has two (both rescue I think). One is nervous yappy but that is being worked on and she's improving quite a lot. They are both very good at the obedience and the other one who is older is an agility super star and not yappy at all. I think they are quite high energy and good fun to have as pets. I think like all these kind of breeds they can get a bit attention seeking if you don't put the training in at the beginning but her dogs are very nice and I can see why someone would like the breed.
 
They are extremely intelligent and easy to train, make excellent agility dogs and have bags of energy. Have decided they arent right for me but they are gorgeous little dogs. think they can be hard to housetrain cos their bladders are so tidgy
 
They are amazing wee creatures, we've bred them since I was tiny.

Very easy to train, very affectionate, tiny dogs with hearts of lions that don't realise their size (to give you an idea I was out walking one of our boys and a lady with a Doberman stopped me to tell me what a precious little dog I had...when we both turned to look at him, he had his leg cocked against her dog. Oops? I made apologies and walked on quickly!).

One thing you might want to be aware of - they can jump. High. All of ours can jump the wall between the stables with ease, they're not being naughty when they do it you understand, they're just inquisitive (or that's what they try to act like when you catch them at it anyway!).

They are not yappy dogs at all, our lot don't really make any noise. (I'm not saying they don't bark at all - our lot warn you when the post man arrives, or someone they don't know arrives on the yard, but so do our big dogs.)

I would disagree with the previous poster about housetraining - they've been no more hassle than our labs/vizslas/springers. I've never found them to have tiny bladders, their bladder is relevant to their size. So is their stomach, amount they eat/drink, size of bed required, etc.


As for ability to obtain, fairly easy but good breeders will have a waiting list and if you're looking for show quality it'll be somewhere between £500-1k (although, much like horses the sky's the limit really) depending on breeding, or for a pet £350-500 roughly. Check out the breed clubs websites, a lot have puppy registers or breeders contact details for you to get in touch.

This isn't the best post because I'm doped up on painkillers but any questions you have on the breed please ask, I'll be more than happy to help. I can also stick up some cute day old > 14yr old pics if you want some cute?
 
I actually think Papillions are ok. I am not a big fan of pugs but that's purely down to their looks and breathing issues. My cousin and his wife however bought one for their daughter a few years back and she was a lovely little puppy. However, the poor thing is left alone all day as far as I know, has not been and is not socialised so, as a result has turned into a nervous, yappy dog who will bite. I guess that can happen with any breed though but for some reason (stupidly) owners seem to accept this behaviour with little dogs - if it was the size of a rottie or something it would do some damage.

makes me very angry but it's not the dog's fault - I guess it's an intelligent breed andthis particular one has not been given people stimulation throughout it's life.
 
There used to be 2 up at the yard and they were nice dogs. However, most definitely would not be my choice for a dog that goes to a yard a lot as they are small and a lot more fragile than my staffords or the yard dally. I did like them as they did not suffer from small dog syndrome in any way at all!
 
We own two Papillons, just got our second one a few weeks ago and my family and of course the kids are really happy. I would say that they are great dogs. Full of energy and they just love to play, hard to get them to sit still, especially when they are young. We took some beautiful pictures of both of our Papillons and made a wall art poster out of them. It was hard enough to get them to stay somewhat still during the photoshooting. They may not be the most obedient dogs to be totally honest, but they are definitely a lot of fun and great family dogs.
 
I'm currently waiting for a puppy to become available, so this is a good post for me, nice to hear some positives. Some people just seem to assume they are overgrown chihuahuas, but I think they are delightful little characters and I'm looking forward to bringing one home.
 
I dont like little dogs really but like paps, the chunkier type. As others have said , they are very clever and trainable but also break legs very easily I believe (eg falling off/jumping off a sofa) so beware.
 
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