What a Maritsa puppy leaves with: the folder, the chip, the food, and the promise that outlasts them

A family drives home with a puppy asleep across a lap and a folder on the seat beside them. The folder is the part still there in five years, when a question comes up that nobody remembers the answer to. This is what leaves this kennel with a puppy.

The folder is the smallest part of it

The folder itself is nothing: a plastic wallet with a popper. What counts is what was put inside it, and when. The vaccination booklet from the veterinarian, with the dates in the vet's own hand. The microchip number, written twice, once in the booklet and once on the contract. The pedigree, or the date on which the club will issue it. The parents' hip and elbow results, with the dates and the body that read them. The feeding sheet, and the weight chart photocopied from the one taped to the wall of the puppy room.

Nothing in it was written on the day the family collected the puppy. It accumulated while the litter was here, and it can be handed over complete.

Fifteen digits that never change

The microchip goes in at the veterinarian's before the puppy leaves, and it is the one item in the folder that cannot be lost, because it sits under the skin. It follows the international standard for animal transponders, ISO 11784 and 11785: a scanner in Plovdiv, in Munich and in Toronto reads back the same fifteen digits.

Watch it being read rather than accepting the number on paper: the scanner and the paperwork should say the same thing. Then change the registration, a chip recorded in the breeder's name is not recorded in yours, and the entry has to be moved at the veterinarian and in whatever register your country keeps for dogs.

What does the vaccination record actually prove?

It proves dates. Every line should carry the date, the vaccine's name and batch, and a signature; a line without those is a note rather than a record. Worming treatments go into the same booklet with the product and the date; a puppy arrives here on a schedule and should leave on the same one.

The last entry will not be the rabies vaccination. Most rabies vaccines licensed in the EU are not given before twelve weeks of age, and a puppy leaves at eight. That dose is given later, by your own vet, and under the EU rules for moving pets, Regulation (EU) No 576/2013, it becomes valid for travel twenty-one days after it. The passport travels with the puppy already opened: chip number entered, rabies page left blank.

Two weeks of the same food

A puppy's first week in a new house is a change of air, water, floor, people and hours, and the gut is what answers that first. So the puppy leaves with two weeks of the food it is eating here, and a sheet copied from the one in our kitchen: how many meals a day, how much at each, at what hours, and whether the food is still soaked.

The first week at home is not the week to improve the diet. Change it, if you want to, after the second vaccination, over a week or more, mixing the new food in while the old one goes down. Anything faster usually ends in a night on the floor with a roll of paper towels.

What the contract puts in writing

One page, mostly plain. On it: the registered names of sire and dam with their registration numbers, the microchip number, the date of birth, the litter. The litter is entered with the club (in Bulgaria the BFRK, the Bulgarian Rottweiler club whose breeding rules sit inside the FCI system) and the pedigree follows that entry, which is why the entry number is on the contract too.

Then the undertakings. From the family: that the dog is vaccinated and wormed on the schedule the vet sets; that it is not bred before its health screening; that the kennel is called before the dog is passed on to somebody else. From us: which papers are handed over and when, and the follow-up, written down rather than remembered.

What does the follow-up actually look like?

A word that means nothing until it is described. Here: a message on the third day, to hear how the first night went. Another at two weeks, when the food is running low and the second vaccination is due. Then at four months, at six, and at a year.

It runs in both directions. We ask the family for the weight at home while the puppy is small, recorded the way it was recorded here; the date of the first season if it is a female; what the vet said at each visit; a photograph of the dog standing square twice a year. All of it goes into the same file as the whelping chart, a kennel that never hears anything again stops knowing what it produces.

What is the promise, in one sentence?

Not a guarantee about health, and not a promise about titles. It is that this dog is never a stranger to the kennel it was born in. A copy of the folder stays here, in the same file as the whelping chart, and the number in it stays the same. If the household ever comes apart (and households do) the kennel hears about it before the dog is handed to somebody nobody here has met. That sentence is in the contract as well as on this page, which is the difference between a promise and a sentiment.

What should you check before you drive away?

Four things, none of them slow.

• The chip: ask for it to be scanned in front of you, and read the number aloud against the paperwork.
• The booklet: dates, vaccine names, batch numbers, signatures. Empty lines are gaps, not oversights.
• The pedigree: whether it is in the folder or coming from the club, and when. In Bulgaria the litter is entered before the pedigree is printed, so a few weeks' wait is normal, but the entry number should be given to you on the day.
• The food: how much is in the bag, and the feeding sheet that goes with it. Take the blanket that smells of the litter, and carry the puppy on a lap: the first hour is not the hour to teach it to be alone in a car.

One thing to do this week

Before you pay the balance, send one message: ask for the microchip number and the litter entry number in writing, and ask when the pedigree follows. Both numbers already exist; they were written down while the puppy was still here, and a kennel that keeps records answers in a minute. Then book the first appointment with your own vet for the week the puppy arrives, and ask that vet to scan the chip and read the number back to you. Two minutes, and the dog in your arms is tied to every page of the folder.