Choosing your puppy...PERSONALITY MATTERS!!!!!!

Hi all, things are rolling along nicely here and I wanted to get the title down for my next and perhaps most important post to date.  John and I were talking tonight about how important it is to try to match the personality of the puppy to the lifestyle and situation of the new family that they will become a member of.  Too often choices are made on looks, cost, or even the effectiveness of the seller and this aspect is overlooked completely.  Even when it is brought up it's almost as an afterthought after a buyer has made their choice of which puppy they want to take home.  Honestly it's not really the ideal way to go about making a decision that will affect the next decade or so of yours and your puppy's lives.  It's similar to finding a potential life partner and basing the decision to marry strictly on looks, 5 minutes of interaction, and some positive input by a dating service. Bringing a pet into your family is a huge deal, bringing a mastiff into your family is both literally and figuratively a huge deal as they aren't tea cup yorkies.
As breeders  we're learning more about all that is involved in the process of  breeding, raising, training, and then placing our family of puppies into new homes we have realized more and more just how important it is to get this right from the very beginning.  Part of that is trying to match successfully our puppy and his or her personality to the different prospective families that are looking to add one of them to their families.  Placing a reserved dog that likes to attach herself to one or two people and who is perfectly content to lay down and watch the world go by in relative peace through observation isn't exactly the type of dog a breeder should send home with a family who has 4 young children and who are extremely active with constant action and new people coming and going into the house constantly (kinda like our house gets at times with our teenaged girls & their teammates and friends).  Mastiffs love their families and are very adaptable but at the same time a very outgoing explorer of a pup who is a bundle of energy is much more likely to thrive in that type of environment than a reserved and very calm one is.
A quiet family who enjoys being around the house or spending time as a small family unit on hikes or walks in a quiet suburb, on trails, parks or in the mountains is going to enjoy a more reserved/laid back puppy much more than one who goes 100 mph with their ears on fire trying to figure out what they can get into next.
The obvious point of the post is that we feel that too little attention is placed on personalities, both human and canine, and we feel it should be the first priority for both the breeder and potential owner to address.  John said he'd ask the pups their preferrence but he hasn't mastered their language yet.  Maybe it's because he's been so good lately that he hasn't had to share the doghouse with them enough to pick up puppy!  Ha,ha. We attempted to give the wonderful families who adopted our last litter all the information we could about the tendencies and the personalities of the pets they would be taking home and we could not be happier for the families that they all belong to now.  Each family got the perfect dog for them and they nurtured their pups to develop into the type of dog they were looking for.  I'd love to say that we could take all the credit but in thruth we didn't focus specifically on personalities, it was more secondary, but in truth Kelly adopted Rayne and she was the only one with a vastly different personality so that also made it easier.  The real credit goes to the puppies themselves for being so adaptable regardless of the situation they were introduced into and to the parents who did an amazing job of loving them and letting them know that they were safe and an important part of their new "pack".  This time we've got personalities that are as different as night and day so we've got to do our best to help you find the pup that suits your needs and your lifestyle the best. 
I don't know if it is because this litter is the second so we were much more prepared for it, or if we have just spent more time from the very beginning with each of the pups, but something has definitely been different with this litter.  We did our best to interact, socialize, and provide a wide variety of experiences to our last litter which included the beginnings of crate and potty training but we saw that we could do even more at an even earlier stage this time.  The result is that we have noticed that each of our puppies have definite and distinct personalities and have had them from almost the day they were born.  For example the smallest of the litter was almost half the size of her siblings at birth but even before she could see she would push, pull, nudge, and do anything in her power to place herself right where she needed to be to get the biggest meal.  As she's grown her forwardness and her fearlessness has become even more prominent, she makes it clear that if there's any pushing around to be done it's going to be done by her.  It's amazing that by 5-6 weeks that the major aspects of a young puppy's personality is so evident but it is cleary the case.  We know that our goal is to nurture them, socialize them, and to help provide a very solid foundation for their future personalities and that the ultimate work is going to be done by their new families.  Still we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to acheive our goal of being excellent breeders, who provide excellent puppies that not only can become wonderful pets but also dogs who improve the overall health and diversity of the mastiff breed.