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Every step of buying a Havanese, from deciding if the breed fits your house to the first year home, in the order you'll actually hit them, with a link to the deep dive at the exact point you need it.
This site has three other pages about buying and living with a Havanese: a breeder-vetting checklist, a day-to-day care guide, and an honest allergy explainer. Each one answers a single question well. None of them tells you when in the process to read it. That's what this page is for. Read it start to finish before you contact your first breeder, or jump to whichever step you're on right now, either way it's built to be the map, not a fourth topic competing with the other three.
The short version
Decide if the breed fits your home, including a real look at allergies and the grooming routine. If you're still weighing a Havanese against another small breed, read the honest side-by-side comparisons first. Set a budget and timeline (expect $1,500 to $3,000 for a pet-quality puppy, plus a roughly $500 deposit and a 6 to 12 month wait at most established breeders). Vet the breeder hard before you pay anything. Get the actual health-testing paperwork, not a verbal promise, and check it yourself in the OFA database. Understand what AKC registration does and doesn't guarantee. Read the sales contract line by line, especially the spay or neuter clause and the vet-exam window. Know your state's pet-purchaser protections before you need them. Put down a deposit only after the contract is in writing. Then prepare, bring your puppy home, and get through the first year with the care guide open in another tab.
Most of what determines whether a Havanese purchase goes well happens before you ever see a puppy's face online. Established Havanese breeders commonly run waitlists of roughly 6 to 12 months, sometimes longer for a specific color or sex, and most hold your place in line by the date they receive your deposit, not the date you first emailed. Being more specific about color or sex tends to add to the wait, not shorten it. That's not a reason to rush the vetting step to save time, it's the opposite: because the wait is long anyway, there's no real cost to spending an extra week checking a breeder's health-testing paperwork or reading a contract twice. The families who end up frustrated are almost always the ones who skipped a step because a puppy's photo was irresistible and a deposit felt urgent. It rarely is.
Because the Havanese is a purebred recognized by the AKC, not a designer cross, there's also a real paper trail available once a litter exists, registration, DNA parentage records, health-test databases. Most first-time buyers don't know how to actually use any of it. Step 6 covers that. This page assumes you haven't picked a breeder yet. If you already have a specific litter in front of you, skip ahead to Step 4, but come back to Steps 1 through 3 before you send any money, they're the ones people regret skipping most.
Before you contact a single breeder, be honest about two things: allergies and grooming tolerance. No Havanese, or any dog, is truly hypoallergenic, and how well a specific person tolerates a specific dog varies more than any breed claim can promise. Read the full allergy explainer before you start browsing litters. It covers why dander, not hair, is the real trigger, and how to actually test your own reaction to an adult Havanese before you commit to a puppy.
Grooming is the other decision that has to happen now, not after you've fallen for a specific puppy. A Havanese's long silky coat needs two to three brushing sessions a week to stay tangle-free, or a shorter puppy-cut trim if you'd rather trade coat length for less maintenance. The full day-to-day care guide covers grooming frequency, diet, and what a Havanese's exercise needs actually look like, worth reading before you decide the breed fits your house, not just your heart. If you already want to know exactly what a puppy cut, teddy bear cut, or kennel cut costs and how often it needs a groomer, the haircut and grooming styles guide breaks that down by style.
If you're choosing between the Havanese and another small breed, this is the moment to actually read the comparison, not guess. The Havanese vs Yorkie comparison covers where the Yorkie genuinely wins, on sheer small size and an even lower-shedding coat. The Havanese vs Maltese comparison covers a similar tradeoff against a breed with zero undercoat. The Havanese vs Shih Tzu comparison covers the opposite case, a breed that's actually larger and sturdier than the Havanese, with a longer top-end lifespan. None of the three oversells the Havanese. Reading one now, before you shortlist a breeder, is cheaper than reading it after a deposit is already down.
Expect a purchase price in the $1,500 to $3,000 range for a pet-quality Havanese puppy from health-tested lines, per this site's own breeder-vetting checklist, sometimes higher for rare colors or show-quality dogs. That's the number most first-time buyers already know going in. The two numbers that catch people off guard are the deposit and the wait.
Established Havanese breeders commonly ask for a deposit in the neighborhood of $500 to hold a spot on a waitlist, and most run that list on a first-deposit-received basis, not a first-contact-received basis. Expect a wait of roughly 6 to 12 months from deposit to puppy at a careful, health-testing breeder. Some buyers report longer waits for an in-demand color or a specific sex, so build in slack rather than counting on the shortest number you've heard.
Budget past the purchase price too. A first year of ownership, food, supplies, routine vet care, spay or neuter surgery, and the inevitable chewed shoe or two, commonly runs $1,300 to $2,800 on top of the purchase price, per cost breakdowns from GreatPetCare (vet-reviewed) and a Synchrony ownership-cost study, though the exact number depends heavily on where you live and what you buy. Basic starter supplies alone (crate, bed, bowls, leash, collar) typically run $300 to $1,200, and a small breed's first year of food usually lands between $434 and $684. None of that is optional once the puppy is actually home, worth planning for before you pay a deposit, not after.
This is the step the full breeder-vetting checklist is built for, and it's the single most important page on this site to read before you talk to a breeder seriously. It covers the five things that matter (health testing on both parents, an 8 to 12 week minimum age at homecoming, AKC or CKC registration, a written health guarantee, and a puppy raised in the home) and the four red flags worth walking away from outright. Read it now if you haven't already, this page assumes you have.
A few more red flags worth adding to that list, drawn from Humane World for Animals' own puppy-mill warning signs: a seller who can't produce actual veterinary paperwork, on letterhead, with vaccination dates and lot numbers, not just a verbal vaccine history. A seller who lists puppies through an online marketplace, classified ad, flea market, or pet store instead of directly from their own program. And a seller who refuses to let you see, even over a video call, exactly where the puppies and their mother actually live. A small, careful Havanese program is usually glad to show you that. An operation with something to hide usually isn't.
Once a breeder has passed the vetting step, ask for documentation, not a description. The breeder-vetting checklist already tells you to confirm health testing on both parents. The Havanese Club of America runs the breed's official health-testing program, CHIC, jointly with the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals. Under CHIC's current requirements, a Havanese earns certification with OFA hip and patella evaluations plus an annual CAER eye exam from a board-certified veterinary ophthalmologist. Ask for the parents' CHIC number and look their results up yourself in OFA's public database rather than taking a screenshot on faith. It takes about two minutes and it's free.
One detail worth knowing: BAER hearing testing was part of the Havanese Club of America's CHIC requirement until the club removed it in 2022. Plenty of careful breeders still run it anyway, along with a cardiac exam, even though neither is required for the CHIC number itself anymore. Asking whether a breeder tests beyond the current minimum is a fair, specific question, and how they answer it tells you a lot about how seriously they take the program.
A lot of first-time buyers assume "AKC registered" means something has already been verified about a specific puppy's health or quality. It hasn't. AKC registration is a paperwork and pedigree system, not a health guarantee. Here's what it actually covers and how the process works, so you know what you're looking at when a breeder hands you the forms.
A breeder registers a litter first, naming the registered sire and dam, before any individual puppy can be registered. Once that litter application is processed, the AKC issues individual dog registration applications for each puppy, valid for 12 months from the date issued. If a litter has more than one possible sire, meaning the mother was bred to more than one male in the same cycle, the AKC has required DNA profiling of every potential sire, the dam, and every puppy since 1998. Profiles compare a panel of genetic markers to confirm parentage with better than 99 percent confidence before that litter can be registered at all. Ask a breeder, plainly, whether the litter was single-sired or multiple-sired, and if it's the latter, ask to see the DNA parentage confirmation, not just the registration paperwork. Most single-sire litters from a careful breeder won't need this, but knowing the question exists is worth more than it sounds like it should.
This is the step most first-time buyers skim. Don't. A real puppy sales contract should name both parents by their full registered names, spell out the health-guarantee window the breeder-vetting checklist already flags (typically one to five years, covering genetic conditions), and include a return-to-breeder clause. That means if you can't keep the dog at any point in its life, the contract should require or at minimum offer that it comes back to the breeder rather than getting rehomed on your own through a stranger online.
Most pet-quality puppy contracts also include a spay or neuter clause, commonly requiring the procedure sometime between 6 and 12 months of age, with proof sent back to the breeder. That clause exists because the puppy is being sold as a companion, not for future breeding, and skipping it typically voids the health guarantee along with it.
Look specifically for a vet-exam clause. Most legitimate contracts require you to have the puppy examined by a licensed veterinarian within 48 to 72 hours of pickup to keep the health guarantee valid. Missing that window, even by accident, is one of the more common ways buyers accidentally void a guarantee they never used. Mark the date on your calendar the moment you know your pickup day, more on this in Step 11.
Even a well-vetted purchase can go wrong. As of a 2023 count from the Animal Legal & Historical Center, 22 states have enacted a pet purchaser protection law, sometimes called a puppy lemon law, giving buyers a legal path to a refund, an exchange, or reimbursed vet costs if a recently purchased puppy turns out to be seriously ill. The protection window varies a lot by state, from as short as 7 days in Vermont to 21 days in Illinois, and the remedies on offer vary too. Look up your own state's law before you need it, not after, since some of these laws require you to notify the seller and get a second veterinary opinion within a tight window to preserve your claim.
None of this replaces a good contract or a well-vetted breeder. It's a backstop, not a plan, and the honest odds of needing it drop sharply if you actually do Step 4 and Step 5 above instead of skipping them.
Once you've picked a breeder, reviewed the contract, and confirmed the health testing, it's time to actually pay a deposit, and how you pay matters as much as how much. The breeder-vetting checklist already flags payment only by wire transfer or gift card, with no contract, as a red flag worth walking away from outright, and that holds here too. A legitimate breeder accepts standard payment methods and puts the deposit terms in writing before you send anything.
Ask, specifically, what portion of the deposit is refundable and under what circumstances. Deposit amounts for Havanese litters commonly run around $500, and policies vary: some breeders treat the whole amount as non-refundable because it holds a spot that could otherwise go to another family, others split it, refunding part if your plans change. Either policy can be reasonable. It needs to be written down before you pay, not explained after a problem comes up.
With a deposit down and a pickup date set, the last stretch is logistics. Confirm the 8 to 12 week minimum age at homecoming the breeder-vetting checklist covers, puppies need that time with their mother and littermates, and a breeder offering an earlier pickup is a flag worth revisiting. Ask what food the puppy has been eating so you can transition gradually rather than switching diets cold, the care guide recommends a 7 to 10 day gradual transition and covers what to look for in that first bag of food.
Schedule your own vet appointment before pickup day, not after. Because most contracts require a veterinary exam within 48 to 72 hours to keep the health guarantee valid (see Step 7), booking that appointment in advance means you're not scrambling to find an opening in a three-day window. Puppy-proof your home, set up a crate and a confined space for the first few weeks, and have food, a leash, and basic supplies ready before the drive or flight home, not the night before.
Get your puppy to the vet appointment you booked in Step 10 within that 48 to 72 hour window. It's not just a contract formality, it's the fastest way to catch anything that needs attention early, and it's what actually keeps a written health guarantee enforceable if something does come up. Bring whatever paperwork the breeder gave you, including the health-testing results you reviewed back in Step 5, so your own vet has the full picture.
Expect an adjustment period. A puppy that was calm at the breeder's home may be quieter, more anxious, or less interested in food for the first day or two in a completely new environment, that's normal and usually resolves within a few days as they settle in. Keep the routine simple: consistent feeding times, a confined space to sleep, and short, calm exposure to the rest of the house rather than the whole family and every visitor at once. The day-to-day care guide covers what a normal routine looks like once the adjustment period passes, from brushing schedule to how much exercise a Havanese actually needs.
If your contract included the spay or neuter clause from Step 7, this is also the window to plan for it and eventually send the breeder the proof they're owed. Beyond that, day-to-day life settles into the routine the care guide covers in full: two to three brushing sessions a week, short daily walks plus indoor play, and ongoing vet care as your Havanese grows into its adult size, usually around 9 to 12 months.
A good outcome isn't a puppy with zero risk, no dog comes with that guarantee, it's a family that did the work up front and knows exactly what they signed up for. That means a breeder who answered every question in Step 4 without hedging, health-testing paperwork you actually verified in the OFA database in Step 5, a contract you read line by line in Step 7 instead of skimming for the price, and a puppy whose fit for your household you decided deliberately in Step 1 rather than falling for the first photo.
The honest answer, the one this whole site tries to give instead of the marketing version, is that a well-vetted Havanese purchase takes longer and asks more of you than the fastest listing you'll find. That's the trade that gets you a dog raised the right way instead of a photo that turned out to be the easy part.
Learn what to verify in a Havanese breeder, then work this checklist from Step 1 before you reach out.
See Havanese puppiesRead the full breeder-vetting checklist