Smaller is not better: what decides the price of our Mame Shiba

Published October 14, 2026 · Last updated October 14, 2026

Smaller is not better for a Mame Shiba. Look up the Mame Shiba in English and you will find people saying, "They are made small by force," or "They are just teacup dogs." That worry is fair. In Japan, there really is a trend where the smaller the puppy, the higher the price, and there are sellers who cut back a puppy's food to make it look small. On this page, we tell you plainly what we base our puppy prices on, how we see small size, and why we do not believe that smaller is better.

Why "the smaller, the better" hurts the dog

In Japan, two-month-old puppies sit in glass cases in pet shops. Small, fluffy, with big round eyes. Japan has long had a love of small things; a thousand years ago, a court lady wrote in her book of essays, "All small things are lovely." A shop sets its highest price the moment a puppy arrives, and lowers it if the puppy does not sell. That is because a puppy sells best now, while it is small and cute. The shops are not the villains. It is the system.

Within this system, the Mame Shiba became a dog priced for being "even smaller." Sellers created a further category called "extra-small Mame Shiba" (gokusho mameshiba), advertised as one size smaller than a Mame Shiba, and charged several times the price. This gave rise to tricks to make puppies look small. One is food: raising a puppy on barely enough to survive, so that its bones, joints and organs never develop, and selling it as a "Mame Shiba." Another is the birth date: since smaller puppies sell for more, a puppy is sold as younger than it really is. This is not just our impression. From November to December 2023, at the request of Japan's Ministry of the Environment, local governments inspected 19 pet auction sites and about 1,400 breeders across the country. At every one of the auction sites, the birth dates of dogs and cats were found to cluster on certain days of the week. In other words, birth dates had been rewritten to match the days the auctions were held. About 700 breeders had faulty records, and 50 were selling puppies and kittens less than 56 days old.

This is not only a Japanese problem. The Kennel Club in the UK warns that, with so-called "teacup" dogs, sellers may use methods to stunt a puppy's growth, or sell puppies before eight weeks of age to make them look smaller. It explains that such dogs are likely to have a much shorter life, and are prone to fragile bones, joint problems and heart problems. Veterinarians also explain that extremely small dogs are prone to low blood sugar, slipping kneecaps, dental problems and low body temperature. The reputation that "Mame Shiba are weak" or "Mame Shiba don't live long" spread from this kind of breeding. It is not that the Mame Shiba is a weak dog. It is forcing a dog to be small that makes it weak. We never cut back on food to make a puppy look small. The same goes for birth dates. At our kennel, several staff members record and keep track of each puppy's date of birth. It is not a system in which any one person could change it on their own.

How to check before you buy →

How we actually price a puppy

So what do we base our prices on? The quality of the dog. Each puppy's price is different. Based on the parents' bloodline, we grade one point at a time: the bone structure, the width of the cheeks, the mouth, the length of the muzzle, the depth of the stop (the step between forehead and muzzle), how the ears are set and their shape and width, the position and shape of the eyes, the stand-off, color and shine of the coat, and the color of the nose. The ideal dog scores 100, and the score decides the puppy's class. With high-scoring puppies, customers often say "What a good-looking dog" before we have even told them the price. A professional's grading and an ordinary person's eye are not so far apart. Small size is only one of these points.

Let us be honest here. Even if a puppy is as small as what some call an "extra-small Mame Shiba," if that smallness comes from poor development, our price goes down. Small does not mean expensive. That said, small mothers have fewer puppies, and often only one. So as a result, puppies from small bloodlines do tend to cost more. That is a fact. But we never do anything to make a puppy look small. At our kennel, a Mame Shiba is a Mame Shiba, whatever its size.

Coat color also affects the price. At our kennel, black is the highest, followed by red and sesame. White is generally called a "rare color," and in Japan some sellers charge more for it because it is rare. But at our kennel, white has always been a lower-priced color. We base our pricing of coat colors on the Nihon Ken Hozonkai (NIPPO) standard for the Shiba Inu. The colors that standard holds up as ideal are red, sesame and black. Being rare alone does not raise the price.

The price also differs by sex. For puppies of the same quality, females cost more and males cost less.

And the reason a Mame Shiba costs more than a Shiba Inu is not small size either. It is numbers. A Shiba Inu will have five or six puppies at a time. A Mame Shiba, being small, cannot. At our kennel, about half of all births are a single puppy, about three in ten are two puppies, and about two in ten are three. Three is a large litter. The work involved in each birth is no different from a Shiba Inu's. With the same amount of work and less than half as many puppies, it simply follows that each puppy costs about twice as much as a Shiba Inu. We are not profiteering.

Sound body first, small size second

As the points we grade show, when we choose our parent dogs, we look at the body first: a sound build, a calm temperament, and the Japanese dog standard. Small but sturdy-boned, with a round face and a thick curled tail. That is the look we have pursued. We do not want the delicate smallness of a Chihuahua in a Mame Shiba. When our customers take their dogs to the dog park, the playmates they choose are large dogs such as German Shepherds, Huskies and Golden Retrievers. Most of them let their dogs run with dogs like these. A delicate dog could not do that.

A dog that grew up eating well and moving well feels much heavier when you pick it up, even at the same size. Its bones are dense and it has muscle. A fat dog is not a healthy dog. A body that can run at full speed: that is a healthy body. Small size comes after that.

"Your puppies are bigger than pet-shop puppies. Why do they cost more?"

Customers in Japan sometimes ask us this. Our puppies are not bigger at the same age. They are a different age. Japanese pet shops sell puppies at two months old. We raise ours at our kennel until they are over three months old, most until about three and a half months, before sending them home. They are one to one and a half months older than shop puppies.

During that extra month or month and a half, the puppies live in our kennel's "puppy nursery," among older puppies and adult dogs. They learn from their companions, with their own bodies, how dogs greet each other, and how much a bite hurts, both giving and receiving one. Every day, professional trainers teach them toilet habits, not to nip, to stay calm when held, and to get used to a leash. We deliberately do not teach "sit" or "stay." We believe those are for owners to teach themselves, while building trust with their dog. Puppies going to the United States stay at our kennel until six months of age, so they also practice walking, to be ready for the world outside.

People in Japan will spend money on a small puppy. But perhaps we are not yet used to paying for something you cannot see, such as education. Try this calculation. Suppose you had a professional dog trainer come to your home every day for a month to train your puppy. In Japan, a trainer's home visit costs about 3,000 to 6,000 yen an hour. Two hours a day, 20 to 25 days a month, comes to 200,000 to 300,000 yen a month. These are average figures for Japan, and rates in your country will be different. Still, in any country, hiring someone to train your dog adds up. And a trainer who comes to your home works with just your one dog. There is no pack of dogs there. No older puppies, no adult dogs, no dogs to teach your puppy how to greet. Socialization within a pack of dogs is something no amount of money can buy at home.

What about bringing a puppy home at two months? You get to spend its smallest, cutest time together. But what kind of time is that? The World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) recommends giving puppies several doses of vaccine two to four weeks apart, with the last dose at 16 weeks of age or older. Japanese veterinary associations also advise not taking a puppy outdoors or to places where dogs gather for at least two weeks after vaccination, until its body has built up resistance. That means walks can only start after four months of age. A puppy that comes home at two months then spends more than two months shut away indoors. That is longer than the number of days it has been alive. You may think you are enjoying its cutest days together, but in fact the puppy is shut up at home, the only dog there. All its chances to meet other dogs and learn the rules of dog society are lost during that time.

We have long believed that socialization during this period matters more. The same view exists overseas. In 2008, the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior stated that behavior problems, not infectious diseases, are the number one cause of death in dogs under three years old, that the risk of missing socialization is greater than the risk of infection, and that puppies can start socialization classes as early as seven to eight weeks of age, once they have had at least one vaccination. Our puppies complete their socialization within the pack at our kennel before they go home. Vaccines, however, are a separate matter. Which diseases occur, and how often, differs completely from country to country and region to region. Which vaccines are essential, such as rabies or leptospirosis, also depends on where you live. After your puppy comes home, please talk with a veterinarian who knows your area well, and have them set up a vaccination schedule that fits the conditions where you live. Then, starting from safe places, help your puppy get used to the world outside, little by little.

Do you pay for small looks, or for what grows inside? Is it the cuteness of the first month and a half that matters, or the growth over the next fifteen years? Which is the longer time? Customers who have read our website from top to bottom sometimes say to us at the end, "After all you do, isn't this price actually low?" We take those words as the best answer of all.

Families from overseas picking up their puppies at our kennel.

The standard sets a ceiling, not a floor

The size standard for the Mame Shiba is up to 34 cm (13.4 in) for males and up to 32 cm (12.6 in) for females. KC Japan's certification check assumes the dog is "a purebred, sound Shiba," then actually measures its height to decide whether it passes. The standard sets only an upper limit. There is no lower line. So if a dog is healthy and has no problems, even a very small one can receive a pedigree.

But that does not mean "the smaller, the better." Putting "a sound Shiba" first in the standard means looking at the soundness of the body before smallness. We look in the same order. We are not aiming for dogs smaller than the standard. Within the standard, we aim for dogs that are sound and look like a true Shiba. Be careful with dogs sold on claims of being "extremely small."

There is one more reason small size is not everything for the Mame Shiba. The Mame Shiba was accepted as a dog that can live indoors not because of its size alone. It was accepted together with a way of raising it that settles the Shiba's wild nature into life with people. Shiba that have been made small without regard for anything else, keeping a fierce temper, are not suited to living indoors. Small size is only one part of what a Mame Shiba is.

The opposite problem: a "Mame Shiba" that grows into a Shiba Inu

The opposite of worrying about dogs that are too small, stories like "We brought home a Mame Shiba, and a year later it was the size of a Shiba Inu" are also not unusual in Japan. The "extra-small Mame Shiba" label we mentioned in Chapter 01 is used to mean one size smaller than a Mame Shiba. Every so often, people bring us dogs they bought elsewhere as "extra-small Mame Shiba." These are supposed to be one size smaller. But when we compare them, almost all are the same size as our ordinary Mame Shiba, or bigger. "We bought it as an extra-small Mame Shiba." "Were we cheated?" When people say this to us, we have no answer to give.

Overseas, telling the difference is even harder. There may be Shiba Inu where you live, but there are hardly any Mame Shiba. With no other Mame Shiba around to compare, there is no way to know whether your dog is small or large. A small Shiba Inu, or a Mame Shiba? I think many owners live with that line very blurred. In Japan it is different. Put a dog from our kennel next to the Mame Shiba in the neighborhood, and ours is clearly smaller. Owners often tell us, "Ours is the smallest one around here."

When a dog from a kennel with no history grows large, all sorts of reasons come back: "It's a throwback to an earlier generation," "Food overseas is different," "It must be getting too many calories." Puppies born from bloodlines that have been consistent in size for generations almost never grow back to Shiba Inu size. Rather than searching for reasons after a dog has grown, look before you bring one home. Not at the "extra-small" sales label, but at the parents' height, the breed line on the pedigree certificate, and how many years and generations that kennel has raised only Mame Shiba. We explain how to check on our page "Before you buy a Mame Shiba from Japan."

What we did when the price could have doubled

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people spent more time at home, the number of people wanting a dog suddenly rose, and there were no dogs left to sell anywhere in Japan. Our kennel received 900 reservations in a single year. Almost every day, pet shops we had never dealt with called us, saying, "We'll pay double for a Mame Shiba from your kennel." Even so, we did not sell a single puppy to a pet shop, and we placed our puppies with the people who had reserved before the pandemic, at the same prices as before. That is why our profits hardly changed during that time, even when everyone was talking about a shortage of dogs. We could not bring ourselves to say, "There are no dogs anywhere in Japan, so we are raising our prices."

Families overseas pay, in addition to the puppy's price, for the vaccinations and certificates needed for export, and for transport. Export costs are charged at actual cost, with no profit added. You will find a breakdown of the costs on our export costs page, and priority list reservations on our reservation page. Joining the priority list is free. We ask for payment only after you have decided on a puppy we introduced and signed the contract.

Dogs are not factory products. The time and care a kennel puts in varies enormously from one kennel to another. We believe a price is the proof of how much time and care went into raising that dog. Not paying for smallness, but for a sound body and for what grows inside. We hope to place our puppies with people who see it that way.

About the author

Tomoyuki Nishiyama, second-generation owner of Sesshu Hozanso, a kennel dedicated to Mame Shiba. I have lived with dogs for more than 50 years and am the author of INUDŌ: The Shiba Inu Code. Everything on this site comes from my own experience.

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