By HILARY POTKEWITZ
For her seventh birthday party in June, Becca Jonas of Encino, Calif. made her wishes clear. “She wanted puppies,” her father Matthew says. Not to adopt—the family already has two older dogs—but as party guests that she and her friends could play with.
When 29-year-old Jacqueline Lawrence was planning her friend Julie’s bachelorette party in New York City in 2014, she also wanted puppies there.
“It’s a classy alternative to a stripper. We put Julie in a chair, blindfolded her, played that music that always comes on when strippers dance and told her to reach out and touch something,” Ms. Lawrence recalls. Then, they filled her arms with puppies. “Her reaction was the best thing ever.”
Puppies may be the only things that qualify as appropriate entertainment for both a child’s birthday and a bachelorette party. A small number of companies now specialize in providing puppies for party rentals...