How we raise our puppies

Bringing a puppy into your family is a big decision. We try to breed very versatile puppies that can go in any direction. We really enjoy seeing our puppies go on to be service and therapy animals. In order for them to achieve this goal they have to be raised with a proper foundation. We raise all of our puppies in our home with the ‘Puppy Culture Method’ I strongly recommend every single one of my puppy buyers to purchase this video so that they can understand the important skills that their puppies were taught in their first eight weeks of life.

Choosing the right pairing

Before we have a litter with any of our females we spend months, if not years looking for the perfect stud to compliment our female. We are constantly looking for the best possible pairings. We health test all of our dogs and when we choose a stud we expect him to also have all of his proper health testing done!

One of the things that puppy culture emphasis on is making sure that the female feels happy, loved, and safe during the pregnancy. We make sure that we are accommodating our pregnant females to the best of our ability, we are very mindful of how much they are eating, drinking, and how much they are wanting to play. Pregnant females tend to get pretty needy! Each female tends to need their own accommodations. While our girls are pregnant we make sure that they get the proper prenatal care, they go into our reproductive vet at approximately 25 days into their pregnancy to confirm that they are pregnant. After this time that is when we start to watch them more closely. At about 57 days we take them in for their pregnancy x-ray. The purpose of this is to count the fetal skeletons so that we can be aware of how many puppies to expect during whelping.

Ensuring that mom is healthy is the best way to ensure that we are bringing healthy puppies into our breeding program, we like to make sure that mom and puppies are getting the proper nutrition. Avoiding prenatal stress for the mother is very essential for the well being of the puppies. Having a stressed out mother can influence the puppies behavior and the way that their brain develops. In puppy culture it talks about stroking mothers bellies during the last few days of pregnancy. They say that the puppies learn to respond to touch. If puppies learn to respond to touch while they are still in utero they are often more docile once they have been born. They believe that the puppies will enjoy being handled more if touched through the moms belly.

After puppies are born

When puppies are born their eyes and ears are sealed shut for approximately the first two weeks of life. When the puppies are just three days old we start something called Early Neurological Stimulation. Some of the benefits of ENS is tolerance to stressful things, they tend to be able to resist disease and have a better immune system, their adrenal system tends to work faster, they usually will have a stronger heart rate, and a stronger heart beat. We do this until the puppies are 16 days old. This has enough impact it can change the rest of their life.

At about 18 days we start litter training our puppies. Puppies have the instinct to “keep their den clean” as puppy culture puts it. They will usually walk away from their bedding to urinate and defecate. This is the perfect time to start potty training and also begin the socialization process.

3 weeks to 12 weeks old is the most important time in a dogs life for socialization. We like to make sure that during this time our puppies are introduced to children of all ages, we like to make sure that the puppies are also handled by the children so they know how to react with small children.

We like to make sure that they are introduced to dogs other than their mother. We let them start to go outside with our ‘pack’ starting at 3 weeks old. They are heavily observed to make sure that they bigger dogs are not getting to rough with the babies. We introduce our puppies to as many animals as possible as well to show them that other animals are okay to socialize with.

Puppy culture helps us to teach our puppies these skills 1. Communication Communication between humans and dogs is very important. 2. Emotional stability 3. The ability to recover easily from fear 4. Being able to cope with stress 5. Habituation 6. Enrichment 7. Health 8. Learned behaviors So that they can exist in a human society. 9. Love For animals and humans

At 3 weeks old puppies become very social. Their eyes are open and they can hear. They begin to react to our touch, and they begin getting excited to greet us. They begin playing with each other and are very noisy! They have been started on solid foods, and are getting more efficient at eating every day! By this time the puppies should be very familiar with nail trims. We add a new toy or object to the puppies pen every day so that they can get familiar with several objects, textures, and toys. We like to build our puppies confidence so that when they go to their forever homes they aren’t nervous of the things surrounding them, and they can just focus on bonding with their new owners.

At four weeks of age we will teach several skills. All of these skills are super important for dogs as adults. We start teaching our puppies how to bounce back from fear which is super important to create safe adult dogs. We teach our puppies how to recover from fear, this is called startle recovery cycle. The more time we startle and they recover the better they will recover from fear as adults. This helps to avoid aggression in adult dogs! We also create obstacles for our puppies to have to go over/around this helps to teach them to not give up, and build their confidence.

Teaching puppies a socially acceptable way to communicate is a great skill. This can help to create less frustration for puppies and their new owners. Animals that have frustration usually leads to aggression. This is why it is so important to teach proper communication to puppies! Puppy culture uses something called the communication trinity. At 4 weeks puppies can start being conditioned to a training marker. We will use a training clicker to mark the puppies correct behavior. They then learn when we click, they get a treat. They will then learn how to offer behaviors. We will reward good behavior so that the puppy learns how to offer the behavior to us. After this the puppies will learn how to ‘ask for things’ we have to teach them at this point that they need to sit and be patient instead of jump up and bite at their owners!

We owe all of this information regarding puppy culture to the DVD “Puppy Culture the powerful first 12 weeks.” We are so thankful to be able to incorporate their knowledge into our breeding program

https://shoppuppyculture.com/