The Way to Raise Puppies

The puppies are born in our home, in our office/trophy room. We hope their first experiences among their forbearers silver trophies and ribbons encourage their little hearts to rise to the level of their sire and dams. ;-)  The office allows for a large whelping box, and I spend pretty much 24/7 with the bitch and her babies the first week, to make sure she has everything she needs and the puppies are strong and healthy.

At 3 weeks we start to offer gruel, with goats milk and ground dog food. At 4 weeks they are eating well and really gaining weight and we start to wean. 

At about that time we move them out to the renovated coop. We do this because we think the best thing we can give them is space to move and develop muscles and an option to go outside to learn about house breaking. Unfortunately in this old farm house, we don't have an area where we can raise them in the main home and give them everything we think they need. But the coop is perfect and it's only a few yards from the house. Once they go out there, I start spending nearly all my time out there with them. I do a lot of crafts and sewing, and I keep myself busy out there with them as they grow.

We follow the techniques of early neuro-stimulation developed of Carmen Batagglia. The concept and theory is to stress the puppy for the first 16 days, to help hardwire the puppy to be an adult that can handle change as well as possible. 

Every litter we have done this with, we have seen our puppies be incredibly adjustable and strong minded. We stress the puppies by tickling them in areas that are not normally stroked by the mother during cleaning; holding them in certain positions, again unlike the dam; placing their feet pads on a cold wet cloth for 5 sec.
   
Once weaned we provide the growing puppies with additional stimuli to help encourage them to learn and experience new and different things.

 The puppies are raised with play apparatus that allow them to learn about stairs and ramps, tunnels and shoots, similar to what they will find in their new homes, and agility classes once they are more mature. 

The puppies are in a very large room, on rubber matting for secure footing and they get LOTS of exercise. 
   
We provide the opportunity for the puppies to meet as many people as possible, including teenagers and young children. 

Every weekend we usually have guests here to help 'play' 
   
We have a small doggy door that at 6 weeks the puppies are tottering outside to go potty. Most of our puppies are nearly housebroken by the time they go home at 8 weeks old. 

Even when the weather is bad we have made arrangements to get the puppies outside. We built an area off the south side of the puppies space, that we insulate during the winter so they can wonder outside and learn the difference between 'the house' and 'outside' we think this has helped our puppies grow up to be very clean and easy to housebreak.
   
We temperament test all our puppies at 7 weeks, making sure that the best temperaments go to each home. Every one deserves a puppy with a good temperament, and we always have that in mind when we plan a breeding, but a family with children has a different requirement than one that does not. 

Our goal is to place puppies ONCE. We will always be able to take back puppies and adults that we bred should their requirements change, but our goal is that they never have to come back here except to be shown.
   
We do conformation evaluations at 8 weeks old, to determine which puppies are worthy of pursuing the show ring. We continue to evaluate all our puppies for up to two years. 

You can only see so much at 8 weeks and each puppy will change based on their environment and exposure to the real world including exercise. Some puppies that looked great at 8 weeks, should be shown as soon as possible, others need to be 2 years old before they body up and should be in the ring.