Puppy Development

I occasionally have beautiful quality AKC/UKC registered,  CH or GRCH-sired multi-colored and solid puppies. They are born, raised, and loved, in my home with my family until 9 or 10 weeks. None of our dogs are ever kept outside in kennels. They live as family members in our home. They are from health tested parents and come with a 3 year health guarantee. They come pre-loved, tails docked in a long show length, microchipped, vaccinated according to a minimum vaccination protocol, and fed a quality diet.

While I vary what I feed to my puppies, I usually start them on raw and add the same kibble my adults are on before they go home. My adults are rotated on various quality kibble (Nature’s Logic, Origen, Acana, Fromm and Earthborn) for morning meals and either frozen, fresh or freeze dried raw for evening meals.

Health and temperament are very important to me. My breeding dogs have wonderful temperaments and are fully health tested well beyond OFA CHIC standards and posted to OFA. Currently we are testing OFA Hips or Pennhip, Eye CERF, Thyroid or Cardiac (usually both), VwD, DM, NEWS, PRA, and at least one of a mating pair will have a PRA-prcd4 and  Dayblindness test so we don’t produce an affected. See my poodles’ individual pages for health testing results and links to OFA. You can also search OFA for their registered names, which are on my “Our Poodles” page.

While starting off with a sire and dam with good temperament is important, environment and experiences during the first 12 weeks also plays a huge role in each puppy’s future temperament and behavior. I pay a lot of attention to enriched puppy development so that my puppies are sweet loving confident pets, are resilient to stress, and already have a head start on training before they go to their forever homes. I am always researching ways to improve on my techniques and adding new tools to my development toolbox. Scroll down for lots of photos and videos of our puppy development work! Puppy development is my passion!

Each litter, I’ve done early neurological stimulation between 3-16 days old (I often start on day 4 or 5 instead) in order to build more resilience against stress. I follow the protocol by Dr. Carmen Battaglia. See his paper at: http://breedingbetterdogs.com/pdfFiles/articles/early_neurological_stimulation_en.pdf  In 2021 I added Early Scent Introduction (ESI) from Avidog and my own protocol for Early Texture Introduction (ETI).

I have also worked on desensitizing them to various sounds and exposing them to lots of new experiences. Since 2015, I have been using the Puppy Culture Program protocols with my puppies and in 2021 added some Avidog protocols. While I was doing a lot of enrichment before starting Puppy Culture, its helped me be more organized and deliberate about everything I do with the puppies to raise resilient, confident, social pups. See https://www.puppyculture.com/ for more information on Puppy Culture.

I use a litter box early on with my puppies which teaches them to go potty in a specific place. Later they will start some outside potty training that each owner will need to complete.

Before going home, I begin crate training to lessen the stress they feel when they get to their new homes and are alone without their siblings and often in their crate at night or during potty training.

I start training the puppies by rewarding attention as a behavior, shaping behaviors I want them to repeat, and teaching a recall. Later I do focus on some basic commands, such as sit, down, place, and some beginning leash training. My training program begins early by saying “good puppy” while they are nursing and later during weaning meals. They learn to associate “good” with something positive like food. I reward looking up at me while sitting with my attention and petting when young. Later, I will be giving small treats and begin shaping a few desirable behaviors and tying to verbal commands. They will also get lots of practice going “through” tunnels and “over” slides and baby agility equipment, “up” onto platforms and wobble boards, learning to read my cues and develop a love for working with and pleasing their human. You will still need to train and work with your new puppy but this gives them a good head start.

I will begin grooming puppies weekly beginning at 4 or 5 weeks (face, feet, and tail) and they will have a fresh groom, with some shaping of the coat, when they go to their new homes.

I do have lots of visitors that come to cuddle puppies when young and play with them when a little older.  I usually do puppy socialization and training parties as well as some visits to dog friendly stores with my pups. In earlier litters I traded temperament testing with my breeder buddies, they helped test my litters and I helped test theirs. For my more recent litters I have used Avidog APET for my temperament tests to get a lot more nuanced information on each pup to help ensure families get a pup that is a good fit for their family. I occasionally do some specialty evaluations such as determining which pup might make a good gluten detection dog, which are scent focused, which are excellent retrievers, and any extra service prospect evaluations as needed.

I try to be as holistic as I can with my puppies. I follow a minimum vaccination protocol starting around 9 weeks. I use essential oil recipes for my cleaning supplies. I add diamataceous earth (DE) with goat’s milk as a deworming protocol and only use traditional deworming medicines if we have a positive fecal at our vet visit. My contract is strict regarding minimal vaccinations, encourages titers, and no early spay and neuter.

Resources for behavioral training, grooming, enrichment, health, poodle topics, and more will be under “Info for Owners” Tab. Check back occasionally, as I will continue adding good references and links to it.

This was the final day of ENS, ESI and Early texture Introduction. The scent was duck scent on Pheasant feather.

As soon as pups start walking away from Mom after nursing to pee, I add a comfy area and a potty area and learn really quickly to pee on the pads. Sometimes I have actually had small rabbit food grass pellets or artificial turf in small shallow boot tray litter boxes, but the most successful at this stage had been good old pee pads. Some Moms leave my potty area alone and others reaarange it or lay on it to nurse, defeating the whole purpose. I just keep refixing it. The important thing is to change out any soiled bedding or whelp pads often to keep their den instinct going strong.

As soon as I move the pups from my whelp room whelp box to a pen in the main part of the house, I add beginning shallow litter boxes with either artificial turf, pellets or pee pads. I’ve tried different things with many different litters. What works with one litter may not work with another. The important thing is to have an area for them to go potty in and to keep the rest of the pen clean. Eventually they all become reliable at using the potty area, although sometimes there is that one pup who just doesn’t get with the program.

I first reward for just sitting with pets. Later I only reward for sitting and looking at me/giving me their attention, to ask for my attention. Some litters I do further manding work individually with treats. The intent is to give them a method of communciation to ask for things, such as owner’s attention, open the door to go potty, ask for treats, ask for cuddles, etc. 

 We do a lot of sessions of “come find the food,” initially right outside the pen, then a little further and later in various rooms.

This was their first experience with both the big slide and the adventure box. I always have multiple pup areas, one for short play session a few times a day, one for most of the day wtih more litter boxes, another with crates for nightime.

I’m always thinking of new experiences for the puppies. I happened to have my granddaughter’s bubbles handy and tried it out with the pups.

I’ve only ever had two litters at one time, once, with 13 puppies total. That was enough. While it was fun, crazy, visually appealing, and my girls co-parented really well, it was also an immense amount of work. For this duo litter I had a setup in my grooming room, with seperate encloseable smaller areas for each litter at night time with comfy bedding and litter box, and a common play area. They also had areas in my kitchen and my living room as well.

Pups hanging out with Lambchop in the open crate. This is how I start crate training, with making it a comfy place they want to be. More deliberate work with it later as they get older. I have also used other comfy animals and usually send each pup home with one for their crate.

These pups seemed to be fine with my closing the door so I left them in a bit longer with their frozen but somewhat dethawed stuffed beef tracheas than I usually would with younger pups. Usually I close the door the first time for only a couple minutes. This was when my house was up for sale and I couldnt have the pups in my main areas. 

Once pups can handle having the door closed for a bit longer duration we do some brief daytime crating and start overnight crating.

The first leash exposure I just let them drag the leashes around and feel the weight of it. They may also drag each other around. I will pick up each pup’s leash and hold it up and follow a pup around making sure not to let them get to the end of the leash. The next session would be with individual pups using treats when they move with me. Some litters I am able to do several leash training sessions and some only the first exposure and one individual session.  

Grooming starts around 4 weeks old and continues weekly, although larger litters may be a little less frequency. I typically do face, tail and skim feet at first. As we get closer to pup going home, I shape the coat and take the feet clean shaven. I start hair dryer on low and before going home they will have high velocity exposure for very short periods. I do nails with nail clipper starting at 2 days and begin dremeling very briefly after using the nail clipper. They get full dremel before going home.

Example of Lap and People Resource Guarding Prevention. For this protocol, you take a puppy out of the lap of the person giving them attention and immediately give them treats, then return them to the lap. Once you have done that a few times you work on having them be okay with another dog near them while they are in the lap and treat, then exchange what laps pups are in and treat. I don’t get to do this with every litter as it depends on what help I have.