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Raising Confident, Bright, Social Puppies 

Our puppies are home born and family raised with lots of love and care in our smoke-free home. To provide the absolute best care for each puppy and our dogs, we typically only have one litter each year or so on average.  Our goal is to produce puppies ready for new experiences and challenges in life. We raise our puppies using Puppy Culture and Avidog which includes socializing protocols, manding, emotional resilience exercises, problem solving, basic skills training, desensitization exercises, body awareness activities, and environment enrichment. Puppy Culture is a socialization and training program specifically developed for puppies from birth through the end of their critical socialization period, with age appropriate protocols and lessons laid out in an organized format to help them become confident, bright, social adult dogs. More information about the Puppy Culture program can be found here. 

Puppies are given a unique color collar at birth to aid in tracking their weight every 12 hours for the first 2 weeks and daily thereafter. This also means they are completely accustomed to wearing a collar. 

 

We expose puppies to Early Neurological Stimulation protocol from days 5-16 which helps puppies to able to cope with stressful situations, increase problem solving, and support better physical health later in life. More information about ENS is available at https://youtu.be/ja6E4xa-6Hs. 

We use Early Scent Introduction protocol from days 5-16 which improves adult scenting ability. This contributes to success in obedience, field work, nose work, search/rescue, detection dogs, barn hunt, tracking, etc. It helps increase confidence and stability of performance and service dogs. We generally introduce the following natural scents: myrrh, birch, vetiver, anise, cypress, clove, pheasant or quail, leather, grass, orange, banana, cat, flowers, lemon, nutmeg, and/or leaves. ESI is an Avidog program, and more information is available at ESI for Neonate Puppies.  

We expose the puppies to a novel item or challenge daily after the neonatal period. We vary the object or experience so they encounter different textures, sounds, scents, surfaces, location, and sizes. These activities build body awareness, develop determination, improve motor skills, and desensitize to a huge variety of sounds. They are socialized and raised to become confident puppies by exposure to:
 

  • wide variety of music/radio/TV sounds all throughout the day starting around 2.5 weeks

  • conformation stacking and teeth examination

  • variety of people including seniors, children, people with beards/glasses/hats/masks/sunglasses/odd outfits

  • live vacuum cleaner

  • adult dogs

  • veterinarian exam

  • flirt pole

  • water and swimming (weather permitting) 

  • ball pit

  • huge variety of toys including toys with different sounds, motions, and lights (squeaking, grunting, croaking, crinkling, flapping, musical keys, etc.)

  • car rides

  • musical mat 

  • formal photo shoot (flashing lights, odd sounds, photography backdrop surface, platforms, etc.) 

  • wide variety of sounds including traffic, barking dogs, thunderstorms, trains, farm animals, fireworks, clapping, dog shows, gunshots, etc

  • household kitchen environment, smells, and sounds

  • variety of surfaces including grass, hard wood, carpet, concrete, rubber mat, kids plastic pool, towels, etc.

  • toddler play center including a slide plus interactive sounds and doors

  • game bird wings (pheasant and quail)

  • body awareness and agility basics including slides, barriers, wobble board, tunnels, dog walk, balance ball, etc.

  • crate  

  • outdoor exploration (weather permitting, puppies are never left outside unattended)

  • Avidog Adventure Box

Establishing the foundation for training is vital for any puppy. We start litter box training at around 2.5 weeks of age which helps with house training. We work on basic skills training including manding, sit, down, paws up, and come. Puppies have a good understanding of these basics before leaving with their new families. We also do resource guarding training, leash introduction, and tugging foundation.  

Grooming is an important component of any Poodle's life. Our puppies start with regular nail trimming at a few days old, desensitization on their face/feet with an electric toothbrush at about 3 weeks old, and full grooming including bathing, fluff drying, clipper, and scissoring at about 4 weeks old. They experience the full grooming process several times before leaving with their new families so they get accustomed to it. As an added value to our puppies, we offer continued grooming sessions at our home on a 3-4 week schedule until they can safely visit an outside grooming salon after completing their puppy vaccine series at 16 weeks old. This helps continue grooming training and keeps our puppies looking great while protecting their health.

Our puppies are evaluated at 7 weeks old with the Volhard Puppy Aptitude Test and conformation structural evaluation by an independent third party which aids in pairing our puppies with the right home based upon their individual lifestyle, goals, and preferences. The Volhard test predicts inherited behavioral tendencies and how the puppy will turn out as an adult.

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