How We Raise Our Puppies
Everything we do with the puppies has a purpose to help them grow into confident dogs that love people and learning new things. We are happy to raise our puppies with our children in a loving and enriching environment.
At 0-2 weeks: We keep a quiet and tranquil nursery feel for Mom to nurture and nurse her puppies. Mom gets as much food as she wants of a premium and fresh dog food we feed all our doggies- Farmina dog food (See Recommended Products page.) From day 3-16, we do Early Neurological Stimulation and just hold the sweet sleeping babies. It is absolutely fascinating how much puppies change from birth until 3 weeks of age – going from not seeing or hearing to toddling, walking and interacting with their littermates, Mom and our family!
At 2-4 weeks: the baby’s eyes and ears are open; they start walking and getting their bellies off the ground, try to play with each other and their toys, all in slow motion... so cute! The puppies get a new variety of toys to play with every day, all with different textures and noises, this starts teaching them at a young age new things are fun to explore and play with. At this point, we start training the puppies to potty in potty stations; they pick up on it quickly. The potty stations teach them there is a right and wrong place to go—making it much easier to housebreak. We use alfalfa pellets in their potty station to connect the smell of grass with the right place to potty! Also they begin getting small grooming times to trim nails, trim face and ears as well as their fanny to keep them clean. They receive regular sponge baths and a ten step handling procedure with them each day to help them grow accustom to having their ears looked at, feeling their teeth to prepare for teeth brushing and many more things.
At 4-8 weeks: the real fun begins! At 4-5 weeks they move out of their whelping box and into their larger playpen and are ready for lots of hands-on socialization. Now they are really starting to play and interact with each other and with people! Toys are fun! We provide appropriate challenges for them to figure out so as adults when faced with struggles they don’t get frustrated but work on figuring it out. We begin to teach the puppies that crates are a special place and we slowly introduce them. We also continue handling them daily and doing spa time including trimming nails, bath, and blow-dry to begin getting the puppy used to grooming in a low-stress setting.