Our Puppy Protocols
Our focus is on puppy personality and giving your puppy the best start in life by positively exposing them to as much as we can at a young age.
Some things we work on: Early Litter training, Early Grooming training, Early Crate Training, Car rides, constant exposure to kids, exposure to strangers, loud noises, bite inhibition, resource guarding, and more.
As a result of our proactive puppy rearing, people continue to say that our Yorkies are “the best Yorkie” they’ve ever owned.
While your puppy won’t come home perfectly house-trained or never whining in a crate – he’s still a baby and also has to get used to your home – we’ve provided him with the best start in life to set him up for success.
A More In-depth Look at What We Do
Days 3-16: Neonatal Period
Early Neurological Stimulation (ENS)
Why? Placing puppies in slightly developmentally appropriate situations helps them learn how to handle stressful situations. It also helps to boost their immune system.
Tell Me More: ENS was actually developed by the US Military. Their goal was to help their dogs to be able to adapt to stress in later life. The result? A well rounded pup. This practice has been embraced by many breeders and is also promoted by Puppy Culture and Breeding Better Dogs Program.
The AKC even recognizes the benefits of ENS. “Five benefits have been observed in canines that were exposed to ENS, including improved cardio vascular performance (heart rate); stronger heart beats; stronger adrenal glands; more tolerance to stress; and greater resistance to disease.”
What We Do: We perform the ENS exercises on days 3-16 of your puppy’s life.
We handle each puppy individually and complete all the exercises with one puppy before working with another puppy.
Here are the exercises we do:
1. Tactile stimulation (3-5 seconds) – puppy is stimulated (think tickled!) between the toes on one foot.
2. Head Erect (3-5 seconds) – puppy is held perpendicular to ground with head directly above tail.
3. Head Down (3-5 seconds) – puppy is held perpendicular with head facing down to the ground.
4. Supine ( 3-5 seconds) – puppy is held with his back resting in the hands and its muzzle facing up.
5. Thermal stimulation (3-5 seconds) — puppy is placed with their feet on a cold, damp towel and allowed to move around
Days 14-21: Transitional Period
Every puppy in the litter will start this period at a different time. The period begins when a puppy’s eyes open and it ends when he begins to startle at a sound.
Litter Training: During this time we introduce a litter area so that the puppy learns at an early age to keep his living area clean.
Weeks 3-12: Socialization Period
What? Our goal during this period is multifaceted. We expose the puppies to new experiences, people, and dogs so that they can learn to process new things as something interesting – not something to be scared of.
We want to teach them how to socialize and communicate with people.
We also teach the puppies to recover quickly from mild age-appropriate stress. Victory when they are young will set the pattern for proper responses when they are older.
Finally, we want to prepare them for life in their new homes and get them ready to be a good canine citizen. As stated before, we begin on early litter training, but we don’t stop there.
We also start on early grooming training, getting them used to clippers and a brush.
We begin early crate training to help them feel comfortable in a crate.
We take them on regular car rides and occasionally take them to stores.
We handle them regularly and have visitors in the home to help them get used to strangers.
We provide a wobble board and tunnel for them to play on. This helps them realize that potentially scary environments can be fun.
What We Do: We try to follow many of the Puppy Culture protocols to help your puppy become emotionally stable. We provide experiences to help each puppy learn to recover from fear and stress. We familiarize your puppy with the as many things as we can. We try to provide new experiences and activities for puppy to learn to respond positively. We carefully monitor the puppies’ health and well-being through weight checks, nutrition, grooming, deworming, vaccinations, and vet checks. We work on litterbox training, gentle crate training, bite inhibition, being awakened from sleep, and resource guarding.
Our goal is to provide the right environment for your Yorkie so that she can have the best start at life.
