Puppy Placement & Matchmaking
Puppies are placed based on temperaments, drives, and personalities. Rather than placing puppies based on looks I thoroughly evaluate my litters and temperament test each puppy and I match them with the person/family who will be the best fit. We will have a thorough conversation about the type of lifestyle your dog will live, activity levels, training, expectations, pet/sport/working goals, etc. and then we will discuss secondary preferences such as coat length, color, looks.
After evaluating the litter I will go through and match you with the puppy who is the closest match to what you need.
Primary factors are drive, confidence, energy levels, temperament, and only after these factors will I then attempt to match your secondary factors like coat & color.
Ultimately we cannot guarantee pups will mature with the predicted temperaments but we have had a high success rate so far. This method is designed to support the long term satisfaction of the client and the dog.
Puppies typically go home at 10-12 weeks and puppy selections will be made at least 1 week prior to go home day.
I do get at least 2 trainer/breeder friends to give me unbiased evaluations as well before I make final decisions.
How we raise our puppies:
Location
Litters are raised inside my home. I transformed the spare bedroom into a whelping room with vinyl fence dividers and kennel door panels. Whelping areas are 6'x6'. By raising them inside the house we can easily monitor their condition, temperature, and maintain a clean, sanitary puppy space.
Early Neurological Stimulation
We practice ENS in the first stage of our puppies' lives. This conditions them to different sensations, surfaces, pressures, temperatues, etc. Allowing for more confident and adaptive puppies.
Puppy Culture Program
We utilize several aspects of the Puppy Culture Program in raising our litters. Puppy Culture is a guide for early socialization and teaching pups things like how to handle corrections, stress, recall, crate training, socialization, desensitization and more..
Crate Exposure
Crate training is a process and does not happen in one night. It varies by puppy but can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. In order to speed up this process and make it much smoother for our buyers we start crate training here. We keep a few small crates in the whelping area with beds and encourage puppies to sleep in the crates and see them as a comforting safe space. If you will be staying in a hotel with your puppy the day that you pick them up please let us know well in advance so that we can help make travel easier by crating your puppy alone in advance.
Litter Box Training
As soon as puppies are up and walking (approximately 3 weeks old) we begin litter box training with paper pellets. This allows easy cleanup in the whelping area and aids in housebreaking.
Environmentals/Desensitization
We expose pups to a variety of surfaces, sounds, and obstacles and use food to encourage them to explore and navigate these challenges. Our goal is to produce confident puppies who can navigate through a variety of environments with ease.
Starting at 10 days we begin using puppy sound desensitization playlists from Spotify exposing them to a wide range of sounds including:
Thunder/Storms, rain, wind
Baby Cries, kids screaming and playing, various voices
Leaf blower, chainsaw, vacuum, weedeater, hair dryer, power tools
Doorbells, fire alarms, phone ringing, beeping, horns, sirens
Fireworks, gunfire, popping sounds, pots clanking, hammering
Contruction noise, traffic, downtown noise, party noise
Various music types, animal sounds (chickens, cats, horses, goats, ducks, geese, etc)
Helicopters, aircrafts, buses, trains, tractors, lawnmowers, motor cycles
And so many more sounds, its a 63 hour playlist.
We also add physical obstacles and a variety of walking surafaces and textures once pups become mobile.