Celsiorex Miniature American Shepherds UK

Puppy Raising

How We Raise Our Puppies:

Our puppies are born in our bedroom and stay there until around 3 weeks old, where they move into a bigger space in our living room.

We want to ensure that we give our pups the absolute best start in life that we can; and that’s why we follow the Puppy Culture protocols. We start this at 3 days old (as long as the birth is uneventful and the first few days are stress-free) with Early Neurological Stimulation. ENS is a set of exercises we do between day 3 and 16 to apply a very brief amount of stress to the puppies. Each exercise is done for just a few seconds, and is thought to improve their ability to handle stress later in life.

Studies have shown the below benefits in puppies exposed to Early Neurological Stimulation over those that weren’t.

  1. Improved cardio vascular performance (heart rate)
  2. Stronger heart beats
  3. Stronger adrenal glands
  4. More tolerance to stress
  5. Greater resistance to disease

Puppy Culture:

Puppy Culture is a programme for breeders that focuses on the first 12 weeks of a puppy’s life. By doing the right things at the right times, we have the power to shape that puppy’s future. It involves basic things such as introducing new textures and sounds, and then as the weeks go on we start to introduce litter training, problem solving exercises, and clicker training.

Starting problem solving and shaping behaviours in young puppies has found to create larger brains, increase the number of new brain cells and neural connections, and increase brain cell survival.

This in turn creates an improved ability to learn and remember, more emotional stability, better resiliency to stress, and the ability to work better under frustration.

We go above and beyond.

Our puppies start litter training as early as 2.5 weeks, this is a great foundation for when they go to their new homes as they already have an understanding of where they can and can’t go.

We BAER (hearing) and eye test our puppies, as well as vet check and microchip them before they leave us.

We start clicker training basic behaviours such as sitting and giving eye contact, feet on an object, and waiting before food. We also start the very basics of crate training.

You can view videos of our puppy raising here.