What to Expect from a WC GSP
What is your puppy doing before they get to you?
Week 1: Your puppy is eating, sleeping, pooping, and exposed to human social interaction. We pick them up, hold them, put them in our jackets and shirts, giving them plenty of skin-to-skin contact. Their eyes are closed, tails are docked and dew claws removed. We start “Super Dog Training,” which is used in military dogs and helps develop the senses and improve cardiac health. This is performed on days 3-16.
Week 2: The puppies eyes are open around days 10 – 14. They start moving around and have more social interaction. They eat, sleep and poo a lot. We continue to perform Super Dog training with each puppy.
Week 3: The puppies start climbing out of the box, looking for environmental enrichment. We give them more and more human contact and stimulate their sensory growth.
Week 4: The puppies are moving around pretty good. We start clicker training and make loud noises before feeding them. They come into the house with us and we take them in different buildings.
Week 5: We continue retriever and clicker training and increase socialization. The puppies are given moistened kibble with a higher protein puppy formula and are allowed to self-feed. The dam is periodically removed based on how well the puppy has been eating dry food. Puppies should have milk as long as possible for proper nutrients and proper development. Similar to humans, mothers milk is always best, as long as she will provide it for them.
Week 6: We continue to monitor the puppies’ nutrition. The puppies are not seeing their dam as much and we continue human interaction. We start seeing a pecking order and the dominant and submissive nature of dogs become more apparent. Most puppies are somewhere in the middle (not too dominant and not too submissive). Puppies may wake 1 – 2 times per night for potty and eating. We start identifying personality traits that make each puppy unique. Puppies are vaccinated with their first dose of DHPP and Parvo.
Week 7: We continue to monitor nutrition and offer lots of socialization. Clicker training is more serious and we do retrieving play with various objects. All experiences and environmental enrichment are important. The puppies are mostly off of the dam’s milk, but we experiment with leaving pups on the milk longer to foster natural healthy growth and development.
Week 8: Basically a continuation of week 7. This is when puppies are available to leave for their new home.
What do you do when your puppy is ready for pick up?
- Puppies have already been reserved by making a $100 deposit
- Puppy Pick Out Day – Many people bring their family to pick up its newest member
- The puppies get to start their bond in an environment where they are comfortable
- Typically there is discussion and demonstration consisting of basic obedience training (clicker training, sit, here, kennel, whoa), retriever training, and potty training. Sometimes it is difficult to keep the puppy’s concentration during pick out day so we also encourage new owners to view our training videos to help them get started.
- On pickup you will get the puppy, vaccination records and pedigree
- There is a 24 month health guarantee on hips, eyes, elbows, cardiac
- We are always just a text, email or phone call away if you have any questions. We are a support group
How do you transition your puppy from the kennel to your home?
Puppies are like infants. For the first few nights you can’t leave them unattended and they need constant supervision. You should puppy proof your house by putting away items and closing doors and blocking areas where the puppy shouldn’t go. You can also buy mousetraps and set them over cords or by the garbage can to deter the puppy from those areas. The puppy may whine at night because they don’t want to be alone. You will need to find a solution that works for your pup and build on it. Find a location where the dog succeeds (if the location is in your bed with you, that’s okay). Eventually you can transition the puppy to any room by taking small steps to their final location. Putting the puppy somewhere like the garage where it will be alone will mentally stress them out.
Puppies are highly susceptible to disease. Keep them out of areas where there are other dogs and keep them in clean areas. Don’t take your puppy to petsmart until they have had their 3rd set of vaccinations.
When the puppy is weaned he isn’t getting antibodies from his dam any more. He might get sick right away, usually with intestinal issues. Some diseases that your puppy could get easily are coxi, giardia, other protozoa, parasites, roundworms. If your puppy has blood or mucous in their stool chances are they have giardia. This disease is huge in hunting dogs and is often found in many ponds, lakes or even puddles.
At 10-12 weeks we suggest you feed a diet with less protein than the puppy formulas. Large breed dogs shouldn’t grow too fast and a diet that is too high in protein can cause joint health issues. Don’t exercise them too intensely.
- DHPP, Parvo, 6 wks, 9 wks, 12 wks
- Bordatella is done at 9 weeks
- Rabies done at 16 weeks
