Puppy Raising Protocol

• We firmly believe in and aim to follow the Puppy Culture program while raising our puppies. The guidelines for this program have a multitude of benefits for growing puppies, including early exposure to an abundance of different sights, smells and sounds; socialization with people and children of many different ages and backgrounds; behaving appropriately when meeting strange dogs; promoting confidence with strange objects and equipment from a young age; early start to leash breaking, potty training, crate training and more!
• Our puppies are raised in the living room which is the center of our house; they will be well adjusted to living indoors with other dogs, cats, and seeing many visitors come and go. 
• Puppies will be dewormed at 2, 4, 6 and 8 weeks of age; puppies will have their first distemper vaccines administered before 8 weeks of age 
• Puppies will be BAER Hearing tested
• Puppies will be Herding Instinct tested (pending weather conditions and availability) as well as Volhard Temperament tested before deciding which puppies are being placed with which families. 
• Puppies will be Microchipped with our contact information and new owners' contact information on file before leaving. ​​

Puppy Socialization Parties

Puppy parties are a critical part of our pups' foundation skills in learning to trust people and building a confident attitude in social situations. We host these parties a few times a week when we have pups, inviting trusted guests to join us at our home for an hour to handle, play with, and socialize the pups. We try to invite a wide range of people, so the pups are used to people of many different ages, backgrounds and body types. Our goal is for the puppies to have a positive experience with around 100 people before departing for their new homes. We find this protocol helps strengthen overall social and environmental confidence, and helps curb some of the "stranger danger" that ACDs are often known for. 
All photos below are posted with permission from folks who have attended our puppy parties. 

Exposure to Strange Dogs 

​When our pups meet new people or dogs, we always want to prioritize giving them a positive experience, while keeping them safe. We only give them the opportunity to meet dogs in our household, or dogs owned by trusted friends, whose vaccination protocol is aligned with our requirements. In the below photos/video our puppies got to meet with a Great Dane for the first time. Novel things like this 160lb Gentle Giant are a huge deal to puppies who have only seen medium sized dogs in the 40-50lb range. It is normal for them to initially be cautious, and warm up over time. We always make sure to end any social session or training on a positive note, which we did for these puppies. We find that following this protocol creates cattle dog pups who are more neutral-submissive with other dogs, and good at reading social cues/respecting boundaries of older dogs, which often helps their transition to a new home. 

About Early Neurological Stimulation

The US Military adapted ENS protocol to improve the performance of military dogs. ENS (Early Neurological Stimulation) involves a brief daily routine of mild physical stressors, such as holding a puppy upright, holding it upside down, placing it on its back, or exposing it to a cold towel, for brief periods, generally performed from 3 to 16 days of age. The goal of these gentle stresses is to stimulate the puppy's neurological and endocrine systems, which can lead to increased cognitive abilities, better stress tolerance, and more robust immune responses later in life.
The 5 Steps of ENS
(See photos for step-by-step)
These five exercises are performed once a day for 5 seconds each, for a period of 16 days:
Tactical Stimulation: touching the puppy between the toes with either fingers, cotton swab or a soft bristle tooth brush (we do a variety with our pups and will change it day by day)
Head Held Erect: holding the puppy in a vertical position with its head directly above its tail
Head Pointed Down: gently reversing the head-erect position, holding the pup with its head pointing toward the ground (usually their least favorite)
Supine Position: placing the puppy on its back, with its muzzle facing the ceiling
Thermal Stimulation: placing the puppy's belly on a damp, cold towel kept in the freezer
There is still much scientific research to be done, and while the benefits of performing ENS are subjective, this protocol takes 5 minutes a day and causes no harm. As breeders, we should all care about the long term health and environmental soundness of our puppies. Therefore, this is something we will continue to do for all our future litters, as well as including elements of Puppy Culture and Avidog programs, to give our puppies the best start possible.

Sped-up video of Marisa demonstrating ENS. We follow this protocol with every litter.