Boomer sleeping.
The puppies continue to grow and be healthy and happy. At 3.5 weeks they began to be offered solid food (mince beef) to start the process of weaning. They now only get access to Clover after they’ve been offered ‘real food’. (The idea is that they will fill up on mince before having a drink.) Clover is no longer getting several big meals a day, as we want to encourage her to cut back on the milk production. Continue reading
Not only do puppies respond to television, but watching the tube may have a positive role in their development.
3.5 week old border terrier puppy watching TV.
Researchers conducted controlled studies which exposed puppies to video images between 3 and 5 weeks of age. This was based on the principle we commonly call ‘socialisation‘ – that exposure to stimuli in puppyhood (particularly from about 3 weeks until 12-14 weeks) creates adult dogs that are less fearful and less anxious, and so impacts upon the temperament and coping style of the dog. The authors said, “puppies that are not exposed to particular kinds of environmental stimuli during this period have an increased likelihood of developing a fearful response to those stimuli, which may present clinically either as inappropriate avoidance behaviour, fearful withdrawal, or fear-related aggression”.
Because puppies at 3-5 weeks show no sign of fear when approaching objects, but start to have fearful responses at 5 weeks, and most puppies will display fear often as 7 week olds, it was theorised that exposing puppies to stimuli at 3-5 weeks may help shape future behaviour in a positive way.
Particularly, these researchers considered that puppies raised in sterile kennel environments (i.e. Dunbar’s ‘lemon puppies’) could be bettered though audiovisual stimulation. In other words, television as a remedy to the sub-standard socialisation in kennels.
In this experiment, puppies were raised in a ‘commercial’ establishment in a barren pen, with two meals a day, housed with mum.
The experiment used 7.16 minutes of video were 50% ‘animate’ (people, dogs, etc) and 50% ‘inanimate’ (such as traffic, vacuum cleaner, etc). The television was played as ‘normal’ – not loud and not with modification to the colour composition of the screen.
I started compiling this list for my puppy buyers, but realised that it would probably be of use to other people intending on adding a puppy to their lives soon. I have tried to narrow this list down to the resources that I genuinely think are the best. I understand that many people are strapped for time, so I’ve included, in bold, my favourite of the resources listed. This means that, if you can’t read all of these links, then just accessing the first one would be my recommendation.
Photo © Ruthless Photos.
Books
Before You Get Your Puppy (free download!) by Dr Ian Dunbar
After You Get Your Puppy (free download!) by Dr Ian Dunbar
The Perfect Puppy in 7 Days by Dr Sophia Yin
The Perfect Puppy by Gwen Bailey
First Call for Dogs by Dr Alex Hynes
Preparing for a Puppy Continue reading
Clover with six puppies in the whelping box, with the 'door down' so that they have a bit of a pen.
The puppies turned 3 weeks old, and they started to get busy! They started walking, and toys were interested to their pen. Their pen was made bigger. Grass was also added to the end of the pen, so they can start toilet training (in theory).
The puppies only met one new person this week. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t meet a lot of people – they did! Just they were all (but one) repeats of the week before.
From the 25th of November (puppies at 19 days old) the puppies started to approach people in a happy way.
A waterbowl was introduced to the pen for puppies, but no pups were really interested at this age.
The set-up in this picture was soon changed, as the puppies weren’t quite strong enough to get up the ramp into the whelping box. The whelping box came out, and so the puppies were left with just a pen.
As a huge fan of Dr Sophia Yin’s blog, I kept seeing mentions of The Perfect Puppy in 7 Days book. It seemed like a pretty cool idea, to me!
With my current litter, I always like to think about new resources for puppy buyers, and so started to investigate this a bit further… After reading a few pages on Google books, I was hooked, and I had to order it!
The book is very much targetted as new puppy buyers, and suits this audience very well. It has heaps of illustrations (400, the cover claims) that show every step of the way, for every little bit in the book!
I loved that this book went into puppy body language, as well, which I think is something often neglected in training books. Dr Yin describes how to identify when a puppy is ‘playful’ versus ‘fearful’ and so forth. To me, this is a really important part of puppy raising, and I’m glad it’s included.
Dr Yin is very into tethering puppies, which is a commonly suggested strategy by puppy trainers. What makes this book different is that it actually demonstrates what being tethered to a puppy could looks like through the use of photographs.
Maybe because I’m still recovering from all the socialisation emphasis of Dunbar, but this was something a little lacking from this book. There is a chapter dedicated to socialisation, and it is good. It has a very extensive checklist for puppy raisers, and answers the important question: “What to do if you notice signs of fear and anxiety in your puppy”. However, it’s tucked away right at the end of the book. I’d put this kind of stuff at the start.
Dr Yin talks about picking a breeder, and what a breeder should be doing first in terms of socialisation and habituation. I really enjoyed this part of the book, and it even gave me some new ideas on what I could be doing with my puppies.
I would recommend this book to a new puppy owner. This is who the book is made for, and it fulfils this purpose well. For those that are more dog savvy, I am not sure if you’ll find this book terribly beneficial – however, once you’ve read it, you can then recommend it to new puppy owners yourself.
Sadly, the book was some-what difficult to find online, but I did manage to get a copy from a private seller on Amazon. That being said, it is sold at a good price for such quality material.