Raising Puppies

All puppies are raised in our home, and are held and worked with on a daily basis. Puppies are exposed to busy children and all sorts of daily noises from our family in addition to what we follow with Puppy Culture and Avidog. We enjoy posting daily updates on Facebook when we have our litters, so make sure to follow along to see how we raise our puppies.

Puppy Culture and Avidog We are a huge supporter of Puppy Culture and Avidog. As a breeder, we want to provide the best start possible with your future puppies and help them gain the experience’s they need to be a well rounded family member. Puppy Culture and Avidog are programs where the breeder follows week by week activities, starting at birth. This covers Early Neurological Stimulation, potty training, crate training introduction, socialization, enrichment and more. Puppy Culture is also a program that we encourage future homes to continue at home, to help with problem prevention, socializing your puppy, communicating with your puppy, and more. To learn more about Puppy Culture, click here.

Early Scent Introduction Early Scent Introduction is where we will introduce a new scent each day starting from day 3-16 of the puppies life. Because we enjoy Barn Hunt and NASDA, we want to help introduce our puppies to scents early on and follow along with which puppies engage with certain scents. To look at the Avidog Early Scent Introduction form we will be using, click here. We also continue doing scent work with Birch, Anise, and Rats from about 5weeks of age until they go to their new homes.

Regular grooming– Puppies are groomed and bathed weekly, nails trimmed and dremeled many times before going home.

Temperament Testing At 7 weeks of age, our puppies will be temperament tested by an outside evaluator. Every puppy has a unique personality and by temperament testing them, it’ll help give us a general idea of where they are temperament wise and can better match them with their forever homes. This evaluation assesses the puppy/dog various strengths and weaknesses at their current age, which can provide some predictive clues to the puppy/dog personality, sociability, and potential trainability. The testing helps both the buyer and breeder determine which puppy has the most suitable personalities for their future homes. Like any test, a puppy temperament test can assess particular qualities at that point in time. Environment plays a significant role, and temperament can be affected by the environment the puppy goes into. Click here to see the PDF of the test and what it covers.

Structural Evaluations Puppies will be structurally evaluated at 7/8 weeks. Our goal with each litter as a breeder is to improve the next generation. Structure along with temperament is very important to us, and there is always room for improvement. After this final evaluation is when we will begin helping our puppies find their forever homes.

Picking your puppy

Once puppy evaluations are completed, we begin working with each of our homes to help decide the right puppy based on goals and lifestyle.

What do you do next to continue socializing the puppies until they leave?

We take them on car rides,trips to our local farm store, walks in the woods, and to outdoor kids sports where they can watch and hear the world around them. We always use safety protocols until puppies are fully vaccinated, while also making sure they get important experiences.

Taking Your Puppy Home We are happy to have future homes pick their puppy up from our home in Burns Oregon, or we can meet in Bend Oregon or Boise Idaho as we live in a rural area. There are flight nanny options, which we would be happy to go over.

Tips for flying home with your puppy:

Tips for driving home with your puppy: