My Puppy Project

A Twelve Week Chronicle of  Puppy Development and Training

Second Week

Super Puppies

The first two weeks of a puppy’s life is known as the neonatal period.  Their eyes and ears are sealed shut, they cannot regulate their body heat, nor can they eliminate body wastes without stimulation from their dam.

Research has shown that exposure to a small amount of stress during this neonatal period is extremely beneficial, and results in more emotionally stable adult dogs who are healthier, more resistant to heat, cold, certain diseases, and cancers, as well as generally tolerating stress as adults better than dogs who were not mildly stressed as neonates. 

As much as a little stress is good for the puppies and will help their neurological development, more than a very little stress can be extremely harmful.  A measured approach has to be taken when trying to stimulate neonates.  The US army developed a ‘Super Dog’ program for use on puppies from day 3-16.   The program consists of five exercises which are done once a day for 3-5 seconds per exercise.   See a video of one of Zulu’s puppies receiving her stimulation exercises here.  The clips are very short because each exercise lasts only 3-5 seconds.

I always do the Super Dog exercises with my puppies, but many breeders (myself included) question if a litter raised in a household with abundant daily handling and interaction really gets any extra benefit from the Super Dog exercises.  To my knowledge, no one has done a study using home raised and frequently handled puppies as a control,  so we can only speculate.  I figure the exercises can’t hurt, and they might help, so why not so them? 

 

 

 

Step One:  Tickle between toes with Q-Tip

Step Two:  Head held erect

Step Three:  Head pointed down

Step Four:  Supine Position

Step Five:  Thermal Stimulation (cold, damp, towel)

Optional:  Kiss the Puppy

Neonates and Learning

There is a school of thought that says that neonate puppies (1-2 weeks old) do not have the neurological development to learn.  I have not found this to be true.  For instance, I regularly get into the whelping box with the litter and pat, stoke, and cuddle with my neonate puppies.  They seem to like it OK, but it is not a big event in their lives, and they do not show any special excitement when I get into the box.  This particular litter is so large that Zulu was getting exhausted and I began to supplement them with goat milk from a baby bottle around day 11.  Within two feedings, they learned to recognize my smell as a predictor of goat milk, and now they go crazy when I step into the box.  This is true even if I do not have a bottle in my hand, so I can rule out the possibility that they are just smelling the bottle.  They have learned that my presence in the box, something which had no particular significance for them before, now means they will get fed.

My guess is that those scientists who claim that neonates cannot learn have simply failed to find the proper motivation for neonate learning.