RAISING HIGH JUMP PUPPIES

A dear breeder friend of mine said:

“Our puppy price is for ten weeks of training. The puppies themselves are free. More training required later.” I think that say it just about right!"

I’d like to give you a view into how our puppies are raised. We are always doing our best to increase our knowledge of breeding, genetics, health and wellness of our breeding dogs. We believe in the use of science based and loving methods of puppy raising. We are strong believers in the Puppy Culture program while also incorporating what we continually learn from sharing with the other experienced breeders that we interact with regularly.

“Puppy Culture” has been followed by good breeders for over a decade. Although there are excellent breeders who do all the right things without calling it Puppy Culture, there are some breeders who pay lip service to the method. We try to be as faithful to this method as possible. As Puppy Culture says: “the proof is in the puppies.”

So we would like to walk you through, week by week, what goes into raising a High Jump Havanese puppy, and why we believe our puppies are special. We work hard to bring out the very best in every puppy we produce!

We strive for properly constructed and pretty dogs. But, that doesn’t mean only show dogs. We want every dog we produce to, first and foremost, be a loved and loving, well balanced member of the family. We believe that is due in large part, to the start we give them here before they go home with you!

We start the way all good breeders do, of course choosing parents with good genetics, good conformation, good temperaments, and health tested above and beyond breed requirements as well. We prefer to use dogs who have proven themselves in the conformation and/or performance rings, though we will make exceptions for exceptional individuals.

Our puppies are whelped in our spare bedroom and spend their first three weeks there. All the supplies we will need for the birth and for the newborns are neatly stored close at hand. To save our backs, the whelping box is raised up just until after the pups are born. Then the table is slipped out and the box is placed on the floor to make it easier for mom to get in and out.

A warming box is on hand to keep the puppies warm in an emergency, and of course a scale to weigh them. There is a space heater to keep the room comfortable for mom and pups, and I have pre-made a batch of “mother’s pudding” to help keep her energy up during labor. I also pre-make, and freeze, a batch of formula for the puppies, just in case someone needs some supplementation. If they don’t (which is usually the case!) it can just be used as part of their initial weaning mush!

We have come to be strong believers in the Puppy Warmer ran incubator with heat and oxygen. This is used for keeping puppies safe and warm while the mom is birthing subsequent puppies. But it is also critical for giving a boost to the occasional puppy that has a rough start. While few puppies need it, we believe that every puppy deserves the best chance they can get. These puppies grow up to be just as strong and healthy as their siblings. They just sometimes have a tougher time during the birth process!

Here is a chance to enjoy a video of one of our mamas with her lovely litter of newborns!

For the first couple of weeks I sleep in the room with them. Then I keep a puppy cam on the puppies 24/7 in any case. Our whelping room is right around the corner from our bedroom so it is easy for us to hear what is going on. I try to give my puppy owners access to the puppy cam too, so that they can watch their puppy growing up!

You can see mom supervising as I weigh the puppies. We keep the scale close to the floor while weighing, so she can see everything that’s going on, and it doesn’t make her worry about her puppies. Because we want her to produce as much milk as possible, we start feeding her a smorgasbord of protein and calcium-rich healthy snacks as wells her regular meals. While we don’t normally feed kibble, at this point, while she needs as much food as possible, we keep a big bowl of kibble available to her at all times, as “snack food” that she can munch on whenever she wants!

We do either “ENS” (early neurological stimulation) or “SMS” (simulated maternal stimulation) or both with a litter. While SMS can do no harm, we do not do ENS with a litter that has been stressed in any way during a difficult birth process. Read more here. We keep things calm and peaceful in the whelping room, playing soft classical music for mom and pups and keeping the other adult dogs away.

In the second and third week potty training starts! It is amazing how strong the urge is for puppies to keep their nest clean. They really are not going TO a potty at this point, but instinctively AWAY from their bed. You can see them below at 2 1/2 weeks, eyes barely open, toddling off their bed to pee and poop. As soon as we see this behavior we make a smaller bed area, and a defined potty area to help them start to make that association. We also make sure that the bedding stays scrupulously clean to reaffirm their natural instincts. There are of course, occasional messes, and mom is still doing a great job cleaning things up too. But it is up to us to make sure bedding gets changed as soon as possible. The cleaner the pups’ area is kept, the more they will value cleanliness in their surroundings!

During the second and third week, as they become more mobile, they start to be interested in new things in their environment. Things that crackle and make little bell noises, things that they can mouth and have different textures become so much fun. These are changed daily so there is always something new for them to learn from. They still sleep most of the time. Toward the end of their third week we introduce their first food, which is a slurry of puppy mush and goats milk. Monster mash! A good time is had by all, but they wear as much as they lap up, I’m afraid. Mom and I did a lot of clean-up after THIS meal!!!

By the end of the third week they definitely need more space. They are still wobbly, but up on their little legs, getting into little play fights and popping around. We introduce pine pellets in their potty, because if introduced now, they will not see them as food items and ingest them later. The puppies make a mess with them, and are not very good at using them as a potty, but it saves problems later to introduce them now.

Even empty wipe containers are grist for their mill… something crinkly to be dragged around and play-growled at!

This is when handy husbands can be a god-send. Dave and Home Depot to the rescue for building the next-stage pen. (Auntie Pixel riding shot-gun!) We also bought some Sterlite boxes to cut down to use as litter boxes for when they are older, and another stool to help Panda to get in and out of the larger pen while keeping puppies in! This was for our first litter, and we no longer use this system. It’s much easier now, but I thought it was still fun for you to see this!

Then, “destruction before construction”! The puppies were temporarily moved in their whelping box, to our bedroom, while I tossed the whelping room to build their new and improved next stage pen. Three times the length of the whelping box and about the same width, this gave them much more room to move around. One third was bedding material while the rest was potty trays. I started with an open litter box with pine pellets, but it made such a mess that by day two, I had switched it out to two trays. Panda and I were much happier with these and the puppies didn’t care. (Oh, I also DID clean up the bed after these photos!)

As you can see, by now they have mastered the art of slurping mush and are enjoying three meals a day, though still nursing regularly as well.

At four weeks old, just a week later they are ready to move downstairs to the weaning pen in the family room.

They no longer fit in the warming box with insulation, so I remove the insulation, and use the box to move them up and down from the whelping room for at least another week or so at night. I still want them close to us in a smaller, warmer room at night rather than in the family room on the other end of the house! But since it is ONLY a bedtime enclosure now, it doesn’t have to be as big.

I send out some important reading to the puppy families this week, while they still have time to read!

Their first weaning pen in the family room is just a single 64” X 64”ex-pen. The litter boxes (re-introduced now, with more space for spreading pellets!!!) are RIGHT beside the beds, where they can find them immediately upon waking. For now, we assume that everything that is not “bed” will be considered “potty.” So, everything is covered with potty pads. While I put the slide in there right away, at 4 weeks, they are not strong enough or coordinated enough to climb on that slippery surface, so I cover it in a towel to give them some purchase. That was all they needed, and they were all over it within the first hour!

At this age, It is important not to overwhelm puppies with a lot of toys. You want to introduce new “novel” toys and climbing surfaces to them each day and take the things they have already seen away, so they have plenty of room to romp and play and develop their motor skills. They are introduced to a water bottle now (mostly licking as a novelty, as they are getting plenty of liquid in their diet) and to play with the adult dogs through the pen. At four weeks they are starting to get outside visitors. Visitors are requested to come in clean clothes, take off their shoes, and wash hands before visiting the puppies. (The mask was because this photo was during covid, pre-full vaccinations, not for the sake of the puppies.)

Oh, and as you can see, we STILL didn’t like the litter boxes, and switched back to the potty trays with litter underneath!!! In a few photos, you can see we are starting to peel back some of the pee pads, as the puppies have more success in using the potty trays.

We now have two puppy cams- one on the sleeping pen, and another on the weaning pen in the family room, so that I can keep an eye on whichever pen they are in!

We also started charging the clicker this week. A challenge with puppies that don’t have teeth! They loved meat baby food from a squeeze tube, though! All we are doing at this point is teaching that the sound of the clicker means that a tasty treat will follow!!!

During their fifth week, the puppies start to get a little more reliable about using their potty trays. They are almost completely reliable as far as poop is concerned, and getting closer with pee, so we pull the pee pads back even further, to just a drip edge around the trays. We have moved the night time sleeping quarters down to my office on the first floor, because it’s breaking my back carrying them up and down stairs every day. Panda is spending part of the night with us, but goes down regularly to check on the puppies. If I hear them rabble rousing during the night, and see that they are up and playing on the monitor, I tell Panda, “Go put your puppies to bed!” Good momma trots off to deal with them.

We continue with novel surfaces, including trips outdoors into the back yard, with new friends as often as not. The puppies have no trouble at all with the slippery surface of the slide any more! I love to have the new puppy owners here and interacting with their pups as often as they can at four weeks and beyond even though they don’t know which pup will be their’s yet. The kids mob mom for a quick snack on the lawn, she often nurses them standing up now. I like that, because studies have shown that pups whose dams nurse them standing up show more perseverance and independence in work as adults. They also get some free time in the kitchen now, after I’ve gotten everyone to potty. There are potty boxes in the kitchen too, but if there are accidents (there are) it is easy to clean up!

It’s also time to enlarge the weaning pen more. They just need more space. The vinyl floor is too slippery for their developing joints, so I cover the floor with yoga mats. These are cheap and have the advantage that they can be thrown in the washer and dryer to be cleaned as needed (which means almost daily.) With more space, we need more potty boxes, so no one ever finds themselves very far from one!

This week we are busy with new Puppy Culture exercises too. Barrier challenges are introduced this week. Puppies are challenged to find their way to food that they can see and smell but can’t get to directly. That may not seem like a big deal, but it really is for puppies at this age. One figured it out right away. The rest were more motivated by seeing a sibling eating on the other side than by just the food itself. When faced with this same challenge a few days later, all the puppies passed with flying colors. Over time, they puzzle out successively more difficult challenges calmly and cleverly. Amazing little brains! It ism important to remember that these are teaching opportunities, not “tests” for the puppies!

We start box training with the clicker this week too. They know that the clicker means good stuff is coming. Now they need to learn to offer new behaviors to get us to click (this is called “operant conditioning.”) They are clicked for any interaction with the box. Before long, they are not only touching it with their nose, but putting a foot in, two feet in, jumping in! This is the start of REAL training!

After the puppies are put to bed each night, a breeder still isn’t done for the day. Even though she has been picking up poop and wiping up pee all day, this is the time when the entire pen needs to be pulled apart and everything cleaned and sanitized, and left to dry for the next morning. All soft toys and bedding that may have gotten soiled (or just funky) goes into the laundry, along with those yoga mats. We have plenty of extras so the laundry doesn’t need to be finished before I set the pen back up. (Sigh) at some point, whether during the day or in the evening, I need to groom the other dogs. Panda is blowing coat like crazy; typical after a litter. Poor thing is looking rather moth eaten!

During the sixth week… We have introduced the activity box, from which hangs all sorts of different things that click, clatter, ring, or can be tugged on. Those get changed regularly too. Mom Panda is still playing with her kids a lot. Not all moms do. Some have totally jumped ship by this stage.

Up until now, a lot of nail trimming has happened while the puppies slept. But by now, it’s really important that the puppies learn to tolerate nail trimming as a regular part of their future lives. So we start doing nails in my lap with a bully stick. You can chew the bully stick if I can cut your nails! Fair trade? They seem to think so! (side note - red puppies often are slower to have their pigment fill in than black puppies. This is Ducky, our stud dog as a pup, and he had full pigment by 8 weeks!)

The days of the warming box to carry the litter is over. They are too big now. So this purple tub becomes their transport from place to place. This is important because they can NEVER be left in the yard without a human to supervise and protect them. They are just too small and vulnerable to hawks and other wild life. So, unless there are two people present, they all must be carried in and out together.

The puppies are now six weeks old, and are eating more solid food, pooping on the potty very reliably, and mostly peeing there, too. They continue to spend part of every nice day outdoors, always supervised, and with an always-changing supply of equipment to play on. We add shallow trays of water to splash in as well as drink from and in warm weather a sprinkler in one end of the pen was a BIG hit!

We started car rides last week with mom. This week we continue with mom on one side and pups on the other. Everyone is doing a great job as you can see below!

Training this week included individual “Manding” practice (sit quietly to ask for attention) and stacking practice on the table.

Seven weeks old, and things are starting to move fast! So much to get done! The puppies are now sleeping in crates at night with the doors off. They can choose where they sleep and who they sleep with. But they are getting the idea of sleeping in crates. I come downstairs to these cute faces in my office every morning!

This week is big! The vet comes to do their BAER hearing tests and to insert their microchips. They take it all like champs! They are getting so big that even though mom, Panda still lets them nurse at times, they lift her right off the ground when they do!

We try to have visitors every day now to introduce the puppies to as many people as possible. I encourage the puppy families to come when they can. We had some very rainy weather when the puppies couldn’t go outside, so my training room became the indoor playground on those days. The puppies delighted guests with their manding. How can you not be charmed by a whole group of puppies sitting there waiting politely for cookies?

A highlight of this week was a visit from a friend’s litter, just a week or so older. At first the two litters eyed each other suspiciously like rival gangs in the school yard. It took a friendly human climbing into the pen to break the ice. Then the games were on!

Another big highlight at seven weeks is temperament testing. These photo are poor quality, because they are pulled off the video footage. We have to stay out of the room as the temperament testing is done by neutral strangers. Temperament testing can be controversial, (more information here) but if done well and used correctly, it can give the breeder feedback on areas that the puppies might need work on in their final weeks before heading to their forever homes.

Eight weeks old and this is a big week too! They are actually being shut into their crates with snacks for short periods during the day now, and still sleeping door-less at night.

At eight weeks we “soap” our puppies to take a close look at structure. In a fluffy breed like ours, all that fluff can hide a lot of sins. Soaping will not allow you to assess top line or outline, because cold, wet puppies often roach their backs. But soaping does allow you to determine whether the puppies have the kind of straight legs we want to produce.

The event of the week was a field trip to meet Dad, Fivefield’s Hebe Awesome. We all went to his home to meet him and his Havanese kin, along with a Bearded Collie, an African Grey parrot and a bunny rabbit! Oh, and new people too! What an adventure!!!

On the training front this week… Since all the puppies have been assigned to their new families, and they have given us their new names we’re working on name recognition. We also work on hand touches and tuck sits. The puppies all practiced wearing their new harnesses too. They found these useful for dragging Ducky, the smallest, around the pen!

They all got to experience the freedom of the WHOLE fenced back yard as a group rather than one at a time, and with the adult dogs. Joyous mayhem! We are constantly counting heads, and they are constantly running at full speed. But they sleep well later!

Nine weeks old. They may look sweet and innocent, but it takes us humans and the adult dogs to ride herd on them out in the yard now. We are constantly barricading areas where they might get themselves in trouble… and then they find new ones. One puppy finds that he can squeeze under the tractor gate and leads all his siblings to the spot. Dave has to reinforce the gate with wire fencing.

They are all sleeping in their own crates at night now, lined up in a row, side by side, with the doors shut. They sleep through the night, going to bed at 10:00pm and getting up at 6:00am to potty. Good puppies! They should be easy for their new families! I spend my spare time this week lovingly preparing puppy packets to go home with each puppy.

Ten weeks old and the puppies are heading home. I try to have the puppies picked up on different days so I can spend as much time with each family as they need. Each puppy gets a bath, nails clipped and feet trimmed. If the family wants, we do this together, so they get to know how to do this at home. We complete the puppy’s registration together on my computer, and I print out their registration and initial insurance certificates for them to take home with them.

The weaning pen comes down, and only our “pick puppy” is left. Just an ex-pen in my office, and life seems very quiet again. Time to take some deep breaths, rest, and start dreaming about the next time!