All
our pups are born in our house and stay there for the first three
weeks. It gets very crowded sometimes! but at least that prevents
puppies from getting squashed by their mothers. It's also a good start
for the pups to have close contact with us. They are very aware of their
surroundings from birth. For example, we often put each of the pups on a
teat so that no-one misses out on a meal, and already in their first
few days they learn to recognize our smell and come to our hands for
food. Between 2 and 3 weeks they start leaving their 'nest' to go to the
toilet on newspaper. When they move out of our house they go into
thatched-roofed houses with grass and sand runs outside and blankets and
newspaper inside. From about 4 weeks we give them toys to play with and
have play sessions with them.
When
we train them they can do fetching and sit and down and stand on
command at 6 weeks, find hidden toys at 7 weeks, and do tracking by 8
weeks. Teaching them is really easy and takes less than 5 minutes a day.
(See puppy training.) We deworm our pups from 2 weeks of age and
continue every second week until they're 12 weeks. They are vaccinated
at 5, 8 and 12 weeks. To protect them from distemper between 9 and 12
weeks, which ordinary vaccines don't, we give them a measles and
distemper vaccine.
