How we raise our puppies

At Griswold Goldens our mamas are given the best care throughout their pregnancy. From vet visits, extra nutrition, vet services, and more, our Moms are well prepared to bring their puppies into the world. Once their due date approaches Moms are integrated into their whelping area. At this point they receive daily massages and grooming care. During whelping our moms receive delivery assistance as needed.

Once puppies are born into the world at Griswold Goldens we begin ENS (early neurological stimulation) and ESI (early scent introductions) at 3 days old. This is performed on days 3-16, including gentle handling and daily weights. ENS is known to improve cardiovascular performance, stronger heartbeats, stronger adrenal glands, more tolerance to stress, and greater resistance to disease. ESI improves nose awareness and confidence.

At 3 weeks old we move into a more advanced curriculum with our puppies. We begin a “10 step puppy massage” every day and increase pressure weekly. We use our 10 step handling exercises to ensure our puppies are exposed to various types of touch, handling and sensation. This includes eyes, nose, inside mouth, around collar, tummy, down back, pull tail, tug on ears, and tapping nails.

Early Socialization is crucial to creating perfect companion dogs. Our puppies are handled and played with on a daily basis.  We are intentional in the way we socialize and play with our puppies to help them learn that people and other dogs are safe and loving. They are socialized to people of all ages as well as other dogs of all sizes while they are with us. We want to create confident puppies that are not afraid of new people, dogs or situations. With our curriculum, we set them up to conquer physical and mental challenges every day. By doing this we build our puppies nerve strength and confidence as well as problem solving skills. Our goal is provide our puppies with a stable and enriching environment for the first 8 weeks of their lives.

Puppies that are raised in a clean environment are easier to train, our puppies learn early on that there are designated areas for sleeping, eating, potty and play which transitions into easy to housetrain puppies.

​We also keep our puppies clean and work to establish good grooming skills.  Puppies are bathed and dried regularly, have their coats brushed regularly, have their nails trimmed, eye hairs trimmed and receive sanitary shaves. Starting these things early on will make it easier for our puppies families and groomers later on and will make it less stressful for the puppy.

Puppies begin sleeping in open door crates around 4 weeks of age and we begin group and individual crate training sessions around 6-7 weeks old depending on when they have finished their 5-6 week old fear period.. At this age as well we also begin taking puppies outside to their designated potty area every few hours throughout the day to go potty, and we will continue this schedule up until the puppies go to their forever homes. We have had  great success using this method and most of our puppies go home almost fully potty trained.