Nature or Nurture?

Is a puppy’s behavior inherited or a product of their environment? The true answer is neither, as it is a combination of both. Science has shown us that it can be guided by various experiences. Therefore it is possible to shape behavior by modifying the environment and through early conditioning and training.

Critical brain development happens in the first few weeks of a puppy’s life. Stimulation of their brain will enhance the efficiency of the brain cells and cause the brain to grow faster. Exposing our puppies to the BioSensor and Early Scent Introduction training in these first critical weeks increases our puppy’s learning potential.

Puppies come in two sizes so to speak! Calm or confident. If we have a calm puppy it must be taught to be confident. If it is confident, we must teach calmness. Our AquaConditioning and Puppy Massage Programs help us work through this. If a dog doesn’t know what it feels like to be calm, how could we expect them to understand what to do when we tell them to be “easy”. If we need that calm puppy to be “alert” he to must understand how it feels.

Our amazing Early Scent Introduction results help assess each puppy’s personality at three weeks old!  Litter after litter we compiled our research and we are now able to determine the puppies learning ability, focus ability, and socialization ability far earlier than ever thought before. We are then able to take advantage of the fact that between three and six weeks our puppies will be at their lowest anxiety level in their entire life! This is the time that we must expose them to many new items in our world. Sight and sound interactions are key. We make adjustments to what type of exposure according to individual puppies and where they are as they approach their first ‘fear’ period. We use body awareness (proprioception) conditioning not only to get puppies used to being handled but also to help them physically discover what they can and can not do.