Puppies are coming!
Spellcast Border Collies had a litter of five puppies born August 8, 2007. Gel is the sire of the litter and Midge is the dam. See their individual pages for more information on the parents. Preference will be given to working, performance or sports homes. The puppies should have excellent work ethics with "off" switches. If given proper exercise, mental and physical, they will be happy to be couch potatoes as well.
The puppies' pedigree is
here.
Creating Super Puppies
From day three through day sixteen I conducted
Early Neuorological Stimulation exercises on all of the puppies. From what I've read and been told by other breeders, this helps puppies to become better performance dogs.
Raising Healthy, Well-Adjusted Dogs
Both
Midge and
Gel eat a 100 percent home-prepared
raw meat diet. The puppies will be weaned on to a raw meat diet as well. Gel, Midge and the puppies stay in separate 10 x 10 runs during the day when I am at work. When I am home, they are all in the house with me. Except for when I am at work, my dogs are not "kennel" dogs, they are part of the family. All of the puppies will receive individual attention on a daily basis. I will begin crate and leash training as well as basic clicker training. As soon as the puppies are agile enough, they will have access to various puppy obstacles such as tunnels, wobble boards, baby slides and the like.
Seven is a Very Good Number
Before the puppies are seven weeks old, they will have experienced at least seven different surfaces, been to seven different places, met seven new and different people and experienced seven different challenges. This is in an effort to produce well-adjusted puppies ready to go out and face the world. The reason for doing this before seven weeks old is to avoid the "fear" period that most puppies experience at eight to ten weeks old. Prior to this fear period, it is important to teach puppies to bounce back from things that startle them. This "bouncing back" is an important skill, especially if they are to be shown in performance venues. For example, a busy agility show, especially if it is indoors, can be very noisy and scary for a dog that was not well socialized as a puppy. I hope the puppies I bring up will be able to go into this type of environment looking for fun without any fear.
The Nitty Gritty
All of the puppies are sold. I kept one puppy back from the litter, Spellcast Inferno. Check out her
page for her progress.
