Act Three Early Off Premises Socialization. Number three. Number three. And this one is why we needed to do this today. Because in our Newborn to New Home course, you're going to start seeing this. And this is different than what we did in Puppy Culture. And that is early off premises. socialization.
You know, I think you have to look at this kind of two ways that when we were making Puppy Culture, what I would describe Puppy Culture is the minimum that any breeder should do with a litter to raise behaviorally sound dogs, meaning to say, well, do what's in this program and you won't be handing over a project to your puppy owner.
So you're not going to hand over a puppy that's totally house trained or can walk a mile on a leash, but you'll you'll be handing over a puppy that isn't going to freak out the second the puppy owner puts a collar on it and isn't just a tremendously dirty puppy that they can't house train at all. That isn't totally neophobic and afraid of things. You know, of its own shadow, I mean, barring any genetic problems. Right.
So what we're asking you to do is sort of hand over a blank slate to the puppy owner that the puppy owner and then can take and run with and write on that slate and go to class and do all that work. We also are telling you to do what has been proven scientifically to be safe. So, you know, all the biosafety precautions that we mention, you know, there's always a risk benefit analysis, okay.
Especially with we do early, in-house socialization and there's always a risk benefit analysis and we talk about that. But, you know, putting that aside, you know that you've done your risk benefit analysis of your local risk and you've decided it's worth it to do early in home socialization.
And then once the puppies are vaccinated, we Dr. Herron and Dr. Leal talk about the UC Davis study that if the puppies have had one vaccine by eight weeks at eight weeks old or later and you wait a week, you're safe, you know that they they did the study. Thousands of puppies. Not one of them got parvo. They all went to to puppy class. So what we put in there is you're safe with what we put in there.
And yeah, I mean, it is going to do a decent job of socializing the puppies, even if you wait, you know, if you don't take them off premises and you wait until they have that vaccine on board after eight weeks. So talking about nine weeks, between nine and 12 weeks, if you socialize them.
Okay. So now we're getting to the part where I've modified my position on this, but I should hasten to add I've modified my personal position on this because I feel I have adjusted my risk benefit analysis on this. And what happened was I used a dog from the United Kingdom, so I brought some new genetics into my lines. And it was a true out cross. And this was, what, three generations ago?
Yes. And the reason I did it is that all my dogs have always been super confident, our line super confident dogs and really great with people always because that's in our standard. And we, you know, we just don't have any tolerance for a dog that's not flat out friendly to people. But we also had some sharpness, right, with other dogs like, you know, a lot of same sex aggression. So we wanted to kind of tone that down a bit.
And this dog, you know, he was gorgeous and very, very sweet, good with other dogs, very low, same sex aggression. So we brought him in, got a beautiful, beautiful litter. Took the litter to be evaluated with Mary Rimmer, who's evaluated all of my for five, six, seven generations. I don't even know how many generations it is now. She's evaluated, done puppy evaluations on all my litters. And they were terrified. I mean, there was a air conditioning duct in the ceiling.
They were terrified by the sound. They did eventually approach the people, but they crawled. I mean, I'd never seen anything like it, you know? And, you know, they they came out fine. I mean, they grew up okay. But I'd say we we really made a pretty intense effort to socialize them at that point. And then, you know, the next two generations, you know, we kind of had similar softness, not as dramatic as that, but, you know, just not what I was used to, not what we were used to at all.
And the last litter that we brought to Mary, she said, Well, I mean, do you get them out, you know, before they come here and I said, No, it's the first time. I mean, they're seven weeks old. It's their first trip. I mean, we used to take them for bear testing, but they don't go do that anymore because we have someone coming in, bear testing, being hearing testing, and she's like, well, you know, that bear testing, probably that trip probably really did a lot for them at six weeks.
And you really need to get these puppies out and that these particular puppies genetically are prone to sound sensitivity and softness. You need to get them out. So these puppies that litter was just seven weeks old and I started taking them around. I bought myself a baby stroller, you know, the kind of zip up puppy stroller put them in that so that they couldn't, you know, no other dogs could get to them or sniff them and people couldn't touch them. And I just start wheeling them around.
I took them to Home Depot, I took them to Tractor Supply. I mean, I just took them any place I could take them. And you know what? My God, those puppies were confident. Yeah, I mean, they just fantastic, really. I mean, night and day with waiting to nine weeks, night and day, getting them out at six, seven weeks. So, you know, I am going to be taking these puppies out this week to places like the bank. I'm going to take them out in their little puppy stroller and get them out.
And they're six weeks old. And I guess I'm going to do it. You know, I'm going to. But again, I live in northwestern New Jersey. It's a, you know, all the dogs around here, there are no stray dogs. Everyone takes good care of their dogs. I'm not going to take them to a place like PetCo where there's going to be a lot of other dogs. I'm not going to take them, you know, there. But I'm definitely I'll take them to the bank.
I mean, you know, I'll take them to any place that will let me push them around in their little cart. I'll take them to a Home Depot. Why the bank? You never go to the bank. No, I don't. But, you know, I never really have this situation. I normally am socializing them later. And the other thing I'm going to do is I'm probably going to have some of my friends that where I feel that their house has similar biosafety to mine.
And, you know, maybe we'll have Alida come over with her Leonbergers sooner rather than later because again, you know, some of my litters have had more trouble getting over the big dogs and things and that certainly dog you know, neophobia is a big thing in bull terriers. They're not known to love other dogs. And this last litter that, you know, you can't discount genetics, but the last litter that we had before this, my goodness, they're fantastic. They go to playgroups.
They they run with other dogs. I mean, I just they're fantastic. So I do think, you know, I would, look, I'm not going to say I'm changing my mind because I always would think that socializing earlier could have a benefit. But I'm changing my risk benefit analysis for me here. Now, with this line of puppies, with my genetics that I have, I am going to start socializing them earlier. I can't officially recommend that people do, you know.
And even on the Puppy Culture Discussion Group, a lot of times people will put up, you know, videos or pictures of they bring their puppies to like libraries and they have kids or kids schools and they have the kids play with the puppies. And, you know, I'm not going to change my official stance on we're not going to put that up as part of Puppy Culture because, you know, a lot of people get on that discussion group and they don't even know that there's a film and a program.
They just think the discussion group is Puppy Culture. So, you know, if you haven't watched the film and you don't know about biosafety and you haven't listened to the vets talk about appropriate risk benefit analysis, I mean, you can't just take your puppies and just say, Oh, I'm
going to take them to a library and just let everyone touch them. So my official stance is still look, I mean, I cannot officially recommend this, but I'm going to say I definitely am changing my mind about taking my own puppies off premises early. So can you just kind of elaborate, though, what what is wrong about that whole process? That seems to be pretty straightforward. I mean, what would, you know, what how would you define wrong in any of that? Wrong about what?
Well, the fact that you didn't take the puppies out, but you notice that they're soft. So it was recommended that you do take them out. Yeah, well, because I didn't I thought that, you know, listen, nine weeks is enough. Like 9 to 12 weeks is plenty of time, you know, is plenty of time to get them out in the world. You can wait till they're past their,. I always want to wait till they're past their initial or their second fear imprint period and you can get them out and that's enough time.
You can get it done. And I'm saying, yeah, I mean, you can. But I think that there is a tremendous benefit and probably, you know, better to get them out earlier. So the wrong part of it is someone could come and say, well, hey, you know, used to say no sooner than nine weeks, right? Well, I used to say, you don't need to. That's what I would say is it's really unnecessary and not safe. And now what I would say is, you know, I think there is more benefit to it than I had thought there was.
And I can't say that it's safe. I cannot say that it's safe. But because I don't have a study. Right. We have a study. We have the UC Davis study. So we know it's safe to take them out at nine weeks after they've had one vaccine. Correct. But or I should say, we know statistically it's safe. You know, statistics show that it's relatively safe. There's always going to be some puppy who's a non responder to a vaccine
that gets parvo. I mean, it can happen, but we don't have any science to say it's safe or what the safe parameters are for taking out a six week old puppy. You know, I would wait till six weeks for my puppies because I want to be well past the initial fear imprint period. But, you know, I'll be taking these puppies around. I will be taking them around. I'm going to put them in a little, I bought a stroller a puppy stroller. So they'll be in that, but I'll be taking them around.
It's a cute stroller, I have to admit. It's a very cute stroller. Mm hmm. Well, I think that I you know, I think that's a pretty good explanation. I think of what you're trying to tell people about. I guess embracing wrong, I guess, is what you're trying to come across to people. Right, well, because I've you know, I had experience. I felt one way based on the information I had at the time, and I got more information.
Listen, another thing and I'll just throw it out here is the whole COVID experience has taught us a lot. Now, I won't say this doesn't come under the umbrella of being wrong, but similarly, when it comes to socialization, you know, it was a frequent thing that people would write into Puppy Culture, not frequent, but from time to time, people right into Puppy Culture. And so, you know, I did all Puppy Culture.
I kept them until ten weeks and then I place them the puppy owner and now the puppy six months. And he's afraid of something, you know, the puppy hides behind their legs or whatever. And, you know, you're like, well, what did the puppy owner do with them? I don't know. You know, we really don't know how much socialization or getting the puppy out after the close of the critical socialization period. We really don't know how much difference that made in until COVID, and now we know.
We know that, we know that doing socialization during the critical socialization period up until 12 weeks is sort of like a card to it's like a pass card to go to the next level, right? You don't get stuck in behavioral mod boot camp. You know, you're again, you're handing the puppy owner a blank slate. It's like, okay, we've done what we have to do up to this point.
now, you can just carry on, keep socializing, keep going, keep having new experiences, keep training, and it will be smooth it will be clear sailing for you. You'll be able to go straight through, but you have to keep it up. But with COVID, we had the experience of alright, we went straight to 12 weeks and then boom, cut it off. Now, you know, we have Alana literally 12 weeks, that's when her lockdown, that's when lockdown came. So that puppy was socialized normally right up to 12 weeks.
And then like an iron curtain, it fell down and she was locked up until she was nine months old. And when she was nine months old, before she could get to a handling class and she just about came unhinged. Yeah. And, you know, frankly, the effects of that are there. And, you know, I mean, it's a she's a behavioral project. I mean, she's an adorable dog. I mean, she's sweet, but we can't even show her at an all breed show because she's only ever seen Bull Terriers.
And, you know, she just she comes unhinged. So and there's a lot of stories like that. So I think, you know, what we've learned is it's not that what we do in the first 12 weeks doesn't matter. You have to do that. You do have to do all that stuff in the first 12 weeks. But what we've learned is you also do have to continue you have to continue with it. So how do you wrap all this up? What do you what do you tell everybody? What is the what is the thing to tell everybody?
What's the short nugget that we walk away from all this, that being wrong is okay. Well, I just think next time you got a piece of information and you think it's wrong that it conflicts with what you think is right, you just take a minute. Take a beat, check yourself and say, is this maybe an opportunity? Could I possibly grow with this information?