Raising with the Puppy Culture Program
This page is to show you how we bring up our special Bellvalley Beagle puppies
Here at Bellvalley we firmly believe in starting our puppies on their education and socialization before they have even met their new families. Right from day one we handle our puppies with love and dedication, ensuring we treat every puppy as the special individual they are.
From Birth - 2 Weeks
Everything we do with our Bellvalley puppies is to benefit their physical, physiological and social development.
We introduce our puppies to novel stimuli, such as different textures, objects, sounds and surfaces from a very young age. This better equips our puppies to cope with new and potentially stressful situations when they are with their new families.
The Development Programs we put our Bellvalley puppies through has lasting effects on our puppies right through to adulthood.
On their first day of their life each and every Bellvalley puppy is individually handled several times a day. In each short handling session we check every inch of our puppies to get them used to being handled and picked up by different people.
From day 3 we begin our puppies on our Neurological Stimulation Program. This amazing scientifically proven Stimulation Program consists of five stimulating exercises that we do with each and every Bellvalley puppy, every day untill they are 16 days old.
These exercises help the puppies to grow up to be strong, healthy, well-adjusted adults by stimulating the puppies’ nerve endings and neurological system. The exercises produce puppies with greater tolerance of stress, greater resistance to disease, better nerve ending connections and stronger heartbeats. These exercises are proven to work as they challenge the puppies’ neurological system to respond.
Week 2 - Week 4
At this stage in the puppies' development they are just starting to open their eyes and take in their environment. The puppy's mum starts to leave them to go for regular short walks to give them and her a little break.
At about three weeks we familiarize the puppies with a litter tray and they soon take to using it, which saves a lot of mopping up!
This is the age that we really start to introduce our puppies to new things. We begin by putting a new toy or object in with the puppies every day, so as you can imagine we have a lot of toys!
The puppy's favourite toys are the noisy ones, which is great as it gets them used to all sorts of noises. We introduce our puppies to a tiny puppy tunnel and encourage them to interact and play with us.
The puppies often get a short visit by our ginger cat, Puss. We think he might have a bit of an identity crisis as he loves to play with the puppies and go in their tunnel!
Week 4 - Week 5
From week four our puppies start showing a real interest in solid foods, so we begin to feed them small meals throughout the day as well as giving them goat's milk to supplement their diet.
At this crucial age we also begin their education and Progressive Reinforcement Training Program.
By this we mean we introduce our puppies to Clicker Training. Each puppy receives individual training sessions every day where we condition them to the clicker through classical conditioning and get them used to taking treats.
We continue to add novel objects and toys to the puppies' environment until we have run out of new things to add, which by the way is never! We will always find something new and fun for our puppies to interact with, card board boxes are are always a favorite.
Socialisation
Week 5 - Week 9
All our special little puppies get thoroughly socialized with people, surfaces, sounds and many different animals including cats, chickens, ducks, pigs, cows and other dogs.
At this age we also start taking our Bellvalley puppies on short car rides and introducing them to the crate. This helps to prepare our puppies for life with their new families. Yennefer will often accompany the puppies on their journeys to give them confidence.
Bellvalley puppies grow up in a calm, happy, enriched environment, where they have access to tunnels, wobble boards, balance cushions and many, many toys!
The wobble boards, ramps, platforms and balance cushions all help to give the puppies confidence and prepare them for a future career in agility, flyball, scentwork, dog sports etc. The list is endless!
- Training -
By the time our Bellvalley Beagle Puppies are eight weeks old they will have already learnt 'Leave It', a 'Default Calm', Hand Targeting and the basic positions (sit, lie down and stand).
All this is taught through Clicker Training and Progressive Reinforcement, we teach our puppies using sympathetic, science based methods without using intimidation and physical punishment.
Bellvalley puppies are taught self-control, patience and manners as well as to wait for their food. They are trained in individual sessions as well as whole litter sessions several times a day.
All our special Bellvalley puppies come with a Bellvalley Beagle Puppy Pack including the Smart Pup Training Program which continues exactly from where we have starting and of course a lifetime of support.
All our puppies are Kennel Club registered and come with a 5 generation pedigree, Contract of Sale, an extensive puppy information pack with a whole host of information on training, health, diet, socialization, exercise, grooming as well as a list of useful resources and our most latest addition is the Smart Pup Training Box which follows on directly from the puppy culture program the puppies follow with us here.
If you would like to apply for a Bellvalley Puppy please email us and we will send you our Puppy Buyer's Questionnaire.