Why you should join Ninja Pups?

Between the ages of 2 and 16 weeks the pups brains are like a sponge, I don't mean physically, I mean they soak up every bit of information they have around them, this is when most of the life long learning will occur .

This is called the critical period.

What this means is that what ever your pup experiences during this time both good and bad will stay with that pup for the rest of its life. 

If your pup has a bad experience during this time it is very unlikely to fully recover .

The same if your pup has good experiences during this time they will stay with the pup for the rest of its life.

For example: at the age of 9 weeks your pup fell down some stairs, this would be a bad experience for the pup so that pup would  probably never be confident with going up or down stairs. It might navigate the stairs with hesitation but will never be as good as it could have been if it had had a good experience as a puppy .

If the pup in this critical period has never had a bad experience with stairs and was encouraged and taught that stairs are a good thing, that pup will grow up being confident on stairs.  Even if as an adult that dog fell down some stairs the long term mental damage done to that dog would more than likely be minimal and not long lasting , the dog would more than likely recover quickly and return to being confident on the stairs.

This of course would always vary for different dogs.

Another example would be during the critical period the pup never saw a male person, that pup could grow up being afraid of, or at least very wary of males.

Sometimes when people get a rescue dog and it's afraid of males, they instantly assume the dog has been badly treated by a male. But this might not have been the case, it might have been that the dog had not been around males during the critical period.

This is why its very important to get your pup out and about in the world, so it can experience, noises, smells, cars, trucks, people, kids on bikes, kids in prams, other dogs. It's a big wide world out there and the pup needs to experience as much of it as it can during this critical period.

But my pup isn't fully vaccinated you say, that's fine, tuck the pup under your arm and take it down to the local cafe and sit outside, it can observe, people, cars, food smells etc.

Take your pup for rides in the car, they don't have to get out to experience the world. Don't just take your pup to the vet and home again, make the car a good place.