Early Scent Introduction: Each day the trainer introduces a strong scent to the puppy for brief intervals and records the puppies reaction. The reaction is considered positive when the puppy is interested in the scent and moves towards it. A negative reaction is recorded if the puppy moves away from the scent. If puppy is neither interested or disinterested a neutral reaction is recorded.
Why is this important? Dogs examine and make sense of the world through their noses like we make sense of the world with our eyes. Dogs noses are 10,000 times more sensitive to smells than our human noses. For practical purposes, early scent introduction gives dogs a better ability to be companion, service and therapy dogs. For example, a diabetic alert dog can smell a high or low blood sugar and alert his owner before a crisis happens. A dog may alert an elderly person to a gas leak or to something burning on the stove.
At Groodle Doodle Ranch, we perform Early Scent Introduction because we understand how important the sense of smell is to each puppy and we want them to be the best puppy they can be. The procedure is simple. Each day from 3 to 16 days old, we expose your puppy to ESI. We use leather, oranges, rabbit fur, mint, cat hair, leaves, alpaca wool, spices, and apples to name a few. We then record their reaction. As they get older, we let them play with oranges, apples, and even cats so they can continue to practice using their noses. We take them on adventure walks around the yard and they love to smell everything outside.
Puppy Curriculum
Our puppies are raised on advanced service dog curriculum. This begins at 3 days old. The military has used these exercises to create “super dogs”. The early neurological stimulation and early scent introduction has been shown to create improved cardiovascular strength and stronger adrenal glands. It also helps puppies have more tolerance to stress and greater resistance to disease.
As the puppies grow, the curriculum changes. We do the 7 essential service dog exposure program. This includes things like walking on 7 different types of surfaces like rocks, rugs, wood, cement. Seven challenges like tunnels, stairs, through a doorway. The puppies will eat from 7 different containers. They meet different kinds of people from babies to elderly, and men with caps to ladies wearing perfume.
As they grow, they are introduced to things with wheels, objects bigger than themselves, and puppy massages to name a few. They are introduced to different sounds like thunder storms, fireworks, and vacuum cleaners.
We do tolerance to handling exercises every day. We touch ears, tails, and paws. We pet them from tail to head “ backwards” because some of our puppies are chosen for service or therapy work and they may encounter small children who will pet them backwards. We want them to be tolerant to all kinds of touch.
We do advanced problem solving games and activities through nose games and educational toys.
Before puppies go home, we do temperament and behavior testing so we can help our new puppy parents match with the best puppy for their needs.
We are committed to our puppies because we have seen how dogs can heal hearts, change lives, and help people lead better lives.