Your Puppy Culture Border Collie
Your brand new border collie puppy has been weened and raised with the wonderful puppy-raising program, Puppy Culture.
Here are some extracts from the Puppy Culture website, written by Jane Messineo Killion Lindquist, the founder of Puppy Culture and Madcap University. Followed by our responsibilities as your Puppy Culture puppy’s breeder.
What is puppy culture?
On the top level, Puppy Culture is a socialization and training program specifically developed for puppies, from birth through the end of their critical socialization period.
It includes age appropriate protocols and lessons laid out in an organized format.
The program consists of videos, books and a Workbook, but that really does not get to the “why” of Puppy Culture, or what makes it different!
The Why of Puppy Culture
Puppy Culture is based on the premise that the puppy always leads the learning, and puppies learn best by appropriate experiences at the appropriate time.
So what we are doing is teaching you to observe the puppy, and, based on the behavioral markers you see, serve the puppy the experience or lesson that is optimal for him at that moment in time.
Let the Puppy Lead the Learning
By letting the puppy lead, we are:
Maximizing the benefit of any given protocol or lesson
Minimizing any danger of over-facing or scaring the puppy
Creating confidence and self-efficacy by presenting the appropriate level of challenge that the puppy CAN do without failing or presenting a danger to himself.
Finally, we teach owners to enjoy each puppy for the precious individual he is, and to bring out the best qualities in that puppy, rather than holding the puppy up to an arbitrary yardstick and labeling him as a problem if he does not measure up.
Appropriate Experiences at the Appropriate Time
Many puppies are labeled as having behavior or temperament issues when they are simply being served an inappropriate experience for their developmental age.
This can hobble the puppy for the rest of his life with an unjust label that will cause people to treat him in an unthoughtful manner. By letting the puppy lead, you avoid this and enjoy your puppy for the wonderful individual that he is.
So you watch the puppy and see what learning experience he’s ready for. And learning what those experiences are and how to effectively serve them is a big part of the Puppy Culture program.
Why is this so important? Because things that are perfect in one developmental period could be useless or even detrimental in the next, and vice versa. So we teach you to know where your puppy is developmentally, and what to do right now.
Yes, Puppy Culture is a “positive,” reinforcement-based program and we do not use corrections or outmoded dominance theory, but that is really all a by-product of observing the puppy and serving him the learning experience he is asking for.
And I will add that our program is based on the latest science and studies on puppy and animal rearing, and we include many experts and authors in the film to further explain the logic of the program.
Where to from here?
Before you get your new collie puppy I highly recommend the “With Open Arms” puppy course, and The Original Puppy Culture Film focusing on chapters 4 through 20. If you are only able to get one of the two I would suggest the “With Open Arms” course.
This course covers:
Transporting your puppy home, setting up their playpen
How to priority your time in your first few weeks with your new puppy
The essential training
Daily schedules
Self-regulation (stopping the annoying puppy behaviours like biting, nipping, and jumping)
The PC complete house and crate training system
As well as:
7 vidoes from the original Puppy Culture film
Our responsibility as your PC puppy’s breeder:
Our primary focus is forming positive associations for the puppies with people and with learning.
Your puppy will not be coming home with perfectly trained behaviours. We are planting the seed of learning in them, beginning to raise well-rounded Border Collies.
We strive to create little adventure seekers.
We hope you enjoy your border collie puppy as much as we have enjoyed raising them!
