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Clickety Split

Poop School & Crate School
For Sundog setting all of our dogs up for success with their future families is the foundation of our efforts and goals. In such an intelligent and inquisitive breed two significant tasks that are critical for continued training, socialization, and exposure at a young age are potty training and crate work. So we use these programs to imprint the ideas of cleanliness and positive associations with crate early on in the litter's development and off into their homes.

What are these two programs?

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There are three entry levels for Poop School: House Training Basics (for families), Basic for Breeders, and Premium for Breeders. I chose to join this program as a premium member when I was offered the option to beta test for crate school for a very discounted rate. I saw the value in both programs and wanted to support Susanna as much as I could for her work. This options also allowed me to have ongoing access to all materials and benefits as well as be able to offer House Training Basics enrollment for any Sundog families who welcome home a dog through our program. Knowing how empowering early potty training success can be I feel this is worth more than I can express to my program.

I tried many different things, talked to many different breeders about their struggles and successes with litter box training, devised a plan, used it, changed it, making continual improvements based on my experiences and observations over several years. I finally hit upon a system of litter box and cleanliness training that created clean habits that persisted into the new home, that worked not just for me and my puppies but for all sizes and types of dogs. A plan that allows puppies to teach themselves to prefer to be clean, that reduces caregiver clean up time, reduces opportunities for pathogen spread, is easily adaptable to different set ups, and produces puppies that are easier to house train and cleaner in the new home.  

After all of her hard work Susanna polished this program. It starts practically at birth with the positioning and design of your whelping box and following through on your layout and interactions melting into a management plan that funnels puppies towards the behavior we want - potty training! By understanding and utilizing the puppies natural instincts and developmental stages you learn to adapt your setup to fit the needs of your breed through observation and data collection to get the end result of confidant and clean puppies that are regularly fully potty trained before they go off to their families.

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There are three entry levels for Crate School: Confident Crating (for families), Basic for Breeders, and Premium for Breeders. I chose to join this program as a premium member so that I would continue to have ongoing access to all materials and benefits as well as be able to offer Confident Crating enrollment for any Sundog families who welcome home a dog through our program. I was actually a beta tester for this program and the PT Boat litter contributed to the development and testing of the program as it is today. I was thrilled to be offered that opportunity by Susanne and am please this the results I saw even through a partial program. So much so that I can't wait to use the finalized form with future litters.

Positively crate conditioned puppies experience less transition stress, settle more easily into their new homes, and are easier for the new family to crate train.  Setting puppies and their new families up for success.

Leave behind the old “scream it out” days and learn a system that works with the puppy’s natural instincts, is based in positive reinforcement, and is easy to transition to new puppy families.

The system focuses on practical and pragmatic breeder skills, practices, and techniques.

The program was built to work in conjunction with Puppy Culture and other similar systems (like Avidog), but a breeder and trainer. It utilizes early learning and whelping/weaning pen designs and layouts to foster and encourage clean crate behaviors, reinforcing desired choices, minimize or eliminate the ability through design and initiative for puppies to make poor choices, capturing positive interactions through routines, games, and special interactions, building understanding on how to reinforce desirable choices by your puppies, and slowly building basic crate skills into our everyday interactions so that puppies are confidant and comfortable going off to their families with basic crate skills that can be built on and fostered after the go home in a similar calm and positive light through a program and support designed for these families.

How Does It Work?

These two programs are designed to work together, and why not. The puppies are trying to learn how to exist in our environments all at once as they grow. The more streamlined and cohesive we can make the process the better if we can minimize the stress and increase the positive outcome. Below is a mini timeline of how we work through this program. Please note you will see a lot of date ranges and overlapping ideas and times. This is because no two litters are ever the same and the entire reason this system can work is because you adapt it to the needs of your puppies and the situations you have each time you apply this (or a similar) system. The great news is that potty training and crate training rely on a lot of the same foundation work at these early stages so they tend to go hand in hand and if you progress through one it makes it easier to progress through the other.

Pre-Whelp

Set Up

The location and direction of the whelping box and how I expand the pen are critical to the success of these programs - especially poop school.

Pre-Whelp

7-11 Days Old

Divide & Conquer

Once pups start defecting on their own create a sleeping texture and a "potty" texture to delineate by feel. Make the distinction in early memory -it sticks.

7+ Days & Beyond

Selecting Access

Carefully place enrichment and nurture items in ways that build you up v cause road blocks. Locations of food, water, toys, and new items can be done with precision.

7+ Days & Beyond

Overview of our whelping pen. Inside is a whelping box, bumpper bed, basket with blanket to the left, bucket of toys to the right, and a medical supply cart by whelping box.
Clara sleeping in whelping box with 8 puppies on vetbed with box rails
Six puppies sleeping in the corner of their whelping box on a cooling bed and vetbed with potty pads beneath and to the left
Clara laying upside down center frame with puppies around/beside her sleeping on vet bed and potty pads, a lambchop toy in the top right corner, and puppies out of fram on a bumpper bed at the bottom of the whelping box
two puppies sleeping on potty pats in top left, single puppy sleeping half on vet bed and potty pads, and two puppies playing on the vetbed in our whelping box
Clara's rear feet on a bumper bed on the left and Sundog Seawolf upsidedown sleeping on a potty pad with front paw touching Clara
Sundog Bogie laying on vet bed infront of a bowl of milk that is sitting on the potty pads in our whelping box
Whelping pen set up with water in tray at top left over potty pad area, bottom area has vet bed and two beds, with crates lining the bottom. puppies are sleeping on one bed and on the small parts ove vet bed in the center
A pupp sleeping in one of the potty boxes inside the whelping pen
Sundog Hellcat sleping upside down in a crate on a blue towel next to a bowl of food
Sundog Hatches & seawold sleeping beside eachother on a yak bed near crates with Sundog Hellcat sleeping in the right upper frame near them and another puppy sleeping between
Sundog Stratus sleeping wedged between to potty boxes on the potty pads in the whelping pen
Sundog Haches with chews in a wiree crate int he whelping pen on a blue/white striped towel
Multiple puppies ina nd out of crates with Clara sleeping in the puppy pen
Sundog Jerk and Bogie in neighboring crates sleeping with toys and chews
Multiple puppies sleeping and sitting on the potty pads near the potty boxes in the puppy pen

5~ Days & Beyond

Wait!

Go at their pace. Even if you build out areas for growth when easiest for you doesn't mean you need to give them access earlier than then are ready for it.

5~ Days & Beyond

Until Nuropaths close +

No such thing as accidents

We may need to remove access to an area based off time of day, development or pups not being able to go the distance. But it isn't an accident unless they can be doing it wrong - they can't be doing it wrong yet.

Always, Every moment

Build them up

Positive interactions and habits will last a lifetime. Make the thing you want to promote fun but don't ever force it. Not everyone will be 100% every time you do something.

Always, Every moment

Each development stage

Subtle Expansion

We minimize drastic changes so they can keep up. Slowly giving more space while altering directions or schedules as little as possible.

Each development stage

7+ weeks

Duration with Development

You can only increase the expectations as the pups develop and can mentally and physically handle what you ask. Five positive minutes is better than 10 negative. Let them learn that they have a voice and you hear it. It takes time too build to hours or all night.
All eight puppies laying in crates or on yak bed
Five puppies sleeping in 4 upper crates
Clara nursing puppies laying on matting and vet bed in puppy pen
All 8 puppies and clara enjoying buly sticks. in the puppy pen that Clara brought them
Clara sleeping in a car int he foreground and Sundog Hellcat and Hatches sleeping in crates in the far back of the car
Cere, Martini, hatches, and Stratus sleeping in crates around 8 weeks old (dogs named left to right)
All eight puppies with chews enjoying some crate time around 8 weeks old
Sundog Bogie sleepingi n a bed in a crate
Remember the training doesn't stop here or with us as breeders. No puppy will be going home fully trained. But this system gives you a very solid foundation to continue to build on and a support system to fall back on if you run into and bumps along the way.

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