The new pups had a very exciting day yesterday as Early Neurological Stimulation started. What is Early Neurological Stimulation you ask? Well, it is 5 short exercises that are carried out on all pups usually between day 3 (for us here at Alaula we started on day 5 for this litter due to mum being a little protective of her babes) to day 16.
I won’t go into to much detail as you can read further about this method on the link below but to give you the short version The exercises consist of : tactical stimulation, head held erect, head pointed down, supine position and thermal stimulation. Each exercise is carried out one after the other for 3-5 seconds each exercise. Why do we do this you may ask? Well these 5 exercises were created to stimulate brain functions that don’t normally occur in the early stages of a puppy’s life and it is believed that this early time period is when the puppy is going through a rapid neurological growth and development stage.
The benefits of these exercises include improved cardio vascular performance (heart rate), stronger heart beats, stronger adrenal glands, more tolerance to stress and a greater resistance to disease resulting in puppies being more activate and more exploratory than puppies that weren’t stimulated.
You may ask where did these findings come from? These exercises are used today by many breeders worldwide and are based on years of research done by the US military, in their canine program, to improve and enhance their dogs performance and overall well-being. The dogs that were stimulated during this window of time exhibited more calming behaviours and were less disturbed and/or upset when exposed to difficult problem solving situations when older.
If you wish to read further about this please click on the below link http://breedingbetterdogs.com/article/early-neurological-stimulation