Research has demonstrated that this mild stress increases the growth rate, improves dogs' ability to learn tasks, improves coordination and generally speeds up later development thereby giving handled pups an advantage over pups not handled during the first two weeks.

Pups' eyes will open at 10 to 14 days of age. Auditory canals open at about three weeks on average, so by three weeks of age visual cues and auditory cues can be added to the olfactory and tactile modalities and the pups are hitting on all four environmental perception cylinders. Though not yet functioning in a totally coordinated way, that's the total sensory pathways the dog will ever have. All four modalities firing together and total absence of fear makes the three to six week period the most critical for socializing on humans and on dogs. This is when the breeder's responsibility is greatest. And what are the breeder's responsibilities? The main one is the breeder must ensure all associations the pup makes are positive.

From birth, pups are able to make associations between an olfactory stimulus or a tactile stimulus and something pleasant or unpleasant. After three weeks, associations are also possible from visual and auditory inputs. The breeder must expose all pups to anything and everything they might encounter later in life that could cause a startle response, a fear response, an aggressive response, frustration or even excitability, all during the three week window from 3 to 6 weeks of age. At this time anxiety levels are the lowest they will ever be so anything a pup is exposed to between 3 and 6 weeks will be associated with low anxiety, will be indelibly imprinted in the central nervous system and forever be remembered by a pup as something that is pleasant or at least neutral because, happening when it does, it is a non-fearful, non-anxiety evoking object or event.

So what should the pup be exposed to? At this time it is not necessary to be specific, the category is sufficient because all specific possibilities could not possibly be covered. One thing every dog will encounter is being physically handled, touched, pushed, prodded by just about everybody so it is essential to handle pups every day if possible. This means sometimes handle pups gently as was done in its first two weeks.

It also means sometimes holding a pup back, rolling him over, rubbing his belly, his feet, lift his overly dangling ears and look in, lift his lips to look at his teeth, and end each slightly rough handling session with gentle petting and with quiet talking all the way through this phase of pup's life. This is a good time to discourage jumping up simply by always bending down and pet a pup only when he is sitting, standing or lying down and never when he is trying to crawl up your leg or arm.

Pups will be exposed to sudden noises as adults so obviously it's imperative to expose them to noise as a pup. You needn't fire a cannon over their heads, but a good thunderstorm would be nice or even an imitation one. General noise would suffice. Drop a pan, rumble a piece of sheet metal, drive some nails, anything you can think of that makes a noise. At 4 to 5 weeks pups will show reflexive startle response to a sudden louder than normal sound.

This is not fear though they might raise their heads and might even shake a bit, they will return to whatever they were doing pre-noise within a few seconds. The important thing is do not run to their aid if they appear frightened. Running to the pups and comforting them at this time will teach them very nicely to be afraid of a loud noise. In wild dogs the bitch doesn't make any big deal about thunder by comforting pups, she simply ignores it--and who ever heard of a wolf or coyote or any wild dog being afraid of thunder or lightning?