Our Method | Natural Pack Kennel

The Lives of our Adults

We have 4 local rescue dogs that have joined our pack of Bell Griffins and Red Poodles, and they all get along very well. Our dogs are our simultaneously like our children and also our best friends. The adults spend most of their time in the house with us, and part of their time in their own private dog park - about an acre of fenced in pasture with mangosteen trees and giant rock formations, to play and run full speed. They have supervised play time multiple times per day. If we have females in season, we carefully rotate our pack out to play and back inside, while keeping our males separated.

Although we do kennel training, our dogs are not kept in kennels unless we leave the farm for a long time, in which case certain trouble makers or instigators are kennelled while we're away.

Importantly, we do not rehome our retired breeders. Many breeders will rehome a female after she is retired from breeding, to make room for a new younger female. We find this cruel, as that dog has put in her time with the pack and the family, and deserves to be taken care of and stay with us. If we keep a puppy from a litter, or bring in another dog for any reason, our pack simply gets bigger.

We feed them food we make ourselves, with brown rice, ground meat and various greens and herbs that grow in our garden. Both cats abnd dogs here are fed this food daily, and occasionally supplemented with dry dog food (IQ brand). We give them Nexguard Spectra for flea/tick/heartworm control, and Pyrantel and Fenbendazole for deworming.

The Lives of our Puppies

We raise the puppies in the house with us to make sure they are perfect and healthy, and the mama is healthy as well. They have their own dedicated bedroom with access to the front yard for the moms.
Between 3 weeks and a month, we bring them outside multiple times per day for supervised explore time, to begin learning about outdoors and where to go poo.
They are raised around their parents, aunts and uncles in a natural pack environment, and are cleaned, groomed and cuddled by the entire group. It's quite amazing watching them raise each other as a family.
They are fed communally until ready to be re-homed, as this helps prevent them from developing food aggression. We closely monitor them to make sure they are developing equally.
At about 3 weeks, we give them our homemade dog food twice daily, in addition to the milk they get from mama.
As the weeks progress, they graduate to only our homemade food, as the mothers wean them as they see fit. Though they can be fully weaned around 6 weeks, they still try to suckle if they can, right up until the time they are ready to leave the farm. We let the mother suckle them if she wants to, even at up to 8 weeks. The mother and relatives discipline them, supervised by us, so they learn boundaries and important social cues.
They are dewormed with Pyrantel every two weeks starting around 2 or 3 weeks.
We do not dock tails. We are firmly against altering any part of the puppies' natural perfection.
Importantly, we cuddle and handle them several times per day, including bathing them at the earliest age possible. We take them all outside to explore daily. They are exposed not only to us and their pack, but to our birds and cats. They learn to play with the cats at a very young age, and we teach them not to chase chickens while outside. They are extremely well socialized by the time they are ready to leave.
We keep our puppies until 10 weeks of age. After closely observing them, we can see that the longer they have with their pack and their mothers, the healthier and better off they are. We have had better results with their overall health and well being, by keeping them longer than most breeders. We have made exceptions, but this is what we prefer.
We are not here to crank out puppies, we are here to carefully raise and provide an important companion for people and families, that will enrich the lives of both the family and the dog.