HISTORY AND PERSPECTIVE

            As many of you know, there are three families in Angel’s Gift Cotons.  The Grandmother, Cecilia; the daughter, Yvette; and the Granddaughter, Monique. All of us share a unique perception of the best way to raise a puppy.  We believe that to truly maximize each individual puppy’s potential the breeder of a litter, must knowledgably handle each puppy from day one for a minimum of twice a day for 5-10 minutes.  This early handling is absolutely crucial if you want a dog that love and responds to people with intelligence, ingenuity, courage, and charm.  In other words if you want a dog that truly is a member of the family, they must be raised as a member of the family.  You can “trick” a dog into thinking his family is, in fact, human, instead of, canine. 

            Cecilia, the grandmother, was taught by her mother, Marie that, newborn puppies need to be “loved with gentle hands”  The was in the early nineteen hundreds and Great Grandpa was known for having “ the best farm dogs around’  Typically for the time, Great grandma got most of the work, and Great Grandpa got most of the credit. Never the less, Great Grandma, with innate wisdom and no “science” was imprinting puppies from the day of their birth.   Thankfully, she was also imprinting Cecilia on how to treat a littler of puppies to make them good dogs.

            So the question always comes around to “great, but does all this really work?”

The back of this booklet has the sources which gives the empirical evidence to back this up; from animal behaviorialists;Scott and Fuller,Buttaglia, kellog and Lorenz dealing with early socialization, neurological and cardio-vascular development. Perhaps though the best validation of our methods came from another breeder who one afternoon learned in an instant.

             I had sold one of our puppies to another experienced breeder who had asked me to show her “how we did it?”  (Obviously, the puppy himself  had gone a long way in proving to her that the method worked—unknown to me however she had her doubts whether she just “got lucky” with her particular pup or could I “do it every time” with every pup I raised)   At any rate I had promised to teach her when I got my next litter

When the pups were 12 days old and the navels were healed, but before the eyes were opened.   On the appointed day she came over and first simply watched me go through

The exercises on a pup.  The next step in the teaching process was to give her a puppy to work on while I worked on another puppy.  She was to “mirror” everything I did to my puppy to her puppy.  As we went thru the 9 different exercises,  she was impressed with the fact that both puppies laid totally relaxed in our hands.  Finally we got to the last exercise where in I blow my breath gently in the puppy’s face and murmer softly to them—her puppy paniced,flailing about and yelping . The puppy  would not stop until I took him in my hands and talked to him.  Actually I thought it was funny. The breeder was however absolutely astonished that the puppy knew at that early age the difference between us. She left a believer and now she also “gets lucky every time with every pup”