Below are pictures of Molly’s 8 1/2 week old puppies. (These pictures were actually taken at 8 weeks 2 days of age.)
The short write-up that follows the pictures gives a summary of what we generally do with our puppies at this age.
However, because we only had one litter and the litter was small, we had the time to experiment with some new training ideas and to train earlier than we’ve ever trained before. You must see the video below to see the results!
Video of Litter Training at 8 Weeks and 2 Days Old
Molly’s 8 1/2 Week Old Puppies: The Boys
Mr. Red
Mr. Blue
Molly’s 8 1/2 Week Old Puppies: The Girls
Miss Yellow
Ms. Green
Miss Purple
Developmental and Training Information
By 8 1/2 weeks, those puppies staying with us until 10 weeks have training well underway.
Meal time manners has moved from puppies merely eating in their crates to puppies learning to give eye contact and wait for a release command before eating. At this age, we are working heavily on training them to like and willingly giving eye contact. This is a very important foundation for our training. We spend a whole lot of time on the basics so that the more advanced work comes easier, quicker, and more solid.
The first behavior we’ve taught by 8 1/2 weeks is to sit for attention. We start this work by requiring a little more from them every day. At 7 1/2 weeks, we pet only the puppies that are keeping all four feet on the ground. Gradually, we begin to choose to give attention to those puppies who are calmest and eventually to those with bottoms on the ground. We do not teach a sit command at this age. However, puppies learn very quickly that we expect a sit for everything. Our philosophy of dog training is to postpone naming behaviors until after behaviors are solid. For the sit, this is usually at about 9 to 9 1/2 weeks.
By 8 1/2 weeks, we’ve been working on the down for almost a week and have also started puppies on leash work.
You can read about how we raise our younger puppies on our Raising Puppies page .
We’ll continue keeping you posted on how Molly’s 8 1/2 week old puppies are growing on a weekly basis. See our Available Puppies page to get to pages of Molly’s puppies at other ages.