Every breeder has a slightly different ‘bent’ on the Samoyed breed, and a variation in priorities in both their breeding program and their kennel practices.  Your puppy will reflect both.  I hope my own bent may meet your needs.  If not, then I hope you will look elsewhere for a Breeder whose priorities are a better match with your own.  Then you and your future pup will be happier.

When you choose a Luminous Samoyed, you will receive a pup whose bloodlines are currently unique in North America.  You will be welcoming a pup that is matched in temperament, needs and abilities to your own.  It will be very well socialized.  It will be healthy and come with a clear contract and a strong health guarantee.  It will be used to being loved.  It will be basically potty and leash trained and will know to come when it is called.  And it will arrive with a simple package of transition and support materials to enable you both to have the best chance of a smooth entry into your shared home and life.  The mechanisms to enable these processes are described further below.

Finally, you will gain us as a resource for the life of your Sam, to help in any way we can with its changing needs and the matters you encounter in the raising and care of it.  

OUR PRIORITIES IN BREEDING

In CHOOSING FOUNDATION STOCK, I put a heavy emphasis on health, beauty, and the construction and temperament that contribute to working ability.  Of the latter, I have selected for steadiness, biddability and intelligence.  (Biddablity is a term used in herding and refers to  cooperativeness, willingness or enthusiasm  to do what is asked, the ability to accept the leadership of and partner with a person, while maintaining the ability to think and act somewhat independently of them, and to take initiative when needed to get the job done.)  We qualify our breeding stock by health testing, conformation showing, temperament testing, herding instinct testing, and working with them in some capacity, usually at agility.

In OUR BREEDING PROGRAM we are engaged in finding and importing bloodlines in our breed from ‘overseas’, which we then intend to ‘prove up’.  It is our hope to be able to make a contribution to our breed in our area in the long run by doing this.  We intend to remain a ‘boutique’ kennel, small and specialized to this task.  Our first generation breedings will be outcrosses, with parents and their ancestors qualified for health and temperament as well as for conformation contributions.   To maintain or develop beauty these individuals will also be matched by physical type.  The second generation will be initiated by careful inbreeding in order to prove up the depth of health sought, and to flush out dominant and recessive traits.  In the third generation, genetic diversity will again be sought, using those individuals who have been proved up for breadth and depth in health.  To aid in this process, our companion placements are required to facilitate health testing on all the Samoyeds bred in our kennel, as it is necessary to this process to have the results for all dogs we breed, and not just those who are placed as show/breeding stock.  There are critics of every style of breeding, but we believe this is the most efficient to making a knowing contribution of assets to the breed while enabling breeders to protect against its potential deficits. 

TEMPERAMENT PRIORITIES at Luminous prohibit dog aggression and of course aggression towards humans is largely unknown in our breed.  While there is nothing wrong with simple dominance in a dog, I don’t currently have heavy dominance in my dogs.  Both males and females are gentle and kind.  They tend to sensitivity and are very forgiving, especially to youngsters of any species. They are moderately independent, have fairly strong prey instincts, and are generally very smart.  Most are very easy to handle, have a high pain threshold and have some sound sensitivity.   They tend to be of a steady and calm disposition, very adaptable, and require an athletic or social outlet to maintain this.  I have a mix of verbal and physical communicators.  All our puppies are temperament tested, and they come with specifics of their temperaments and basic needs and capacities in a written form to aid in raising them.   These same evaluations are combined with careful development records on our puppies.  When matched with the information on prospective homes (gained by a combination of questionnaires, interviews and references), they are also important to making puppy placements.  Our girls are excellent mothers:  tender, competent, tidy and patient.  I have a good working relationship with them, one of cooperation and trust as regards the care of their babies.  Our in-house male is also a playful, generous and gentle poppa, and loves his pups.  We have two Sams in our house who are not part of our breeding program, both of whom are trained as therapy dogs.  Eventually all puppies here become part of this extended pack, and stay long enough to go to their homes with good dog-to-dog manners.

All our dogs are home-raised.  We have no actual kennel runs.  They are crate trained.  They sleep on our bed, are allowed on most of the furniture, have pet doors for access, and go with us most places.  Once your pup has rolled out of the whelping box at about 3 weeks of age, it begins to become a part of our household. 

HOW A LUMINOUS SAMOYED IS RAISED

INITIAL FEEDING, HANDLING, POTTY TRAINING AND GROOMING

Prior to that time each pup has had me sleeping in the whelping box with them for at least the first week of life, and I stay with them in the puppy room at night most of the time they are with us.  Throughout their early weeks, each pup has been weighed, watched, handled and simply held close every day.  They are put in situations of mild and brief temperature/environmental stress periodically to boost their budding immune systems.  Although a puppy will not have its ears or eyes open until later, the things they smell and touch make a big impression upon them.

We wait upon the needs of the mother of the pups for determining when to begin weaning, then the pups are weaned by finger feeding a raw diet.  They are kept on a raw diet with supplements until it is time for them to go home.  If their new homes are not going to feed raw, or if they are going to feed one meal raw and others of kibble, then we take a week before they leave here to change their diet.  They are sent home with transition food and breed-specific feeding and supplementation suggestions.  We are giving them the best developmental start we know how.

By four weeks they have learned to use their legs well enough to motor around the puppy room and they begin to follow momma out the pet door to go potty.  It is common for me to have to clean up no more than two poops from the raising of an entire litter.  Both the moms and I are very clean and the pups adapt to that quickly. 

By this time the pups have already had their nails trimmed and a light combing weekly since birth.  By five weeks they become familiar with the grooming table and procedure, including introduction to the air dryer.  They are encouraged to consider handling by people as a normal and pleasurable thing, and grooming to be a type of handling that is somewhere between necessary/non-threatening and a great way to get attention/treats.  Most will have had only one or two baths by the time they go home with you, but they will have had a warm water bath with me in the tub with them, and have had lots of praise and reassurance and treats during the process.

THE HOME ENVIRONMENT

Once the pups are fully ambulatory, they have access to their own puppy yard.  In it are: various places under which to find cover from large birds and sudden noises; tubes or pipes into which they can crawl to sleep or get away from a pesky sibling; and small sized agility obstacles such as the pipe/tunnel, mini-A-frame, small weave poles, walk-up, tire, and a slightly raised box/table.  They play on and around these as they grow, and we take moments now and again to train them to use them the right way, too! The puppy yard itself has three sections, each of which is opened to make a larger area for them as they grow.  It is cleaned daily.  The yard has grass, digging dirt, flowering bushes and big fir and alder trees, with covered and open areas for them to choose from.  Second only to people, (and perhaps food!), Sams love the out of doors.

Also, once they are up and about, they begin to spend the parts of the day in which we are in the kitchen with us there, being introduced to some of our pack members, and becoming familiar with normal household noises.  We bang pots, loudly close cupboards and doors, let squeak the dishwasher door, drop tin cans on the floor and let all these plus the voices and music of the radio or become part of what is non-threatening to them.  Later at night they come into the family room with us for the short but blessed period of rest that occurs after dinner and before the night chores.

POTTY TRAINING

When they are younger we sit or lay down in their puppy pen with them, playing, cuddling, nibbling and sleeping while the sounds of TV and phone become normal, too.  Of course, as they are used to potty access outside via the pet door, they begin to ask (with whimpers, accelerated movement and circling of the pen or sitting anxiously at the ‘entrance’ to the pen) to go out to potty.  So, we spend a lot of time jumping up to take them out.  Once outside the front door, they are encouraged to ‘go potty’ and/or ‘go poop’ with these words in repeated and soothing tones until and while they do so.  They are praised lavishly as soon as they are done.  In this way the pups are largely potty trained by the time they go home. (That said, no puppy should be expected to make no mistakes.  Their physical system is not fully developed until 4 months of age, and even adults will regress on potty issues in stressful or new situations.)

GENERAL TRAINING:  NOISE, CHANGES AND MOTION

While we do not generally introduce them to strange dogs until they have had their second series of shots, they do get lots of visitors, of all ages and genders and as many races as we can round up at a given time! We hold an informal open house each Sunday afternoon when we have pups, and people drop by for a visit with the pups and adult dogs. They go on car rides, both crated and on our laps, to run errands (no, we do not leave them in the car alone!), to get tattooed, go to the vet or eye clinic, go to church events, visit friends and family.  In this way they become familiar with cars and motion, groups or crowds of people, clinical settings, and changes generally in environment.

COMING WHEN CALLED, VOICE DIRECTION AND LEASH TRAINING

Each of our puppies is given a stretch collar with a colored tassel at birth and they are called by the name of the color or an object that is that color.  Hence, each is an individual from the start.  Once they can focus and hear, we casually refer to them by their color name, and often they are aware that sound designates them in particular by 5 weeks of age.  They are called by ‘puppy-puppy-puppy-puppy’ for every meal, and at other times in the yard and house, so they become very used to coming when called.  We always reward coming to us with food, praise and love. 

Before your puppy goes home with you, they will be made familiar with a harness and leash and will have been walked about.  I rely on voice commands to direct a puppy, not on the leash and harness.  However, the leash and harness gets them used to this type of equipment, enables them to be firmly and safely attached to me (or their people on the way home) when out of the grounds, and does not create the choking and bucking reaction that a suddenly tightened neck collar does.  Also, most of our pups are more sensitive to the pressure felt in their armpits than to any applied around their necks.  Your puppy will be more or less proficient with a leash and harness depending on how old they are when they go home with you.  Likewise, we will show you how to use the leash and harness and voice commands and let you and your pup practice together before your pup goes home with you. Of course, you must begin leash training with a choke or release collar once they have the basic idea with a harness and leash.

TRAINING AND DISCIPLINE

We have patterned our methods of training and discipline entirely from a combination of observing how the adult Samoyeds handle pups and young pack members and from a sorting of advice and experience of others gained directly or through classes, videos and books over the years.  We recommend you do likewise, choosing a combination tailored to your pup’s nature and to you.

Samoyeds show inexhaustible patience and tolerance of pups.  When they discipline it is swift, decisive, in proportion to the offense, completely unemotional, and immediately forgiven and forgotten.  We rely heavily on the Monks of New Skete book “THE ART OF RAISING A PUPPY” and its methods and attitudes in guiding our own training and that of our puppy owners.

If you are not familiar with this book, please get one and read it!  They also have a video series of it.  It is available through many library systems, can be ordered through any bookstore and some pet stores and through the Canadian Kennel Club online.

Our PRIMARY TRAINING STRATEGY is prevention.  We try to make it difficult for a pup/dog to do anything of which we disapprove and easy for them to do the right thing.  For example, it is better to keep articles you do not want to be mistaken as toys or chews out of reach of your dog (puppy proofing), and to provide them with toys or chews in any area they are welcome. 

Our SECONDARY TRAINING STRATEGY is re-direction.  This is encouraging the behavior we want in place of the one we don’t.  For example, when puppy chews a shoe you left on the floor, you pick up a toy or bone, take the shoe away and replace it with the approved chew. (Verbal cues should accompany this process, like ‘uh-uh’ with shoe removal, then ‘gooood puppy’ with chew.) 

Our TERTIARY TRAINING STRATEGY is encouragement.  This is often referred to as positive reinforcement.  It includes immediate praise and/or treats and/or play as rewards associated with doing the right thing.  Most of us like this ourselves, and don’t find it hard to think of ways to use it with our dogs once we learn to think of it in the first place.

Our FINAL TRAINING STRATEGY is to employ what most refer to as discipline or correction.  Correction is not punishment.  It is strong communication.  It is immediate consequences to associate with undesirable actions.  It is only one of a package of training tools.  We use a progression of corrections which is as follows:  attention getting noise and a warning; voice correction and re-direction, followed by praise for compliance; muzzle clasp and release; scruff shake and release; alpha dog down.    Most corrections should be accompanied by a simple verbal cue.  We also employ time outs on our dogs and pointedly turn our backs on a demand barking dog or squirt with a spray from a water bottle or hose a misbehaving dog who is ignoring verbal direction at some distance.  Having said all that, we have not had to use any of these on a puppy except removing the object of chewing and replacing it with an approved object (re-direction) and praise for compliance, and the occasional muzzle clasp and release.  Dogs are not like people, they desire whole-heartedly to do the right thing.  They just have to rely on us to clearly communicate what that is, poor souls!

AIDS TO TRAINING

LEARNING TO THINK LIKE A DOG is a good idea for people wanting to live with one.  Otherwise you are expecting the theoretically less intelligent species to understand themselves plus the theoretically more intelligent species, rather than the other way around.  For example, a puppy will pee in the wrong place on the floor and you will catch them at it, say ‘No!’ sharply, pick them up and take them out to the right place, tell them soothingly to do their business there and praise them for a job well done.  Later that day the puppy will pee 6 feet away on the floor.  What you have to understand about a dog is they don’t think in concepts, but instead think in concrete and specific terms.  They didn’t do the bad thing and pee in the same spot, they moved over a little.  It takes more or less times for each individual dog to get to the point where they suddenly understand that you mean, don’t pee anywhere that is ‘floor’!  Nonetheless, dogs do generally eventually get this, while few humans ever understand what the problem is for their dog in the first place!  

GET EDUCATED.  There are many good books, videos, TV programs, and classes to aid you in thinking like a dog and learning to train yourself to communicate effectively with your dog.  Find and try several and put what you learn into the best testing environment, your life with your dog.  Ask for help when you are not sure or simply want a second opinion or other options.  There is a great diversity of options in methods and materials.

Next PREVENT TROUBLE.  Then you and your dog are happy with each other most of the time.  This is done by:

1. keeping temptations and your dog apart from each other, 
2. providing acceptable means for them to indulge their instincts and natures as canines, 
3. by either forgiving your dog’s misbehavior in a totally new situation or 
4. being prepared to handle them through it successfully by prior preparation and on -the - spot training.