The Puppy Play Room and Play Yard:
It’s All About Enrichment

The Puppy Play Room

Our puppy room is purpose-built to promote our dogs’ well-being and confidence by providing them with a large space to play and roam. We believe that well-balanced puppies are socially-stable puppies who are able to handle the world around them with ease. Our puppy room is designed from corner-to-corner with deliberate choices to keep our dogs happy, safe, and healthy.

When a puppy is busy and all over the place, they're discovering their world. Our puppy room is designed to promote our dogs’ well-being and confidence by providing them with a large, safe space to play and roam.

Please take a look at our puppy room tour, where you will see our toy boxes, our TV that is used for desensitization and to build conditioned emotional responses to sounds that typically scare dogs.

Additionally, our puppy room allows us to spend more time on the floor with the pups. During this period in their lives, the puppy/human bond that takes place is absolutely amazing!

Tactile, Safe Floors

All puppies are born with perfect hip joints! It takes months for all the bones, including their joints, to fully calcify. The first 8 weeks of a puppy’s life are so important to joint development! Only 20-25% of hip issues are genetic... the other 75% is environmental factors. Therefore, breeders have a very important job in the first 8 weeks of life to make sure those bones have a great head start during ossification! This includes having appropriate flooring to develop strong and correct bone structure.

At Enchanted Retrievers, we ensure that our puppies have nothing but the best! through the flooring used in our whelping box and what is used in our puppy room. Good non-slip flooring is a must! So do not disregard what breeders raise their puppies on… it is so important!

From day one, having appropriate flooring in the whelping box that allows neonates to get proper traction during nursing, to the type of flooring used during critical socialization (2-8 weeks) in our puppy playroom, flooring is one of the most important things in our program. The flooring in this room is rubber, and provides both traction and cushioning for the puppies’ joints. However, make no mistake… not all rubber flooring is the same. Our flooring is properly textured and cushioned to promote proper muscle tone and to ensure that our dogs’ joints are not put in jeopardy. We do nothing but the best for our Enchanted babies!

The Potty Training Puppy Pad

We start potty training at 3 weeks old. The way we start is very natural for them to come out of their bedding. By the time they can toddle, we put grass in their whelping box. Then, just a few days after, we can put them in the playroom with the grass and they’ll get to grass at least 40% of the time. By the time our puppies go home, they are making the grass at least 90% of the time.

Even if they are not fully potty trained, they have the idea of what they are supposed to do - and this will make life in their new homes so much easier. Every time I do this, I always think they will not be so good with their potty training, but they just naturally do this! All we are doing is offering them a choice that reflects how they would potty in nature. It’s a natural process, we are just encouraging them to make good choices.

The Puppy Play Yard

Our Play Yard is outfitted with an artificial turf. This means that we don’t have to use any chemicals on the grass, which can be incredibly dangerous to dogs, and can cause cancer, seizures, and other ailments. In fact, we use no chemicals except for a chlorine-based wash, which kills all of the viruses and keeps our dogs healthier. We also vacuum and clean the yard daily to minimize the risk of viruses (and puppies eating things they shouldn’t!).

Our yard features many enrichment play items that help to promote self-regulated exercise. We have a sandbox that allows the puppies to dig in and find items that we’ve hidden inside (such as chew toys). This is very stimulating for their brain, and helps to promote neurological development when they’re puppies! This action is so enriching for them, and it also tires them out! We also have tunnels and a ball pit, which are all for their development. Going through tunnels, climbing through appropriate items, and jumping into a ball pit helps to build the puppy’s confidence, self esteem, and investigation skills. This helps puppies to be less afraid as they grow up. The more we give them to play with, the better they’re going to be in life!

I believe in a clean, safe environment for them to explore their world. That is our primary goal with our Play Yard!

For more information about us, check out our Proven Puppy Program, Calls to Dinner, and our Early Training Program!