‘Super puppies’ keep calm and carry on in the most stressful situations
English setter puppy Crosby works on basic retrieving with a pigeon. (John Hafner/)This story originally featured on Outdoor Life.Tom Loy of Tallgrass Gordon Setters sits by the whelping box, where a litter of three-day-old setter puppies navigate their tiny universe from behind closed eyes. One by one, Loy lifts the puppies from the box and runs them through a series of brief exercises. When he is finished, the puppies go back into the box and crawl close to their mother.Those lessons continue for the next 13 days, and while the exercises have nothing to do with bird hunting—at least, not directly—they effectively teach Loy’s setter puppies how to manage stress. Years later, this early training results in dogs that are less timid, more social, and better equipped to handle the stressful situations that any working dog encounters in the field.The program Loy uses was pioneered by the US military as...