Hunting Wirehaired Pointing Griffon Puppies

My time with these little ones is coming to a close soon, we go to the veterinarian for final checks, shots and microchips on Thursday, then they start to go home on their eight week birthday on Monday. I’m only doing spring litters at this point, so my next litter won’t be until 2025. Feel free to reach out to bluestemkennels@gmail.com if you are thinking about getting on a list for that time. There are several people who already have deposits down, but things always change with us since the deposits are fully refundable. We pride ourselves in being reputable breeders of Wirehaired Pointing Griffons; you can see the health clearances, hunt titles and pedigrees of our dogs on the “About Our Dogs” page.

They’ve all done really well with cap gun fire exposure, I call them to meals by banging on a metal bucket with a rod, so loud noises have a positive meaning for them. As long as their new owners focus on working with bird contact excitement while exposing them to things such as starter pistols and eventually shotgun fire, they won’t have problems with gunfire conditioning. I still like Richard Wolters Gun Dog as an easy place to start with puppies in book form. Of course, once your puppy is fully vaccinated you should take him or her to their first NAVHDA training day for advice too! Griffons don’t do very well with being sent away for training since they are so attached to their people, so if you decide to work with a professional, have them work with both you and the dog together.

Their favorite toys are rope bones and hard rubber balls. They eat Diamond Puppy food twice per day, about 3/4 cup per pup each feeding. They are all used to wearing collars and have been exposed to walking on a leash briefly (if owners want to pick out and bring their own collars, they are wearing the small 8-12 inch size). They naturally tug and resist the leash at first, as you can see here in this photo:

They’ll get their first crate exposure later on this week as well. I recommend puppy families put the crate next to their bed and start nighttime crate training right away. I will take them out at night when they wake up for the first week or so and as needed to avoid accidents. After a week or two they usually sleep through the night as long as they are getting plenty of exercise during the day.

I’ve been walking them twice per day around the farm, for about an hour of exercise per day. It makes it so that they are calm in the kennel. I do not work on them with housebreaking, but if you take them out once an hour or so, then every time they wake up from a nap, they will naturally learn to hold it until they go out. Just give them a firm “no” when you catch them starting to piddle and don’t give them too much room to roam where you can’t see them. I use lots of baby gates to keep a pup in the room with me when I am housebreaking. If you don’t have time to watch them, they need to be crated.

Okay, so here are the photos from the live and dead bird exposure. The set up I use is to take them out of the kennel, walk them to the live chukar in a cage on a leash, after they check out the live bird I pick them up and praise them on the way to the ex-pen where the dead quail on a string sits. I keep the interactions fun, low pressure and positive. I don’t make them pick up the dead quail, I let them just sniff it or pull feathers off if they want to. So these are the last photos of the litter before they go home to their families!

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