A Cavapoo puppy’s socialization period starts when they are about three weeks old and ends around twelve (to fourteen) weeks of age. It’s not that you can’t “socialize” them after that period, it’s just that they are being desensitized to new things at that point. During the socialization period your puppy is a little sponge and learns and absorbs things much quicker. Good experiences will stick with them for life, as will a bad experience with something.

It’s important to introduce your puppy to lots of sights, sounds, smells, textures, people, friendly animals and such during this socialization period.

The last couple of playtimes we have used some different surfaces for the puppies to investigate and play on (should they choose to). We’ll continue to mix these in with other toys during play sessions. Some of the pups are still not super adventurous and we want them to have the opportunity to try them out when they are a bit more confident.

I have a couple of bath mats with different textures. One has little suction cups and the other is more like a fake grass texture. There’s the fuzzy car blanket, the nearby living room rug, the vinyl (fake wood) floor, the plastic boot tray and the slicker material of the baby play gym. There’s a bumpy plastic turtle “stepping stone” and a crinkly sounding cat tunnel. The tunnel does not stay up and open very well, so I’m using more as something the puppies can climb on. There’s also the new feel of the pine pellets in the litter box. And that last funky surface we’ve introduced is the water mat. It’s a baby play mat that you fill with water. It has little toys that float around inside and gives the puppies a really different surface to climb on. Snowflake thought it was her own waterbed to chill on!

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