Puppy Brain, Early Socialization, and What to Ask a Breeder with Kerry Nichols

Zazie chats with Kerry Nichols, bestselling author of Puppy Brain: How Our Dogs Learn, Think, and Love.

We talk about:

• How Kerry got into breeding dogs
• Why we both love Golden Retrievers
• How the book, Puppy Brain, came about
• What puppies are like when they are born
• Examples of the socialization that Kerry does with puppies
• Her favourite part of the first 8 weeks of a puppy’s life
• Advice on finding a responsible breeder (for any breed)
• And Kerry reads from Puppy Brain for us!

Puppy Brain: How Our Dogs Learn, Think, and Love is out now in hardback. The paperback will be out on April 29th and can be pre-ordered now from all good bookstores.

The books we recommend in this episode are:

Also mentioned in this episode:

OFA – The Canine Health Information Center is at https://ofa.org/.

Kerry Nichols is a former attorney turned canine
educator and advocate whose journey into the world of dogs began nearly
fifteen years ago. With the founding of Nicholberry Goldens, she devoted
herself to raising the healthiest Golden Retrievers possible. This
evolved into a mission to instill emotional resilience and agency in her
own puppies, a pursuit she now shares with an audience of hundreds of
thousands of followers across social media. Her methods continue to
garner support from leading veterinarians, trainers, and psychologists,
and notable owners of her Goldens include executives from Facebook,
Microsoft, and Tinder. 

Kerry’s website: https://www.kerrynichols.com/home 

Highlights of the conversation with Kerry Nichols

Z: Let’s start at the beginning then. So you were an attorney, and then somehow you got into breeding Golden Retrievers. How did this come about? 

K: This is very natural. Doesn’t everybody do that? I mean, you know, one is probably not terribly connected to the other.

I love research. I love school. I spent about a day out of law school in the real world of law and realized this is not going to be for me. I mean, it was pretty quick and some of that is just, you know, fit. I probably chose the wrong area for me, but I could just tell that law was not going to be my jam.

And so I was looking for an off ramp almost from the outset. And I think, like, life is funny. Sometimes you have to let a door completely close before the next one opens.

And it just coincided that as I began to wean away from the practice of law, our Golden, Daisy, got diagnosed with cancer. And we had bought a little piece of acreage in Clovis, the central valley of California. My kids were just about to start preschool. My time was beginning to get a little freed up a little bit. And all of these things kind of came together at the right time.

And as I began to really research, looking for our next Golden, it evolved into the idea of what if I were to raise Goldens? And we had thought about that years ago, but it’s one of those things you think about and then you forget you had thought about until then. It bubbles back up and you’re like, oh.

And then I just became obsessed, researching. I mean, I went a little bit nutty with it, just researching, you know, rearing Golden Retrievers, understanding the breed, everything that it would entail.

Z: Well, we like to hear that on this podcast because we love people who like to do their research. And what you do is very science based and evidence based as well, which is wonderful.

Now I absolutely love Golden Retrievers. I think they’re wonderful family dogs. But what do you especially love about goldens?

K: I mean, I think part of it is just that happy face. They have such a joyous countenance. One of my son’s friends was over here the other day and he looked over at, you know, Fritz, our little puppy, and Fritz was just, ha, ha ha, you know, sitting there looking at him and in that smile, that Golden Retriever face, it’s just so engaging. 

So I think, I love that, I love that they are on the whole like a, you know, as the breed is a friendly breed and they really are, they’re not a one person dog. Everyone likes to argue that they’re their dog, but really they’re everybody’s dog. Like if you are a family with a golden retriever, everybody’s their favorite person and I love that about them.

And then, you know, of course, what I didn’t anticipate when I started was how passionate I would get about therapy work. And Goldens are just fantastic. That’s just an amazing breed to do therapy work with.

Z: That’s wonderful. And so one of the things that you do is you share lots of information on your social media about your puppies or about puppies in general and the science of how to raise a puppy and what people need to know about puppies.

And I think that’s been going for quite a while ahead of the book. And then somehow this wonderful book came about. And I love the book. I love how evidence based it is, but also it’s just so enjoyable to read. It gives us insight into some, some aspects of puppies that most of us never get to see because most of us never really see those early days and weeks or if you visit a breeder, you’re only there for a short time, so you don’t get to see very much of that.

So that’s really fascinating. And there is such a big need for, I think, people to have good information about puppies. So how did the book come about? How did you turn all of this into a book? When did you decide that this should become a book?

K: Oh, I have such an unusual story here because I think, you know, the traditional thing is people think I want to write a book and then they seek out a publisher and there’s a whole path.

I mean, you’ve done this, you know this. So you, you especially won’t believe my story when I tell you what happened. I, you know, I had been as every litter from the very first one. I kept a private blog for all of our families and I increasingly posted on that. So I think the first litters there were probably like three times a week.

I was putting something on the blog for them to read or to watch. And I think by the time I got to, before I started writing Puppy Brain, I was having to control myself because they had something every day for sure, they had to read and watch. And I sometimes twice a day. And then as the puppies were close to going home, I’m like, oh, okay.

Just in case you weren’t real clear, like, here’s some more videos on like resource guarding. And, you know, I just really wanted to prepare our families so that what I was doing here, they were able to just take the baton and run with their puppies and continue it seamlessly.

And I was of course, posting all of that, a lot of that on Instagram. I mean, I just. I. I’m not a person who goes on Instagram for cute things.

I love learning and I just felt like I have cute puppies, but maybe if I have cute puppies and you look at that, maybe I can get you to learn something about dogs at the same time and we can begin to change how we treat dogs. So that was all happening and people began to say, you know, if you thought about writing a book, you should write a book. I started to hear that a lot because my Instagram really took off and really grew.

And so then I thought, oh, you know what I’ll do? I was writing these 2,200 character Instagram captions, you know, and I was like packing in as much as I could into each day’s caption.

And I thought, I’ll just take these captions and I’ll print them and turn them into a book and I’ll self publish it. So that I began to kind of work on that process.

And I didn’t know that my agent at that time had been ghost following me. She. She didn’t officially follow me, but she checked my Instagram because she didn’t want other agents to see that she was following me. And so she was clever about it.

And so she was following and she saw me say that, and she DMed me and said, are you really serious about writing a book and do you have an agent?

And so I thought maybe it was like a bot. I thought, oh, it’s some sort of troll. It’s a stalker, it’s not real. I didn’t really like. And then I looked her up and I asked an author friend, and, you know, she was legitimate. So we spoke. And she’s also a repurposed lawyer who loves books. And I loved her from our first conversation. I felt safe with her. I felt like I could trust her.

I didn’t really do a whole lot of vetting or due diligence. I signed her as my agent. I just had no idea. And she said, well, okay, we’re going to create this proposal, and I still have no clue what’s happening. And we sent the proposal out and my book went to auction and. And the rest is history. I loved Celadon and chose them as my publisher.

Z: Awesome. I think that’s wonderful. And I understand that you’ll be like, is this a bot? Is this person for real? Because you actually have to be really careful. I think in publishing there are a lot of people waiting to like vanity publishers and so on, waiting to, you know, take authors, basically. But I think that’s absolutely wonderful that she got in touch. I especially love that she was secretly following you so that no other agents would get the idea.

K: She’s so cute. I love her so much. She’s great.

Z: And so the rest is history because now it’s a national bestseller and it’s absolutely wonderful book. And as I said, one of my favorite parts is actually about the development of puppies.

So I was wondering if we could talk first of all about what puppies are like when they’re born. Because obviously you’re there through this whole process and then the first eight weeks until they go home. So let’s start with what the puppies are like when they’re born.

K: It is a magical experience. It is very stressful. Every time is never gotten easier from the first litter because when they, you know, my repro vet, I even gave him credit in the book for saying this. Dr. Christensen, he says, you know, when birth is going as it should, they’re like sausage shaped torpedoes. They should just come out, you know, one after the other and it should be.

And it’s not painful for dogs the way it is for humans because they’re literally, you know, in their sack and they’re just shooting out and it’s, they’re a litter bearing species.

So when they first come out, we do help. I, you know how I tear the sac, I clear the airways, Mom’s tearing the umbilical cord. And my whole, you know, I’m, there’s a lot I’m thinking about when they come out is do I see that they look like they’re breathing or that they’re moving? Do I see movement in the puppy?

I mean, that’s kind of like the first thing I’m looking for is are you alive? That’s the first thing I’m looking for. And then when we see that movement, we know that, okay, it’s all systems go. You know, we’re doing all the things to get them cleaned off and clean their umbilical cord and get them onto the milk bar as fast as possible. And it is stunning.

Sometimes a puppy, we’ve had puppies born that the placenta hasn’t even been delivered yet. Puppy’s out, there’s the umbilical cord. The placenta is still in, mom. And they start to nurse. I mean, it’s really extraordinary to watch the way that they are designed. And the one Thing they can do, they can’t see, they can’t hear, they can’t regulate their own body temperature, but they can find mom and they can nurse. It’s pretty amazing.

Z: So they’re like little heat seeking potatoes looking for their mama’s milk.

K: They know her smell, you know, that’s in their brain already. And they find her and they begin nursing. It’s rather extraordinary.

Z: That’s amazing. And so one thing that I think people know a lot more about now is that when they bring a puppy home, they know that they need to socialize the puppy. And I think, of course, one of the things that you talk about so brilliantly in your book is the fact that actually so much socialization has to happen ahead of that.

So in your home, you’re doing a lot of socialization. And I wondered if you could give me an example of that.

K: Oh boy. There’s a lot. I think, you know, our outdoor area serves a lot of purposes. So it’s a large area on synthetic lawn. And then it’s. We put up puppy gates around that and then we put a variety of things in that area that have different heights for them, socialization, it’s not just to people. I think that maybe people think that’s all that it is. And it’s not. It’s actually just to the world, it’s just getting that puppy brain opened up to.

There’s going to be unexpected textures, there’s going to be unexpected heights. I might tumble off of that. Um, something might fly overhead. The thing overhead might sound like a bird, it might sound like an airplane, it may sound like a helicopter. I’m going to hear gardeners, right? Like that. We’re creating an environment for them to just be a puppy. They’re just living their life out there, you know, playing, wrestling, doing all the things.

And in the midst of all of that, they are experiencing so much of the world. The smells that are floating in, you know, like the cars that are going past on the street. There’s just a lot happening in that brain that’s helping that brain grow in a way where they’re open to the world and not afraid of the world. It isn’t an assault of newness.

When they leave our home, they have already had a brain full of newness and they’re used to new. So the new might look different or smell different or feel different, but the concept of new is not new, if that makes sense.

Z: I like that way of putting it. And so you do a lot to socialize them to people and to habituate them to everything in the world that they basically need to know about. But one of the other things you talk about is how you make some of that kind of gradually develop. So how you start with something easy and then you gradually make it a little bit more and a little bit more.

And I wondered if you could just tell us a little bit more about the socialization that you do and habituation to things and just explain that.

K: I think that like layering is probably one of the biggest things I’ve come up, like developed in the process of raising puppies is I realized, you know, if you take a seven week old puppy and you just put them under your arm and you march into the bathroom and you flick the light switch on and the fan comes on and then you turn on the water and I mean, this is a lot for a puppy to take in and that is scary. And you can feel them get stiff.

So we layer the process of a bath starting at three weeks of age. So at three weeks of age, they’ll just get. I’ll just do a back end bath, I’ll just get their back end wet with warm water. I might just dunk them real gently into like a vessel of warm water, just their back legs, and then dry them and then cuddle them. So everything’s safe, we’re feeling good, everything’s safe, and it’s real quick.

And the whole process, from three to eight weeks of age, we are adding into the, we’re adding layers to getting to the point where we’re marching into the bathroom and getting a bath. So that when we’re doing something like, you know, you think about what’s traditionally scary to dogs.

Many dogs hate a bath, many dogs hate a car. So if you know that about dogs, many dogs are terrified of fireworks, then we can take these things and we can say, okay, a bath has a hundred components to it, so let’s desensitize every single component methodically, carefully, slowly.

So that today we’re just turning the water on and we’re giving treats while we do that. Tomorrow we’re gonna. Or today we’re turning the light switch on with the fan and then tomorrow we turn the water on, but we’re still just standing here eating treats.

We’re not anywhere near it. And that layering helps them have a managed response to something that’s traditionally scary. So that when you put all the pieces together, it’s all familiar and it can still be scary, but it’s not to that point of terror.

And we’re helping them stay safe. We’ve established a secure attachment to us as the humans. We’re giving treats, which makes it good, and all of that helps them not be afraid of something they would otherwise be afraid of.

Z: And I love the way that you describe all of those things. So the treats, the attachment, you know, breaking everything down, layering. And I think it’s so important to do that because one of the things I try always to tell people about puppies when they bring a puppy home is that the last thing you want to do with the puppy is to terrify them, because you know that’s going to be an awful experience, and that’s potentially then going to make them frightened or something for the rest of their lives if you’re unlucky. 

And so I explain to people the need to break things down. And I think you just described it so, so beautifully, the way that you can break everything down into so many pieces.

And when you just think of it as, like, you say, we think of it as a bath, but that’s a really big thing, you know? So I love the way that you break all of these details down, even to, like, turning the light switch, because there’s a noise associated with that.

K: And then the light changes. 

Z: And that’s something we don’t pay attention to. But of course, puppies are so new. Everything is so new to them.

K: Yes. And it might flicker. You know, they’re afraid of things. We just have to somehow get ourselves into their perspective and see the world. You know, a ceiling fan could look very scary to a puppy if they’ve never seen it. And we just don’t think about those things.

Z: Yeah, we don’t at all. So I’m going to ask you what I think is kind of an impossible question, because I want to ask you. Like, I find this absolutely fascinating, and I love hearing about all these different stages of the puppy’s development while they’re with you. And I was wondering if there is a part that, for you, is your favorite part? 

Because it just all seems so adorable. Apart from maybe the beginning, which seems also quite stressful when they’re born as well. But the rest of it just seems adorable. So is there a favorite part for you?

K: Oh, gosh. I think if I were asked this every day for the next year, I’d probably have a different answer every day because there are so many favorite parts. It’s very satisfying to see, like, doing barrier challenges. I have a video that’s pinned on my Instagram and It’s like seven minutes long. And I, I videoed this particular puppy every day from the first day I put her in a crate to find her food.

We played this game, find it to the last day in day one, you can see this stiff, scared puppy that doesn’t want to come out of the crate. Can’t even work up the confidence to put her little paw over the edge of the crate. And then at seven weeks of age, she is ripping around the living room.

The confidence is off. You know, it’s through the roof seeing that light bulb moment happen where I think, oh, today’s the day. Today’s the day where something switched for you.

And now you feel confident. And now tomorrow it will be where you took a baby step today. Tomorrow you’re gonna take 10 steps. And I know that’s coming. And then I can hardly wait for the next morning when I can see, like now she’s ripping around and it’s so much fun.

Like, that light bulb moment is really satisfying to see.

Z: That sounds so exciting. And so you’ve actually integrated a lot of science into the book. You know, you know the science of what you’re doing. You’ve done all the research, as you said earlier, and actually you also clearly have been keeping lots of notes on previous litters.

So when it came to actually writing the book, how did you decide on the structure of the book and how to fit different aspects of like puppy development into the book? What was your process for doing that?

K: Originally, when I met with my editor at Celadon, they had asked if I could write a more comprehensive book. Because what we put in our, our proposal was actually going to be a little less like, I think I can’t remember even what the time frame was, but it wasn’t through like a dog’s life the way it was.

And they asked if I could write it bigger. And I said, sure. You know, I have this blog I can pull from. So originally I just used the blog kind of as my structure. Like the first eight weeks.

And then I, like, there’s this, there’s this concept in writing, you know, this of writing fat of just. I just wrote. I data dumped everything I could think about dogs into my scrivener document.

And then I began to pare back. But that last chapter on saying Goodbye, you know, the Rainbow Bridge felt non negotiable. And a lot of people that looked at the manuscript felt like that was out of place on a Book about raising a resilient dog.

I felt really, really strongly that chapter needed to be in there because I have heard from so many people who feel very lost emotionally when they have to say goodbye. So it was kind of like, I would say, gut instinct to some degree.

The spay and neuter chapter, also, there’s so much science coming out that I felt like I would be remiss not to include that more than anything. As, like, I know that that’s going to get dated. I know that chapter will get dated, but at least it begins the conversation that people don’t just take the old approach of spay and neuter at 6 months of age, at least, like, I’m introducing the conversation.

And then I didn’t feel like I could write a book without including therapy dogs because it’s become such a huge part of what we do. So I guess, like, I kind of backed my way into what ultimately became the contents of the book.

And then my editor did a brilliant job of reorganizing the structure. I have to give her a lot of credit. And my son, he kind of gave me the four parts. And so he, you know, he was like, I think you should break it up. And so I. I have a great team.

That’s my answer, I guess, is I had good people on my team that helped structure it in a way that made sense.

Z: I think every great writer has a great team behind them as well. You know, I mean, we rely so much on our editors as well and everybody, you know, around us when we’re writing. But I absolutely agree that you were right to include that last chapter. I think that’s such a difficult time for people, and so many people are so lost when they come to the end. And also, it’s just fitting that you start, you know, you have the story of how puppies get bored, and then you also have the story of how they. They leave us at the end. And I think, you know, it’s a difficult topic, but it is an important one. 

So another thing I want to ask you is, what’s your advice to someone who’s looking for a responsible breeder? Because so many people, it seems, don’t actually do their research. And if they don’t do their research, then they’re at risk of getting a puppy from a puppy mill. And then we know that they are more likely to have behavior issues and maybe health issues as well, because they’ve come from a very impoverished environment. It’s not at all well, it’s cruel, basically. 

So what is your advice for someone? Obviously not everyone can come to you, right? So if someone’s looking for a breeder, what should they be looking for?

K: Oh man, that’s such an important question. I think you know the low bar. And it’s so funny because it’s so hard to find people who meet the low bar. The low bar is for Golden Retrievers, the health clearances, the big ones, I mean, there’s more than this. But the big ones that are non negotiables are a yearly eye exam, hip and elbow clearances and a cardiac clearance with a board certified cardiologist, not a regular vet.

That’s it. You would think this is not hard. So every breed has their clearances that they should have. Those are listed on the OFA website, the Orthopedic foundation for Animals. I always forget if It’s America or OFA.org website. They do a great job. You can go on there, you can search a breed and then you can see what clearances should be present for that breed.

And that’s just like entry level, low bar. Every breeder who is intentionally pairing dogs should have those clearances on both parents. Both parents, no excuses.

And my position is if you’re going to buy from somebody who doesn’t have those clearances, please go rescue a Golden Retriever, Please go rescue a dog. Because it’s actually a backdoor support to backyard breeding by buying from somebody who doesn’t have the clearances. That’s what we’re doing.

So that’s, you know, that’s just the low bar. And then I would say look at their socials because I know everybody doesn’t like social media and people don’t need to do what I do with my Instagram. But gosh, it’s just not that hard to take a video of the situ, you know, of how you’re raising your puppies. It’s just not that hard. And that should be available.

I just feel like that should be available on a website or on a social media site somehow so that if you can’t physically look at those, a puppy, you know, a litter being raised by a breeder in advance of putting down a deposit, then at least you should be able to see video that shows that they’re doing some rearing protocols.

So a question that’s a great question to ask is can you tell me what you’re doing on a week by week basis to meet the changing needs of puppies because there are things we can do every single week of development.

And that’s an intentionality that I think is really important that’s present in breeders. So those are two, like, pretty big things that are, that’ll help people weed through breeders.

Z: Yeah. And I think most people unfortunately miss, miss them. I mean, one of the things I always say to people is a warning sign is if the person is willing to bring the puppy to meet you in a parking lot and give you the puppy at that point, because then you know nothing about where the puppy has come from and you don’t know what circumstances if they were raised actually even in a home, you know, to start with, or in someone’s shed down the garden or whatever, or in basically like a factory setup.

And that’s a real warning sign as well. But yeah, I completely agree with those tips that you mentioned.

K:  And I should say I do meet people in a parking lot, but you know, they always come to my, I mean, not always, but of course they’re wel. We do puppy visits and stuff. And I just like on our go home day because people have seen it all over my Instagram, I like to have puppies travel together before they go into the car of their forever families. 

So anyhow, just so that people like know that’s why that’s on my Instagram, is people are coming to my home first. And obviously I have a very transparent Instagram.

Z: Yes. And they can see exactly what you’re, you’re doing to raise the puppies. And we, we’ve only touched on a few tiny, tiny amount of that here. You do so much for them. Whereas, like I was thinking, especially because there is even a particular parking lot not too far from me that is a common place because a lot of puppies from puppy mills come from upcountry and they just bring them down and they meet people there.

And people have not been able to see anything on the socials of how these puppies were being raised or anything like that. They know nothing about that other than this is where they can meet the puppy. And then obviously you know that this is, this puppy has not come from a good, responsible source. So that’s why I mentioned that one. 

K: Yeah, yeah.

Z: But it’s so useful to have your guidance on this because you do all the right things and you know exactly what to do. So I think anyone should read your book and go to your socials to see exactly what kinds of things need to be done.

K: You know, and one other thing is just to ask for referrals. I mean, anybody could go on my Instagram and a whole bunch of Nicholberry families are commenting and interacting on there. And I post them, I post their accounts. In 2025, it’s really easy to get referrals and talk to other people and just do a little bit of vetting.

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