PUPPY SOCIALISATION

The primary and most important time for puppy socialization is the first three months of life… For this reason, it should be the standard of care for puppies to receive such socialization before they are fully vaccinated… While puppies’ immune systems are still developing during these early months… appropriate care makes the risk of infection relatively small compared to the chance of death from a behavior problem.” - The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior *Puppies provided with poor socialization or deprived of environmental exposure often develop lifelong deficits and dysfunctional behaviors. A puppy isolated early in life from other puppies and humans will not only fail to establish satisfying social contact, or enjoy companionship with people later in life (such puppies are extremely fearful of any social contact), they will also exhibit widespread behavioral and cognitive disabilities as well. Isolated puppies exhibit poor learning and problem-solving abilities and are extremely hyperactive or rigidly inhibited, are emotionally over-reactive and unable to encounter novel social or environmental situations without extreme fear and avoidance, and are socially and sexually incapacitated." – “Handbook of Applied Behavior and Training, Steven R. Lindsay”.In order to prevent unwanted behaviours later in your dog’s life, it is clear that socialising the pup at a very early stage will greatly reduce that risk. It was interesting to read that socialisation should begin as early as the first 12 days from when the pup is born. Indeed further research has highlighted that there are roughly ten key stages in the socialisation of puppies.

DEVELOPMENT STAGES                      AGE

Neonatal Period           Birth to 12 Days
Transitional period       13 to 20 days
Awareness period        21 to 23 days
Canine socialisation     21 to 49 days
Human socialisation     7 to 12 weeks
Fear imprint period       8 to 11 weeks
Seniority classification 4 to 8 months
Flight instinct period    4 to 8 months
Second fear period       6 to 14 months
Maturity                     1 to 4 years

Dr. Ian Dunbar in his book “After you get your puppy……the clock is ticking”, outlines 5 key stages in a puppies development.

1. Neonatal (birth - 2 weeks);
2. Transitional (2-3 weeks);
3. Socialisation 3-13 weeks);
4. Adolescence (13 weeks - 6 months);
5. Adulthood.

Taken from the studies carried out by John Paul Scott and John Fuller.

http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/puppy-personality-development

As mentioned before I now have five dogs of my own, my two Labs were bought from a breeder at the age of eight weeks and the other three were all rescue dogs acquired at different ages, and at different times I add, ranging from seven months to fourteen months. What was interesting after doing the research for the question above was how I am able to recognise some of the unwanted learned behaviours that each of the rescue dogs came with and indeed how the labs developed, due to my misguidance, some unwanted behaviours which I later had to retrain to correct.

A few years after getting the Lab pups we decided to get a rescue dog. We got Laya a medium sized sandy coloured cross breed. Right from the first day home we knew she was very nervous around men. Particularly men in uniforms.

Her history was that she had been turned out into the street not long after she had been weaned and lived off the streets for four or five months. She was then captured by the local dog warden and put into animal shelter. She was rehomed but because of her issues she again was put out onto the street and again caught by the dog warden and back into animal shelter. Her behaviour was such that she was not ideally suited to be rehomed to your average household as lengthy and patent rehabilitation was required. It was sheer luck that we came upon her and my wife being a soft touch for a hard luck story soon convinced me we had to give this pup a chance. There were two incidents early on which caused us some alarm. The first was when we stupidly left a bag of kitchen rubbish on the floor and Laya decided to go into the bag naturally to scavenge. This had been her norm for the first few months of her life living on the street. Hearing the rustling I moved to the kitchen and called her name at the same time moved up behind her to take hold of her by the neck and get her out the bag. As I touched the back of her neck she wheeled round with a ferocious snarl for her size to tell me to back off this was hers. However as quick as she snarled she backed down rather sheepishly and moved away. Instinct had taken over. The second and more alarming incident was not many months after we were attending a local gala day and had been walking around mingling with folks and had been getting admiring glances because of the two labs and this cute looking puppy. People had been coming up to say hello and whilst the labs were their usual delighted to see every body Laya would move round behind my wife or myself away from the strangers. We went back to the car and put the dogs in the back. It was a 4 x 4 and so we sat at the back door with the door open and strategically sat so that the dogs couldn’t get past us out the door. Again people strolled by and made admiring nods and comments, however one little boy decided he would come over and say hello, as quick as a flash he stretched past me to clap Laya inside the car. At this, she lunged forward baring teeth and snarling quite ferociously. Fortunately she never made contact and the lad had good reflexes. But that was a warning that she had issues and we hadn’t been aware of them. To ‘fix’ these issues we embarked on an intense rehabilitation program desensitising her to both men, particularly men in uniforms i.e. Postmen, Policemen, Lollipop men and men in high Vis jackets and children both male and female. The alternative to success was unthinkable. By far her favourite thing was playing with a ball. We used this to make every interaction with adult males and children a positive experience. Encouraging as many strangers as we could find in parks, the local training school, whilst walking in the street to ‘play’ fetch with Laya with a ball we carried everywhere. It took time for her to trust us and the individuals but I’m happy to report there have been no further incidents and indeed she is quite calm when men approach and happily goes to children to initiate play with a ball.

According to Dr. Ian Dunbar in his book “After you get your puppy…the clock is ticking”. The second most important thing you can teach your puppy is to be people friendly, especially the family it is living with. The most important thing to teach your puppy is bite inhibition.

Bite inhibition means training for a "soft mouth. It teaches your pup to use his mouth gently with people”. Says Melissa Alexander in her journal Click for Joy: Questions and Answers from Clicker Trainers and their Dogs. This is another of the situations on my list of things that I would want to introduce to my new puppy.  The reasons are fairly common sense. If a puppy is not taught bite inhibition early on then the consequences later on can be a potential train wreck. From having a sore nip when roughhousing with your young adult dog to something far more worse if the dog is in a fight mode where flight is not an option. Examples given by Dr Dunbar include were the dog is perhaps accidentally trod upon whilst sleeping or perhaps chewing on a tasty bone. A dog that has no bite inhibition can cause and adult and more worryingly a child serious damage. The dog does not understand the action by the human maybe an accident, it just reacts instinctively. If the dog has been taught good bite inhibition then the likely hood of damage done to skin or flesh is greatly reduced.
Even dog on dog interactions are less stressful. When two dogs meet and don’t exactly hit it off, any escalation is usually a lot of snarling and snapping with very little or no contact where dogs have good bite inhibition. However dogs who have not had the opportunity to play fight with other canines or adults does not learn not to bite down hard when making contact and that is when ears get bitten or necks and blood is drawn. This is unacceptable and causes great distress to the injured party and indeed their owners. There have been many recorded instances in the press of children being mauled by their family pet. I don’t suggest that these dogs have never had bite inhibition training, but if properly socialized and taught proper bite inhibition then the likely hood of an adult dog causing damage is greatly reduced. However, leaving any child unsupervised with the family pet is never recommended. I have five dogs and they have all been properly socialized and I trust them completely around adults and children alike. We live next door to a family who has an eight year old girl, who can be very excitable at times. Although I don’t think for one minute any of my dogs would harm her, accidents always happen when you are not around and the fact that the five dogs are playing together can sometimes times lead to competition for attention and even competition for resource possession i.e. the ball. I therefore ensure that play between my neighbor’s daughter and my dogs are always supervised by an adult, one that I know my dogs will listen to.

           

Another area I consider is more a necessity than anything else is car travel. I have had a number of handlers come to me saying that their dog is not a good traveller. Car travel these days is more and more frequent. A lot of dog owners now live in urban areas and often have to travel even short distances by car to get to an area where they can give their dogs much needed off lead exercise in a safe area. We don’t have many if any dog parks in the UK like America, but we do have plenty of open countryside and beaches which are at most one to two hours drive away from anywhere in the country. However getting your dog to be quiet and be still in the car for up to two hours is not easy. So the earlier you can acclimatise your pup to car travel the better. All of my dogs travel in the back of my pickup. It is not an open back and has a hard top. But they need to be able to travel together and not be anxious as I travel for up to two hours every other weekend taking my dogs down to Berwick Upon Tweed to the holiday caravan.

So it is imperative that my dogs can travel comfortably and without stress for up to two hours in the back of the pickup. Most dog owners don’t have the luxury of having a pick up where the dogs are separated from the passenger area of a car, it is therefore more important in this case for puppy to be relaxed and enjoy the ride. The other reason we need a relaxed pup or dog in the car is hat it could potentially be a hazard whilst driving if the driver is either taking his or her eyes off the road to see what’s fretting the puppy or worse, the pup escapes the baggage area and clambers over the driver whilst travelling.

In conclusion then there are many areas of socialisation for your new puppy and other than bite inhibition and socialisation with children and adult males you should prioritise what is most important for your puppy relative to your individual lifestyle and needs. In my case car travel, for someone living on a farm it may be the farm animals, chickens and horses etc. However what is clear is that the more you socialise your puppy and introduce it to as many different situations and people the more likely you will have a balanced well mannered puppy as it grows into adolescence and adulthood.