February 29, 2024 • 22 mins
This week’s question is about puppies who growl when restrained:
"Hey everyone! We're raising our first litter, English Setters, nearly 7 weeks old. All have lovely temperaments and have been going through the PC process like little pro's.
One thing we've noticed over the last week is, if they want to hop down when a puppy family or friend is holding them, they'll do little frustrated growls or barks (I hesitate to say growl, though I'm sure you'll understand – it's just a "let me down!" kinda thing).
We've introduced gentle restraint over the last week and they all get a little annoyed if they want to go play/explore etc but nothing out of the ordinary. I just wanted to check if this is normal - should we be upping gentle restraint, or something we should be concerned about?"
In this episode, I cover:
- What you should do about puppies who growl when restrained
- Whether you should be concerned about puppies who growl or don’t like to be cuddled
- How to balance the will of the puppy with the will of the puppy owners
Visit our website, madcapradio.com for further reading.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.
And this is a Puppy Culture
potluck podcast.
You bring the topics,we bring the conversation.
This week's question is about puppies
(00:22):
who growl when restrained.
And here it is.
This is the question.
Hey, everyone,we're raising our first litter.
English Setters, nearly seven weeks
old, all have lovely temperamentsand have been going
through the Puppy Culture processlike little pro’s.
(00:44):
One thing we've noticed overthe last week is
if they want to hop down when a puppy
owner or friend is holding them,
they'll do a little frustratedgrowl or bark.
I hesitate to say growl, thoughI'm sure you will understand
it's more of a “let me down”kind of thing.
(01:07):
We've introducedgentle restraint over the last week
and they all get a little annoyedif they want to go play, explore, etc.
but nothing out of the ordinary.
I just wanted to check if this is normal.
Should we be upping gentle restraint?
(01:28):
Is this somethingwe should be concerned about?
Okay, this is me again.
So first I'm going to sort of addressthis particular case.
And then second,we're going to have a discussion about
what is normal in terms of growlingwhen restrained.
(01:48):
So here's the quick answer.
In this particular case,you know, it's interesting.
It's a very common thingthat for some reason, pet people insist
on restraining puppiesthat don't want to be held.
Even very experienced dogowners will reach
and grab and restrain puppies.
(02:11):
And working on conditioning
and emotional response to restraintis super important for breeders.
We have several protocols on thisfor breeders in Puppy Culture
and also ShapingEmotional Responses is all about this.
If you don't have those course videos,you can go to puppyculture.com
and learn more.
But the point isthat you do want to counter condition
(02:34):
that natural response of aversionsto being restrained.
It's natural.
Puppies don't like to be restrained.
We work on counter conditioning it.
And if you're a puppy owner, we addressthis also in depth in our puppy course
at Madcap University,we go into detail about the exact ratio
of reinforcement that you should havedepending on how your puppies reacting.
(02:57):
We have protocols for picking up
and interrupting puppies,feeding them, putting them down.
So it's not likeI don't recognize this or address it.
But, you know, here's the thing.
While you
absolutely should do these protocols,
you can't train the puppyout of the puppy,
(03:22):
nor should you expect to.
Sometimes they don't want to be held.
Sometimes they wouldrather be doing other stuff.
Sometimes they're just not in the mood.
So a puppy vocalizing to get down,
even growling, is not in and of itself
(03:45):
diagnostic of anything.
It is unreasonable to expect themto put up with your desire
to hold them at any time,no matter what the puppy would rather do.
And I find that puppy
owners are oftensurprisingly tone deaf to this
and are just not open to hearingwhat the puppy is telling them.
(04:10):
So my follow up questionfor this breeder was,
do the puppies ever growl at you?
And I said, I would bet not,because you're more tuned in to them.
At least that has been my experience
with my puppies and my friend's puppies.
And this is what she answered me.
No, they don't growl at me,
(04:32):
which is why the behavior cameas a bit of surprise.
We find all the litterhighly tolerant and attachment seeking,
but I guess we recognize that seven weekold pups are generally less interested
in a nice cuddlethan noodling around most of the time.
Exactly.
(04:53):
I think, you know, in this caseand this is what I advise this breeder,
you might look more at what's going onwith the person who's holding the puppy
and evaluate if they're being responsiveto what the puppy is telling them.
So I think really while
yes, absolutely we counter condition this.
(05:13):
Absolutely.
That is the whole basisof Shaping Emotional Responses.
But in this particular case,
this is a teaching momentfor the puppy owner.
This is a moment to teach the puppy owner
what is a reasonable expectationfor a puppy this age.
So let's go back then
(05:35):
and talk in more general termsabout a seven week old puppy
growling at you when you restrain itor do something that they don't like.
I mean, not all puppies will push backagainst restraint with a growl.
Some will go catatonic,
some will just squirm, some will wine.
(05:57):
So the question is,should you worry more about the puppies
that growl than the puppies that just go
limp, squirm or whine?
I don't think there's a universal short
answer I can give you in a podcast,but here are some thoughts.
Let's startwith the root cause of the issue,
(06:20):
which is that puppiesdon't want to be restrained.
This is the fundamental issue, okay?
Because people appear to think
that with training and PuppyCulture, puppies
will somehow not feelthe normal range of puppy emotions.
And I'm telling you, the vastmajority of puppies
just don't like to be restrainedand they don't like to cuddle.
(06:43):
Not much.
No trainingis going to change that in a young puppy.
On the whole,most puppies would rather be on the ground
doing stuff, biting youor playing with other puppies.
That's just a natural fact
and not a problem that has to be fixed.
(07:04):
It's where they are developmentally.
They look cuteand you want to cuddle them,
but they don't much like it.
So let's just establish that almost nopuppy wants to be restrained.
So the
puppy, the growls at youfor restraining him
(07:24):
is not fundamentally differentthan the puppy that just squirms
or the puppy that goes catatonicor the puppy that whimpers.
The internal state of the puppyis the same.
The difference is what toolsthe puppy feels
he has at his disposal to communicatethat internal state to you.
(07:47):
The differencebetween a growl and a squirm
is difference in degree, not kind.
So should you worry about the puppythat growls at you?
Well, for sure.
It's information.
It tells you what that puppy isgoing to reach for when there's conflict.
(08:07):
So it's not like it'smeaningless information.
But again, the overwhelming
chances are it's totally normal.
Most breeds are hardwired
to push against conflict.
When you look at the breedstandards of most breeds,
(08:27):
most dogs did at one time fulfillsome kind of either
guardian or hunting functionthat required them to stand up
in fairlydaunting situations with courage.
Those are the puppies
that are going to growl at youwhen you restrain them against their will,
you know?
And then you have puppiesthat don't push back this way.
(08:49):
But again, those puppies are still feeling
that same feelingas the puppies that growl.
So no matter what, when you
restrain a puppy against its will,you're still creating conflict.
When you don't listen to them telling youthat they want to get down
(09:10):
and my advice is restraintprotocols aside, okay,
put the puppy downthat wants to be put down.
Yes, we work on counter
conditioning those negative feelings.
But if you continue to assault
puppies in this way, if you continue
to disregard their feelings in the matter,
(09:32):
you start building a lack of trust
and the puppy does not believe he'sbeing heard.
And your primary job in that first year
to 18 months of life is to build trust.
And that takes time and repetitions overtime.
We'll come back to that.
(09:53):
You see, context is everything with this.
For sure,
there are times when that puppy, I'mtelling you, you're
getting picked up, restrained, put away,and it's not what you want to do.
But I don't care.
Let's saythe puppies are in the back yard.
The landscapers are here to mow the lawn.
(10:13):
You're getting pickedup, you're getting put away.
You can grow if you want. I don't care.
It's my way or the highwayand it's happening now.
Okay, But you're having a puppy partylet's say,
there's a roomful of new peopleand all the puppies littermates are there?
There's new equipment,I mean, it's tantamount to an assault
(10:33):
to restrain a puppy that does not wantto be held under those circumstances.
That puppy wants to getdown and explore and play.
And finally,
you can't discount that that puppythat's squirming,
growling, wants to get out of your arms,
may actually have a bodily need.
I have definitely seen puppy ownersjust continue to hold and forcibly
(10:57):
restrain puppies that desperatelyhad to go to the bathroom.
So, you know, in sum,
the overriding rule is don't force it,
don't grab and clasp a puppythat does not want to be held.
Do your restraint protocols,
but do them in discreet training sessions.
(11:20):
Don't expect a seven,eight, ten, 16 week old puppy to enjoy
being held all the time.
You know, I realize how fundamentallywe all want to cuddle with our puppies.
They're cute, but they're not cuddly.
I'm sorry.
Cuddling is something that developsas the puppies curiosity
(11:42):
and drive to explore and play drive
wanes and his trust in you increases.
It's truly a developmental thing
that you facilitateby putting money in the relationship bank.
And the first ruleis not to be making withdrawals
from the relationship bankby restraining unreasonably.
(12:08):
Again, you do a lot of pick upfeed, put down the puppy growls.
He doesn't want to be restrained.You put him down.
So you're teaching him, you know,
I'll pickyou up, I'll pay you, I'll put you down.
I'm I'm going to listen to you.
I mean, sometimes it's going to happen,but it's not going to be so bad.
And I know, you know,we all want to fix it right away,
but you have to trust me.
(12:29):
It's a developmental thing that's goingto it's going to smooth out over that,
you know, that year, that yearto 18 months.
Okay.
And you're just going to wake up one dayand the puppy that growled
when you were stranded growledwhen you're trying to his nails growled
when you know, when you were tryingto do anything, interrupt him.
You know, one day you're going to be like,wow, I can't believe it.
(12:49):
That puppy used to growl at me.
So you really
have to look at thisas a developmental period
and not a specific problemthat you have to fix.
But I know when you hear that growl,especially as a puppy owner,
even if you yourself are doing somethingtotally unreasonable to the puppy,
(13:10):
it's scarybecause it's just you're afraid.
You're afraid that you're probablygoing to be aggressive.
And all I can tell you is this that I have
definitely seenmy share of behavioral issues.
And I can tell you right nowthat the puppies
that ultimately turned outto have behavioral problems
(13:32):
were not the puppies that growledwhen they were restrained.
That has not been, you know,something that sorted with puppies
that had behavioral problems.
I have to say
I havea personal feeling about this topic.
This topic strikes close to home for mebecause when I was a child, I didn't,
(13:54):
I wasn't a cuddly kid and I had qualities.
I mean, I was a go go, go kid.
I was inquisitive, I was smart, I was fun.
But I just I didn't like to be held.
I didn't like to be restrained.
And I guess my parentsmaybe being a little more progressive,
understood that and appreciated mefor who I was.
(14:15):
But, you know, my Sicilian grandparents,when I went to visit them,
they were going to hug me.
I mean, it was that's how it was goingdown.
And I fought it pretty hardand they would get offended.
And, you know,it was always the thing when I went there.
Now, listen, it it turned out fine.
I loved my grandparents, in the end,as I grew up.
(14:37):
But, you know, when I was a child,it was a little horrifying.
And I
turned out to be a person that I thinkhas things to offer the world.
And I'm affectionate.
So it's not like it was a
you know, that that natural inclinationfor children
to be more interested in doing thingsthan being hugged and restrained
(14:59):
somehow sorts with adult personality
or capacity to form emotional connections.
I guess what I'm trying to say,it's reasonable.
Okay?
It's reasonablethat children, that puppies, you know,
they sometimesjust really don't want to be restrained.
All right.
Now, all that having been said,there are definitely
(15:23):
behavioral outlier puppies.
There are puppies that really just hate
physical touch to the pointwhere it's pathological.
That's beyond the scope of this podcast.
But suffice itto say that if you as a breeder
are not experiencing puppiesgrowling at you when you hold them,
(15:45):
but suddenly when puppy buyers
show up or your friends show up,the puppies are growling at them.
That'snot a behavioral issue with the puppies.
Okay.
That that's that's a people problem,not a puppy problem.
Even if your puppies do growl at you
when restrained,sometimes it's still not pathological.
(16:07):
This is a really huge trust issuethat you have to earn over time.
There are definitely protocolsthat will facilitate that process
and that's what we're all about
in Puppy Cultureand our films and our puppy courses.
But there is not a protocol
that's going to speed up that processvery much.
(16:29):
You can't really, you know, skipthat year of building trust.
You have to do it.
You have to put in the time,you have to put in the repetitions
and not freak out if your puppy doesn'twant to be restrained.
In the meantime.
In our
house, puppy taming is Mark's job.
He gets on the couch,he tames those puppies.
(16:51):
Okay? It takes, you know, a year.
It takes a year.
And then one daythe puppies will cuddle with him.
You know, it starts out as little as I'm.
I'm not exaggerating. 5 seconds.
If you can get 5 seconds of that puppyholding still, it's amazing.
And then somewhere around 18 months,I mean,
they're taking a nap with him on the couchwhile he reads his phone.
(17:13):
So I've been through it.
I've been through it.
A number of times.
And again, there'snothing wrong with the puppy that doesn't
want to be restrained.
So I'm going to read you one comment
that was on that postthat I thought was quite good.
She said;I agree with Jane wholeheartedly.
(17:36):
My breed is a giant breed,so I really discourage my visitors
picking up puppies at all.
I don't want the puppiesto become used to being held.
I do welcome themto get down on the ground with the puppies
and let the puppies climb in their lap
and let the puppiesgo to sleep in their lap if they choose.
But I'm very picky with the rulesI ask of my visitors.
(17:59):
My biggest concern is
because of the size of my puppiesat seven weeks old.
If one is too wigglyand someone were to drop them,
that might be somethingthat they would not easily recover from.
I think your puppies are perfectly normal.
And then the last thing that someone wrotein was actually a recommendation
(18:23):
for two whole dog journal articlesthat are very similar.
In fact, I think they're kindof derivative of each other.
The original one was by Nicole Wilde,
and the second one was by Nancy Kerns.
And again, they're in Whole Dog Journaland they're both called Work That Body.
(18:45):
And it's just a punch listreally for puppy owners
about how to approach dogs and puppies.
It's really good.
So I think that's a good thing to put inyour your toolkit
to share with your puppy owners.
So I want to wrap this all up with a word
on handling this
(19:08):
with our puppy owners.
Okay. So
I think we have to address
why puppy owners do this.
And even, as I said, very experiencedpuppy owners, people that you would think
would know better and you see them,you see them reaching for those puppies,
reaching for them, grabbing them,grasping them, pulling them to them.
(19:29):
And I think as a breeder,what you have to recognize is that
they're not just reaching for the puppy.
They're reaching for that bondright there.
There's so excited, they're so chargedand they're so really
desirousof forming that bond with that puppy.
And we're primates, right?
(19:51):
So we just physically want to clasp themto us and on some sort of very deep
cellular level, we feel likethis is going to facilitate that bond.
And I think as breeders, we have to
help the puppy owner
see how magical it isto let the puppy come to them.
(20:13):
Okay.
How magical it is to listen to the puppyand how the puppy
is so much more open to that bondwhen we let go.
You have to let go to receive.
It's a very Zen thingand I think we can do that.
I think, you know,you can instruct them all you want.
You can give them the print out.
You can say, Listen,this is how you touch the puppy
(20:33):
and don't restrain the puppyand put the puppy down
if it wiggles and blah,blah, blah, blah, blah.
But it's not satisfying the puppy owner.
And I think we have to besensitive to that.
You really have to reassurethose puppy owners that
that bond is going to come,but it's just not going to be
instantaneous, maybe in the way that thatthey hope it's going to be.
(20:55):
So in sum,
I definitely recommend that you doall the restraint protocols.
You have your puppy owners doall the restraint protocols that you show
your puppy owners how to handle puppies,that you demonstrate it,
that you give them handouts with listsof how to handle puppies.
But, you know, I also think alongside this
(21:18):
you need to acknowledgethe emotional component of this.
Show your puppy ownershow letting go of that puppy
actually increases the puppies approach,how sitting
passively and just allowing the puppy
to come toward you is magical.
(21:39):
If you can satisfythat emotional component for the puppy
owner, it's going to go a long wayto giving them the space
to be able to be empathetictoward their puppies.
If you liked this podcast,you'll love our breeder
(22:00):
course at madcapuniversity.com.
If you're a puppy owner,we have a course for you too
at madcapuniversity.com.
If you're new to puppy cultureand you want to get started,
visit us at puppyculture.comand check out our bundles.
(22:22):
Well, that's all for this time.
Thanks for listening.
Bye bye.
I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.
And this is a Puppy Culture
potluck podcast.
You bring the topics,we bring the conversation.
This week's question is about puppies
(00:22):
who growl when restrained.
And here it is.
This is the question.
Hey, everyone,we're raising our first litter.
English Setters, nearly seven weeks
old, all have lovely temperamentsand have been going
through the Puppy Culture processlike little pro’s.
(00:44):
One thing we've noticed overthe last week is
if they want to hop down when a puppy
owner or friend is holding them,
they'll do a little frustratedgrowl or bark.
I hesitate to say growl, thoughI'm sure you will understand
it's more of a “let me down”kind of thing.
(01:07):
We've introducedgentle restraint over the last week
and they all get a little annoyedif they want to go play, explore, etc.
but nothing out of the ordinary.
I just wanted to check if this is normal.
Should we be upping gentle restraint?
(01:28):
Is this somethingwe should be concerned about?
Okay, this is me again.
So first I'm going to sort of addressthis particular case.
And then second,we're going to have a discussion about
what is normal in terms of growlingwhen restrained.
(01:48):
So here's the quick answer.
In this particular case,you know, it's interesting.
It's a very common thingthat for some reason, pet people insist
on restraining puppiesthat don't want to be held.
Even very experienced dogowners will reach
and grab and restrain puppies.
(02:11):
And working on conditioning
and emotional response to restraintis super important for breeders.
We have several protocols on thisfor breeders in Puppy Culture
and also ShapingEmotional Responses is all about this.
If you don't have those course videos,you can go to puppyculture.com
and learn more.
But the point isthat you do want to counter condition
(02:34):
that natural response of aversionsto being restrained.
It's natural.
Puppies don't like to be restrained.
We work on counter conditioning it.
And if you're a puppy owner, we addressthis also in depth in our puppy course
at Madcap University,we go into detail about the exact ratio
of reinforcement that you should havedepending on how your puppies reacting.
(02:57):
We have protocols for picking up
and interrupting puppies,feeding them, putting them down.
So it's not likeI don't recognize this or address it.
But, you know, here's the thing.
While you
absolutely should do these protocols,
you can't train the puppyout of the puppy,
(03:22):
nor should you expect to.
Sometimes they don't want to be held.
Sometimes they wouldrather be doing other stuff.
Sometimes they're just not in the mood.
So a puppy vocalizing to get down,
even growling, is not in and of itself
(03:45):
diagnostic of anything.
It is unreasonable to expect themto put up with your desire
to hold them at any time,no matter what the puppy would rather do.
And I find that puppy
owners are oftensurprisingly tone deaf to this
and are just not open to hearingwhat the puppy is telling them.
(04:10):
So my follow up questionfor this breeder was,
do the puppies ever growl at you?
And I said, I would bet not,because you're more tuned in to them.
At least that has been my experience
with my puppies and my friend's puppies.
And this is what she answered me.
No, they don't growl at me,
(04:32):
which is why the behavior cameas a bit of surprise.
We find all the litterhighly tolerant and attachment seeking,
but I guess we recognize that seven weekold pups are generally less interested
in a nice cuddlethan noodling around most of the time.
Exactly.
(04:53):
I think, you know, in this caseand this is what I advise this breeder,
you might look more at what's going onwith the person who's holding the puppy
and evaluate if they're being responsiveto what the puppy is telling them.
So I think really while
yes, absolutely we counter condition this.
(05:13):
Absolutely.
That is the whole basisof Shaping Emotional Responses.
But in this particular case,
this is a teaching momentfor the puppy owner.
This is a moment to teach the puppy owner
what is a reasonable expectationfor a puppy this age.
So let's go back then
(05:35):
and talk in more general termsabout a seven week old puppy
growling at you when you restrain itor do something that they don't like.
I mean, not all puppies will push backagainst restraint with a growl.
Some will go catatonic,
some will just squirm, some will wine.
(05:57):
So the question is,should you worry more about the puppies
that growl than the puppies that just go
limp, squirm or whine?
I don't think there's a universal short
answer I can give you in a podcast,but here are some thoughts.
Let's startwith the root cause of the issue,
(06:20):
which is that puppiesdon't want to be restrained.
This is the fundamental issue, okay?
Because people appear to think
that with training and PuppyCulture, puppies
will somehow not feelthe normal range of puppy emotions.
And I'm telling you, the vastmajority of puppies
just don't like to be restrainedand they don't like to cuddle.
(06:43):
Not much.
No trainingis going to change that in a young puppy.
On the whole,most puppies would rather be on the ground
doing stuff, biting youor playing with other puppies.
That's just a natural fact
and not a problem that has to be fixed.
(07:04):
It's where they are developmentally.
They look cuteand you want to cuddle them,
but they don't much like it.
So let's just establish that almost nopuppy wants to be restrained.
So the
puppy, the growls at youfor restraining him
(07:24):
is not fundamentally differentthan the puppy that just squirms
or the puppy that goes catatonicor the puppy that whimpers.
The internal state of the puppyis the same.
The difference is what toolsthe puppy feels
he has at his disposal to communicatethat internal state to you.
(07:47):
The differencebetween a growl and a squirm
is difference in degree, not kind.
So should you worry about the puppythat growls at you?
Well, for sure.
It's information.
It tells you what that puppy isgoing to reach for when there's conflict.
(08:07):
So it's not like it'smeaningless information.
But again, the overwhelming
chances are it's totally normal.
Most breeds are hardwired
to push against conflict.
When you look at the breedstandards of most breeds,
(08:27):
most dogs did at one time fulfillsome kind of either
guardian or hunting functionthat required them to stand up
in fairlydaunting situations with courage.
Those are the puppies
that are going to growl at youwhen you restrain them against their will,
you know?
And then you have puppiesthat don't push back this way.
(08:49):
But again, those puppies are still feeling
that same feelingas the puppies that growl.
So no matter what, when you
restrain a puppy against its will,you're still creating conflict.
When you don't listen to them telling youthat they want to get down
(09:10):
and my advice is restraintprotocols aside, okay,
put the puppy downthat wants to be put down.
Yes, we work on counter
conditioning those negative feelings.
But if you continue to assault
puppies in this way, if you continue
to disregard their feelings in the matter,
(09:32):
you start building a lack of trust
and the puppy does not believe he'sbeing heard.
And your primary job in that first year
to 18 months of life is to build trust.
And that takes time and repetitions overtime.
We'll come back to that.
(09:53):
You see, context is everything with this.
For sure,
there are times when that puppy, I'mtelling you, you're
getting picked up, restrained, put away,and it's not what you want to do.
But I don't care.
Let's saythe puppies are in the back yard.
The landscapers are here to mow the lawn.
(10:13):
You're getting pickedup, you're getting put away.
You can grow if you want. I don't care.
It's my way or the highwayand it's happening now.
Okay, But you're having a puppy partylet's say,
there's a roomful of new peopleand all the puppies littermates are there?
There's new equipment,I mean, it's tantamount to an assault
(10:33):
to restrain a puppy that does not wantto be held under those circumstances.
That puppy wants to getdown and explore and play.
And finally,
you can't discount that that puppythat's squirming,
growling, wants to get out of your arms,
may actually have a bodily need.
I have definitely seen puppy ownersjust continue to hold and forcibly
(10:57):
restrain puppies that desperatelyhad to go to the bathroom.
So, you know, in sum,
the overriding rule is don't force it,
don't grab and clasp a puppythat does not want to be held.
Do your restraint protocols,
but do them in discreet training sessions.
(11:20):
Don't expect a seven,eight, ten, 16 week old puppy to enjoy
being held all the time.
You know, I realize how fundamentallywe all want to cuddle with our puppies.
They're cute, but they're not cuddly.
I'm sorry.
Cuddling is something that developsas the puppies curiosity
(11:42):
and drive to explore and play drive
wanes and his trust in you increases.
It's truly a developmental thing
that you facilitateby putting money in the relationship bank.
And the first ruleis not to be making withdrawals
from the relationship bankby restraining unreasonably.
(12:08):
Again, you do a lot of pick upfeed, put down the puppy growls.
He doesn't want to be restrained.You put him down.
So you're teaching him, you know,
I'll pickyou up, I'll pay you, I'll put you down.
I'm I'm going to listen to you.
I mean, sometimes it's going to happen,but it's not going to be so bad.
And I know, you know,we all want to fix it right away,
but you have to trust me.
(12:29):
It's a developmental thing that's goingto it's going to smooth out over that,
you know, that year, that yearto 18 months.
Okay.
And you're just going to wake up one dayand the puppy that growled
when you were stranded growledwhen you're trying to his nails growled
when you know, when you were tryingto do anything, interrupt him.
You know, one day you're going to be like,wow, I can't believe it.
(12:49):
That puppy used to growl at me.
So you really
have to look at thisas a developmental period
and not a specific problemthat you have to fix.
But I know when you hear that growl,especially as a puppy owner,
even if you yourself are doing somethingtotally unreasonable to the puppy,
(13:10):
it's scarybecause it's just you're afraid.
You're afraid that you're probablygoing to be aggressive.
And all I can tell you is this that I have
definitely seenmy share of behavioral issues.
And I can tell you right nowthat the puppies
that ultimately turned outto have behavioral problems
(13:32):
were not the puppies that growledwhen they were restrained.
That has not been, you know,something that sorted with puppies
that had behavioral problems.
I have to say
I havea personal feeling about this topic.
This topic strikes close to home for mebecause when I was a child, I didn't,
(13:54):
I wasn't a cuddly kid and I had qualities.
I mean, I was a go go, go kid.
I was inquisitive, I was smart, I was fun.
But I just I didn't like to be held.
I didn't like to be restrained.
And I guess my parentsmaybe being a little more progressive,
understood that and appreciated mefor who I was.
(14:15):
But, you know, my Sicilian grandparents,when I went to visit them,
they were going to hug me.
I mean, it was that's how it was goingdown.
And I fought it pretty hardand they would get offended.
And, you know,it was always the thing when I went there.
Now, listen, it it turned out fine.
I loved my grandparents, in the end,as I grew up.
(14:37):
But, you know, when I was a child,it was a little horrifying.
And I
turned out to be a person that I thinkhas things to offer the world.
And I'm affectionate.
So it's not like it was a
you know, that that natural inclinationfor children
to be more interested in doing thingsthan being hugged and restrained
(14:59):
somehow sorts with adult personality
or capacity to form emotional connections.
I guess what I'm trying to say,it's reasonable.
Okay?
It's reasonablethat children, that puppies, you know,
they sometimesjust really don't want to be restrained.
All right.
Now, all that having been said,there are definitely
(15:23):
behavioral outlier puppies.
There are puppies that really just hate
physical touch to the pointwhere it's pathological.
That's beyond the scope of this podcast.
But suffice itto say that if you as a breeder
are not experiencing puppiesgrowling at you when you hold them,
(15:45):
but suddenly when puppy buyers
show up or your friends show up,the puppies are growling at them.
That'snot a behavioral issue with the puppies.
Okay.
That that's that's a people problem,not a puppy problem.
Even if your puppies do growl at you
when restrained,sometimes it's still not pathological.
(16:07):
This is a really huge trust issuethat you have to earn over time.
There are definitely protocolsthat will facilitate that process
and that's what we're all about
in Puppy Cultureand our films and our puppy courses.
But there is not a protocol
that's going to speed up that processvery much.
(16:29):
You can't really, you know, skipthat year of building trust.
You have to do it.
You have to put in the time,you have to put in the repetitions
and not freak out if your puppy doesn'twant to be restrained.
In the meantime.
In our
house, puppy taming is Mark's job.
He gets on the couch,he tames those puppies.
(16:51):
Okay? It takes, you know, a year.
It takes a year.
And then one daythe puppies will cuddle with him.
You know, it starts out as little as I'm.
I'm not exaggerating. 5 seconds.
If you can get 5 seconds of that puppyholding still, it's amazing.
And then somewhere around 18 months,I mean,
they're taking a nap with him on the couchwhile he reads his phone.
(17:13):
So I've been through it.
I've been through it.
A number of times.
And again, there'snothing wrong with the puppy that doesn't
want to be restrained.
So I'm going to read you one comment
that was on that postthat I thought was quite good.
She said;I agree with Jane wholeheartedly.
(17:36):
My breed is a giant breed,so I really discourage my visitors
picking up puppies at all.
I don't want the puppiesto become used to being held.
I do welcome themto get down on the ground with the puppies
and let the puppies climb in their lap
and let the puppiesgo to sleep in their lap if they choose.
But I'm very picky with the rulesI ask of my visitors.
(17:59):
My biggest concern is
because of the size of my puppiesat seven weeks old.
If one is too wigglyand someone were to drop them,
that might be somethingthat they would not easily recover from.
I think your puppies are perfectly normal.
And then the last thing that someone wrotein was actually a recommendation
(18:23):
for two whole dog journal articlesthat are very similar.
In fact, I think they're kindof derivative of each other.
The original one was by Nicole Wilde,
and the second one was by Nancy Kerns.
And again, they're in Whole Dog Journaland they're both called Work That Body.
(18:45):
And it's just a punch listreally for puppy owners
about how to approach dogs and puppies.
It's really good.
So I think that's a good thing to put inyour your toolkit
to share with your puppy owners.
So I want to wrap this all up with a word
on handling this
(19:08):
with our puppy owners.
Okay. So
I think we have to address
why puppy owners do this.
And even, as I said, very experiencedpuppy owners, people that you would think
would know better and you see them,you see them reaching for those puppies,
reaching for them, grabbing them,grasping them, pulling them to them.
(19:29):
And I think as a breeder,what you have to recognize is that
they're not just reaching for the puppy.
They're reaching for that bondright there.
There's so excited, they're so chargedand they're so really
desirousof forming that bond with that puppy.
And we're primates, right?
(19:51):
So we just physically want to clasp themto us and on some sort of very deep
cellular level, we feel likethis is going to facilitate that bond.
And I think as breeders, we have to
help the puppy owner
see how magical it isto let the puppy come to them.
(20:13):
Okay.
How magical it is to listen to the puppyand how the puppy
is so much more open to that bondwhen we let go.
You have to let go to receive.
It's a very Zen thingand I think we can do that.
I think, you know,you can instruct them all you want.
You can give them the print out.
You can say, Listen,this is how you touch the puppy
(20:33):
and don't restrain the puppyand put the puppy down
if it wiggles and blah,blah, blah, blah, blah.
But it's not satisfying the puppy owner.
And I think we have to besensitive to that.
You really have to reassurethose puppy owners that
that bond is going to come,but it's just not going to be
instantaneous, maybe in the way that thatthey hope it's going to be.
(20:55):
So in sum,
I definitely recommend that you doall the restraint protocols.
You have your puppy owners doall the restraint protocols that you show
your puppy owners how to handle puppies,that you demonstrate it,
that you give them handouts with listsof how to handle puppies.
But, you know, I also think alongside this
(21:18):
you need to acknowledgethe emotional component of this.
Show your puppy ownershow letting go of that puppy
actually increases the puppies approach,how sitting
passively and just allowing the puppy
to come toward you is magical.
(21:39):
If you can satisfythat emotional component for the puppy
owner, it's going to go a long wayto giving them the space
to be able to be empathetictoward their puppies.
If you liked this podcast,you'll love our breeder
(22:00):
course at madcapuniversity.com.
If you're a puppy owner,we have a course for you too
at madcapuniversity.com.
If you're new to puppy cultureand you want to get started,
visit us at puppyculture.comand check out our bundles.
(22:22):
Well, that's all for this time.
Thanks for listening.
Bye bye.
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