This week’s question asks what the earliest is that breeders have observed consistent personality traits in a puppy:
“Out of curiosity, how early have you noticed personality traits developing in your litters that did stick around until the time they went to new homes or even beyond? (Caveat: I know a puppy's personality truly doesn't settle until they are much older which is why temperament tests aren't predictive of adult temperament as we learn in PC. This is just for fun / curiosity and because my current litter seem to be showing consistent temperaments at only 3 weeks and my last litter didn't really start to show that until around 5 weeks!)”
In this episode I discuss:
- Various breeders’ experiences with early personality traits.
- Why adult personalities will often seem inconsistent with puppy personalities.
- Practical advice regarding breeder observation of early personality traits.
Visit our website, madcapradio.com for further reading.
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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 earlyindicators of adult personality.
(00:25):
And here's the question:
Out of curiosity
how early have you noticed personalitytraits developing in your litters
that did stick around until the time theywent to their new homes or even beyond?
I know a puppy's personalitytruly doesn't settle
until they're much older,which is why temperament tests aren't
(00:48):
predictive of adult temperament,as we learned in Puppy Culture.
This is just for fun/curiosity.
And because my current litterseems to be showing some pretty
consistent temperamentsat only three weeks and my last litter
didn't really start to showthat until around five weeks.
(01:11):
This is a great question
because what's maddening about this
is that for sure, sometimes
puppies are born, who they are.
In literal answer to her question,I have had puppies
who were not even all the way outthe birth canal,
(01:31):
and they were already showing mewho they were.
And that remained consistentthroughout the life
of that animal.
But for every one of those,
there's five puppiesthat I thought for sure
we're going to be one way, and turned outto be a completely different way.
(01:54):
I think as breeders, it often feels to us
like personality traitsare extremely consistent from birth.
But I also think that there's strongconfirmation bias going on.
It's, it's emotionally satisfying.
And we remember the puppiesthat tracked very consistently,
(02:16):
and we also remember those aspectsof their very early behavior
that are consistentwith the adult behavior.
So there's a little bit of
hindsight
being 2020 when we're looking at thesevery early personality traits
and how they track with adult behavior.
(02:37):
I also think it's possible
that you can see personalities very early,
but exactly how
those personalities are going to expressthemselves is variable
because you just can't extrapolatehow that personality
(02:57):
is going to look like in behavioral terms.
As an example, Bijou.
I do remember in the whelping box,she was always the peacemaker.
If the other puppies were squabbling,she'd be like, Hey, come on, guys.
Can't we all just get along?
And, you know, she'd get visibly upsetwhen the other puppies squabbled.
(03:21):
She'd get in the middle of it.
She’d try and calm everyone down,and she's still that way.
But she's also not abovebeing the troublemaker herself.
If it suits her, she gets terribly upset
if the other dogs have disagreements.
But if she's on the couch sitting nextto my husband and Theo wants to get up,
(03:43):
she has no problem growling at himand telling him no.
So, yes, she is consistent from the time
she's been in the whelping box,she's been the peacemaker,
but only in the sense
of not wanting the other dogs to argue.
She's got no problem starting troubleherself if it's in her interest to do so.
(04:06):
Now, that's not something that we sawin her
as a baby puppy,But you got to think about it.
Three week old puppies, you know,
they don'treally have possession of anything.
They don't really have a strong senseof self in that way and ownership.
So, yes,
(04:26):
you can see some personality traits, but
only in that
very small portion of the dog's psyche
that is even available for examinationat three weeks old.
There'sso much more that's going to come online.
There are so many other
desires, drives,
(04:48):
just abilities and brain developmentthat just
literally doesn't exist yetwhen they're very young.
So extrapolating how what that looks like,
that three weekold personality to an adult,
you know, you're hardly going to be above
random chance much of the time.
(05:10):
The other thing about Bijou
is that she grew up to be extremely soft,
which was not at allhow she presented as a puppy.
But when you think about it,it can be a natural extension
of being uncomfortable with conflict.
So again, I can Monday morning quarterbackher personality
(05:35):
at three weeks old in the whelping boxand see all of her
adult personality traitsin that puppy behavior.
But I really don't thinkI could have guessed prospectively
how she would have grown upbased on what I saw in the whelping box.
Because again, that peacemaker
(05:56):
attitude that she hadcould have developed into a dog
that completely defers from conflictlike Daphne was.
It can be a dog that will avoid conflict
like Bijou,she has no axe to grind with anyone,
but if she's crossed, she has no problemstanding up for herself.
(06:17):
You could wind up with a dogthat just really is
afraid of other dogs and dislikesbeing around other dogs,
you could wind up with a dogthat has fear aggression.
I mean, all thesethings are possible. It's
like the Nile
Delta, all these fingerscoming out of this personality trait.
(06:37):
You have this personality traitof being uncomfortable with conflict.
Okay?
And that we can say the dog has,but how is it
going to express itself in a three weekold puppy?
It might be peacemakerin the whelping box, but to take that
and say, well, this is what the dog'sgoing to be like when it grows up,
you know, you really can't sayyou might have guessed right.
(07:00):
And then that's your confirmation bias.
You say, Oh yeah, you see, I knew,but you really don't know.
Another puppy in one of my litters
was one that I definitely
from the whelping boxflagged her for being extra
and I was keeping a close eye on her.
She was the worst with handling.
(07:22):
I could not get a good CER on herwith nail care.
She was not above growling at youif she didn't want you to do something.
And all I can
say is she grew up to be magical.
So sweet and gentle,
easy to care for, great with body
(07:43):
handling, obsessed with small creatures,
other dogs, people, cows, nothing but lovefor everything in the world.
And is a super easy dog.
Yes. She went to a great homewith great people.
But really, that only accountsfor so much.
Look, as I might add, her puppy behavior,
(08:06):
I can't see the dog she's become.
And I would not say thatthat is the only time
that I flagged a puppy for potentially
being a little bit more problematicthat the puppy has turned out
to be not only okay,but absolutely magical
even on a litter level, I do not see
(08:29):
consistency with puppy behaviorand adult behavior.
Daphne's second litter was the absolutemost mellow litter ever.
I called them my civilized puppies.
I remember thinking howwe would never have any trouble
with any of them because at ten weeks oldthey didn't guard things from each other.
(08:51):
They never squabbled,they never made a mess.
They were house trained.
They were completely even and calmwith any outside person or dog.
But two of those puppies grew upto have pretty severe same sex aggression,
which is not, oh, how shall I say,pathological in our breed.
It's, you know, same sex aggressioncan be normal in bull terriers.
(09:16):
And one of them was reactiveto small dogs, which again, you know,
maybe that could be within normal range.
But I never would have predictedthat in this litter of all the litters
I had, I would have thought thatlitter, we'd never have those problems.
Now, that having been
said, at least on a litter level,
(09:38):
there are some overall traits
that differ tremendously frombreed to breed.
So it's not like you don't see anything
in these puppies at this age.
It's just that if you never met a Vizsla,an adult Vizsla
or an adult Bull Terrier, and then you saw
(10:02):
a litter of Vizsla in the whelping boxat three weeks
old and a litter of bull terriersin a whelping box at three weeks old,
you definitely would say, well,these are not similar.
The behavior would be very different.
But I don't think that you would be able
to extrapolatewhat they would be like as adults.
(10:24):
And that's my point about this.
Now, why am I such a killjoy
when it comes to this topic?
I mean, really, what's the harmif breeders one look at puppies and say,
oh, look, I see this puppy is doing thisand it that means
(10:45):
the puppies are going to be like that.
Or, you know, looking back on itand seeing consistencies
and seeing personalitytraits that tracked.
There is a reason.
There's a reason I'm a killjoy about itbecause in my observation,
a lot of breeders
(11:05):
go through a lot of emotional turmoil
and potentially do
a lot of harm to their puppies
by ascribing bigger
personality traits to puppy behavior,
meaning to say
the puppy that maybe you can't
(11:27):
get a good CER on the nails as easily,
I don't think labeling that puppyas the ‘difficult one’ is helpful.
I think just saying this puppy right nowat this point in
time has not developed enough food drive
to overcome the natural distaste
(11:50):
that the puppy has for having their nailsdone.
So often times it's
just simply you can't balancethat classical conditioning
seesaw properly where you have to havesomething emotionally more salient
to give them in order to counter conditionsomething that they don't like.
(12:11):
If the puppy is too young,really still nursing, doesn't
like food much for whatever reason.
A lot of times you can't get a good CERon them because you don't have anything
to give them in exchangefor the thing that they don't like.
And that usually is a developmental thing.
So it's something thatif you just remain calm and wait it out
(12:33):
and keep trying day after day,you're going to see that turn around.
But if you jump to the conclusion that,oh, this puppy has body
sensitivity issues, you're going to tendto get stuck and not be willing
or think of really continuing to believein that puppy and work with that puppy.
(12:55):
And that'sreally what I want to save breeders from,
because breeders write in a lot
worried about puppy behavior.
It causes a lot of consternationand it causes
a lot of anguish for the breeder
and it can potentially hobblethe puppy with a label
that can be damagingbecause when you start believing
(13:17):
something about a puppy, that a puppyis a certain way, it unfortunately
can become a self-fulfilling prophecybecause you're seeing that in the puppy
and inadvertently sort of not,
I wouldn't use the word reinforcing, but
supporting that sort of view of the puppy.
(13:40):
Another thing that we get a lotis people writing in saying
that they have a bully puppy, a puppythat's
dominant on the other
puppies or rough or aggressiveto the other puppies.
And I'm telling you,
99 times out of
100, it'sbecause the puppy is developmentally
(14:03):
a little ahead of the other puppies, maybea little bigger than the other puppies.
Maybe not bigger,but maybe just more agile.
A lot of times the puppythat gets their legs under them first
figures out, Oh, I can run roughshodover these other puppies.
And you know, when you're talkingabout puppies in the well being barks,
the difference of twoor three days is is huge.
(14:26):
And that puppythat maybe just gets their legs under them
a little bit sooner and can run roughshodover the other puppies
learns that lessonand now reaches for that as a go to.
So behaviorallyit can start to create a personality,
(14:46):
but it's easy to change that as a breeder.
It's easy to take that puppy out,give them some time
with adult dogs, not ones that are goingto correct the puppy, but adult dogs
that are good shapersthat will shape that puppy down
just so that puppy learns that,Oh, I can't just get what I want by force.
(15:08):
I have to learn social negotiation.
Now, if instead of just remaining calmand doing this and I'm just going to put
a footnote here, Suzanne Shelton's article
Weaning Pen Riot's,you can find it in Madcap University
under free resources, under articles,weaning pen riots.
(15:31):
We go into this in detail.
But the point is, if you don't just
look at it sort of dispassionately
as just this is what's happeningand this is how I change it.
And you ascribe a personality
to that puppy and say, Well, this puppy,he's a dominant, and that's Ralph.
(15:52):
He's a troublemaker. He's dominant.
It makes you not want to tryand change it.
Right.
Because now you think, well,this is just the way this puppy is.
Okay, so now this puppy is a bad puppyor is a dominant puppy
or he's a troublemaker puppy.
So we're going to have to find a homethat is going to be able to deal
with a troublemaker.
And, you know, it just in nine timesout of ten it's just not true.
(16:15):
It's just a perfectly good, sweet puppy
that through a confluenceof circumstances, figured out that
they can boss the other puppies aroundand you can change that pretty easily.
So 100%,I’m no better than the next person.
You cut me, I bleed, right?
I'm always looking,What's this puppy going to be like?
(16:36):
Which one is the one that'sspeaking to me?
But even I really have to check myself
whenever I find myself starting to thinkthings about a puppy's personality
because it can really interferewith my ability
to objectively work with that puppyand do the best I can for that puppy.
(16:58):
I mean, for sure you have to seewhat's in front of you with these puppies.
So when there's a behavior,if the puppy is running
roughshod over the other puppiesor the puppy does seem to be a peacemaker
or the puppy does seem to have bodyhandling issues.
100% you you don't ignore that.
(17:19):
You take note, but you assume
that the behavior is malleable.
The point is you just don't ascribe
a bigger personality trait to the puppy
based on what you're seeingin the whelping box
or when the puppies are very youngbecause that could potentially
(17:43):
keep you from bringing your A-gameto the protocols with that puppy
because you've already made some kindof prejudgment, even a very deep,
almost subliminal prejudgmentabout who those puppies are.
So that's my
professional opinion on this topic.
And I will say the science onthis is limited,
(18:07):
but there have been a number of studiesthat have looked at
temperament testing of puppiesand some starting from neonatal straight
through, trying to develop predictorsof adult personality.
And the only thing that they have found
to have any consistencyin multiple studies
(18:28):
is exploratory behavior,which is interesting.
I love to hear what everyone elsehas found
about exploratory behavior,but I've been sort of tracking it.
And I can say, yes,I do think exploratory behavior does track
pretty much from
as soon as they're they're ambulatory. But
(18:51):
I'm going to be a contrarian here againand say
just because it hasn't been provendoesn't make it not true.
So even though studies have not found
consistent personality traits from, from
birth or puppy
hood onward,it doesn't mean that you're wrong.
If you as a breederhave seen consistent personality traits,
(19:15):
it just means that hasn't been identified
scientifically yet.
My experience is that personality
traits really don't trackwith any degree of consistency,
But you know,your experience might be different.
But again, not to beat a dead horse,
even if it is your experience that maybepersonality traits are consistent,
(19:41):
you still as a breeder arealways are going to do the best service to
your puppies by not making any assumptionsabout their personality
and just working with the behaviorsthat you see in front of you.
So this post also generateda lot of discussion.
(20:01):
And it was interesting,a couple of people wrote in and said that
the one thing that they have noticed to beconsistent is the level of drive.
But then other people said no,
they didn't see thatthe level of drive was the same.
It seemed likeit's about 50:50 in the group.
(20:22):
Some people saying, yes, some people aresaying no to the drive being consistent.
Now, here's one person who says,I knew the personalities
of my litter of sevenby the age of four weeks.
The notes I have from that weekshow them as they really are.
I didn't ask her a follow up question,and I don't know
if she's had more than one litter,but that's interesting.
You know, and actually that would bea really interesting thing to do,
(20:45):
is to start to make sealed predictionson what you think
they're going to be based on four weeksand start seeing how that comes out.
As long as you don't let that affecthow you interact
with the puppiesas you're going through the protocols.
Well, here's someone who writes in.
She's reading all of this going backand forth about, yes, you can tell.
(21:07):
No, you can't tell.
And she says,So it might be somewhat a guess.
And who knows when trying to place puppieswith their families
and then hope for the best and crossfingers.
Well, yes, it is.
It's a bit of a conundrum, isn't it?
We wish that we had a crystal balland could see the future of every puppy.
It's not so.
(21:29):
Certainly
all of these observations are validby the time those puppies
are going to their homesat ten, 12 weeks old,
you've got a pretty good pictureof those puppies.
And statisticallyyou're going to do a good job
placing those puppies at that age. It'sall part of it.
The puppy testing is part of it all.
(21:49):
Your puppy rearing protocols,
what you observed about them duringthis is part of it.
The things you observed about themfrom the time they're in the whelping box.
I mean, all of it is going intothis information bank and most of the time
we do make very good decisions,but nothing is ever going to make it 100%.
(22:10):
And I don't think any one thing
is going to be something that you can seeprospectively and see exactly
what trajectorythat personality trait is going to take
for the rest of that dog's life,especially very, very young traits.
They're valuable, taken in total with allthe rest of the information you have,
(22:33):
but they're like data points,none of which make any sense
except with referenceto a lot of other data points.
I just want to close this
podcast by
saying, I don't want to leave youwith the impression
that I'm against this kind of conversationabout
how early personality traits track
(22:57):
my sort of crusade is to to impressupon breeders
the importance of keeping an open mind
and not assigning labels to puppies,
because, as we discussed,that does not serve the puppy well.
And it also can make youas a breeder crazy with worrying
about puppieswhen there's nothing to worry about.
(23:18):
That having been said,
I really enjoyed this threadand I enjoyed everyone that wrote in.
There were great comments,lot of food for thought
and I hope we have the discussion againmore in the future.
If you like this podcast,
you'll love our Puppy Culture bundles.
We have bundles for breeders.
(23:40):
Bundles for puppy owners, bundleswith courses, bundles
for show puppies, bundles for pet puppies.
Check them all out at puppyculture.com.
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 earlyindicators of adult personality.
(00:25):
And here's the question:
Out of curiosity
how early have you noticed personalitytraits developing in your litters
that did stick around until the time theywent to their new homes or even beyond?
I know a puppy's personalitytruly doesn't settle
until they're much older,which is why temperament tests aren't
(00:48):
predictive of adult temperament,as we learned in Puppy Culture.
This is just for fun/curiosity.
And because my current litterseems to be showing some pretty
consistent temperamentsat only three weeks and my last litter
didn't really start to showthat until around five weeks.
(01:11):
This is a great question
because what's maddening about this
is that for sure, sometimes
puppies are born, who they are.
In literal answer to her question,I have had puppies
who were not even all the way outthe birth canal,
(01:31):
and they were already showing mewho they were.
And that remained consistentthroughout the life
of that animal.
But for every one of those,
there's five puppiesthat I thought for sure
we're going to be one way, and turned outto be a completely different way.
(01:54):
I think as breeders, it often feels to us
like personality traitsare extremely consistent from birth.
But I also think that there's strongconfirmation bias going on.
It's, it's emotionally satisfying.
And we remember the puppiesthat tracked very consistently,
(02:16):
and we also remember those aspectsof their very early behavior
that are consistentwith the adult behavior.
So there's a little bit of
hindsight
being 2020 when we're looking at thesevery early personality traits
and how they track with adult behavior.
(02:37):
I also think it's possible
that you can see personalities very early,
but exactly how
those personalities are going to expressthemselves is variable
because you just can't extrapolatehow that personality
(02:57):
is going to look like in behavioral terms.
As an example, Bijou.
I do remember in the whelping box,she was always the peacemaker.
If the other puppies were squabbling,she'd be like, Hey, come on, guys.
Can't we all just get along?
And, you know, she'd get visibly upsetwhen the other puppies squabbled.
(03:21):
She'd get in the middle of it.
She’d try and calm everyone down,and she's still that way.
But she's also not abovebeing the troublemaker herself.
If it suits her, she gets terribly upset
if the other dogs have disagreements.
But if she's on the couch sitting nextto my husband and Theo wants to get up,
(03:43):
she has no problem growling at himand telling him no.
So, yes, she is consistent from the time
she's been in the whelping box,she's been the peacemaker,
but only in the sense
of not wanting the other dogs to argue.
She's got no problem starting troubleherself if it's in her interest to do so.
(04:06):
Now, that's not something that we sawin her
as a baby puppy,But you got to think about it.
Three week old puppies, you know,
they don'treally have possession of anything.
They don't really have a strong senseof self in that way and ownership.
So, yes,
(04:26):
you can see some personality traits, but
only in that
very small portion of the dog's psyche
that is even available for examinationat three weeks old.
There'sso much more that's going to come online.
There are so many other
desires, drives,
(04:48):
just abilities and brain developmentthat just
literally doesn't exist yetwhen they're very young.
So extrapolating how what that looks like,
that three weekold personality to an adult,
you know, you're hardly going to be above
random chance much of the time.
(05:10):
The other thing about Bijou
is that she grew up to be extremely soft,
which was not at allhow she presented as a puppy.
But when you think about it,it can be a natural extension
of being uncomfortable with conflict.
So again, I can Monday morning quarterbackher personality
(05:35):
at three weeks old in the whelping boxand see all of her
adult personality traitsin that puppy behavior.
But I really don't thinkI could have guessed prospectively
how she would have grown upbased on what I saw in the whelping box.
Because again, that peacemaker
(05:56):
attitude that she hadcould have developed into a dog
that completely defers from conflictlike Daphne was.
It can be a dog that will avoid conflict
like Bijou,she has no axe to grind with anyone,
but if she's crossed, she has no problemstanding up for herself.
(06:17):
You could wind up with a dogthat just really is
afraid of other dogs and dislikesbeing around other dogs,
you could wind up with a dogthat has fear aggression.
I mean, all thesethings are possible. It's
like the Nile
Delta, all these fingerscoming out of this personality trait.
(06:37):
You have this personality traitof being uncomfortable with conflict.
Okay?
And that we can say the dog has,but how is it
going to express itself in a three weekold puppy?
It might be peacemakerin the whelping box, but to take that
and say, well, this is what the dog'sgoing to be like when it grows up,
you know, you really can't sayyou might have guessed right.
(07:00):
And then that's your confirmation bias.
You say, Oh yeah, you see, I knew,but you really don't know.
Another puppy in one of my litters
was one that I definitely
from the whelping boxflagged her for being extra
and I was keeping a close eye on her.
She was the worst with handling.
(07:22):
I could not get a good CER on herwith nail care.
She was not above growling at youif she didn't want you to do something.
And all I can
say is she grew up to be magical.
So sweet and gentle,
easy to care for, great with body
(07:43):
handling, obsessed with small creatures,
other dogs, people, cows, nothing but lovefor everything in the world.
And is a super easy dog.
Yes. She went to a great homewith great people.
But really, that only accountsfor so much.
Look, as I might add, her puppy behavior,
(08:06):
I can't see the dog she's become.
And I would not say thatthat is the only time
that I flagged a puppy for potentially
being a little bit more problematicthat the puppy has turned out
to be not only okay,but absolutely magical
even on a litter level, I do not see
(08:29):
consistency with puppy behaviorand adult behavior.
Daphne's second litter was the absolutemost mellow litter ever.
I called them my civilized puppies.
I remember thinking howwe would never have any trouble
with any of them because at ten weeks oldthey didn't guard things from each other.
(08:51):
They never squabbled,they never made a mess.
They were house trained.
They were completely even and calmwith any outside person or dog.
But two of those puppies grew upto have pretty severe same sex aggression,
which is not, oh, how shall I say,pathological in our breed.
It's, you know, same sex aggressioncan be normal in bull terriers.
(09:16):
And one of them was reactiveto small dogs, which again, you know,
maybe that could be within normal range.
But I never would have predictedthat in this litter of all the litters
I had, I would have thought thatlitter, we'd never have those problems.
Now, that having been
said, at least on a litter level,
(09:38):
there are some overall traits
that differ tremendously frombreed to breed.
So it's not like you don't see anything
in these puppies at this age.
It's just that if you never met a Vizsla,an adult Vizsla
or an adult Bull Terrier, and then you saw
(10:02):
a litter of Vizsla in the whelping boxat three weeks
old and a litter of bull terriersin a whelping box at three weeks old,
you definitely would say, well,these are not similar.
The behavior would be very different.
But I don't think that you would be able
to extrapolatewhat they would be like as adults.
(10:24):
And that's my point about this.
Now, why am I such a killjoy
when it comes to this topic?
I mean, really, what's the harmif breeders one look at puppies and say,
oh, look, I see this puppy is doing thisand it that means
(10:45):
the puppies are going to be like that.
Or, you know, looking back on itand seeing consistencies
and seeing personalitytraits that tracked.
There is a reason.
There's a reason I'm a killjoy about itbecause in my observation,
a lot of breeders
(11:05):
go through a lot of emotional turmoil
and potentially do
a lot of harm to their puppies
by ascribing bigger
personality traits to puppy behavior,
meaning to say
the puppy that maybe you can't
(11:27):
get a good CER on the nails as easily,
I don't think labeling that puppyas the ‘difficult one’ is helpful.
I think just saying this puppy right nowat this point in
time has not developed enough food drive
to overcome the natural distaste
(11:50):
that the puppy has for having their nailsdone.
So often times it's
just simply you can't balancethat classical conditioning
seesaw properly where you have to havesomething emotionally more salient
to give them in order to counter conditionsomething that they don't like.
(12:11):
If the puppy is too young,really still nursing, doesn't
like food much for whatever reason.
A lot of times you can't get a good CERon them because you don't have anything
to give them in exchangefor the thing that they don't like.
And that usually is a developmental thing.
So it's something thatif you just remain calm and wait it out
(12:33):
and keep trying day after day,you're going to see that turn around.
But if you jump to the conclusion that,oh, this puppy has body
sensitivity issues, you're going to tendto get stuck and not be willing
or think of really continuing to believein that puppy and work with that puppy.
(12:55):
And that'sreally what I want to save breeders from,
because breeders write in a lot
worried about puppy behavior.
It causes a lot of consternationand it causes
a lot of anguish for the breeder
and it can potentially hobblethe puppy with a label
that can be damagingbecause when you start believing
(13:17):
something about a puppy, that a puppyis a certain way, it unfortunately
can become a self-fulfilling prophecybecause you're seeing that in the puppy
and inadvertently sort of not,
I wouldn't use the word reinforcing, but
supporting that sort of view of the puppy.
(13:40):
Another thing that we get a lotis people writing in saying
that they have a bully puppy, a puppythat's
dominant on the other
puppies or rough or aggressiveto the other puppies.
And I'm telling you,
99 times out of
100, it'sbecause the puppy is developmentally
(14:03):
a little ahead of the other puppies, maybea little bigger than the other puppies.
Maybe not bigger,but maybe just more agile.
A lot of times the puppythat gets their legs under them first
figures out, Oh, I can run roughshodover these other puppies.
And you know, when you're talkingabout puppies in the well being barks,
the difference of twoor three days is is huge.
(14:26):
And that puppythat maybe just gets their legs under them
a little bit sooner and can run roughshodover the other puppies
learns that lessonand now reaches for that as a go to.
So behaviorallyit can start to create a personality,
(14:46):
but it's easy to change that as a breeder.
It's easy to take that puppy out,give them some time
with adult dogs, not ones that are goingto correct the puppy, but adult dogs
that are good shapersthat will shape that puppy down
just so that puppy learns that,Oh, I can't just get what I want by force.
(15:08):
I have to learn social negotiation.
Now, if instead of just remaining calmand doing this and I'm just going to put
a footnote here, Suzanne Shelton's article
Weaning Pen Riot's,you can find it in Madcap University
under free resources, under articles,weaning pen riots.
(15:31):
We go into this in detail.
But the point is, if you don't just
look at it sort of dispassionately
as just this is what's happeningand this is how I change it.
And you ascribe a personality
to that puppy and say, Well, this puppy,he's a dominant, and that's Ralph.
(15:52):
He's a troublemaker. He's dominant.
It makes you not want to tryand change it.
Right.
Because now you think, well,this is just the way this puppy is.
Okay, so now this puppy is a bad puppyor is a dominant puppy
or he's a troublemaker puppy.
So we're going to have to find a homethat is going to be able to deal
with a troublemaker.
And, you know, it just in nine timesout of ten it's just not true.
(16:15):
It's just a perfectly good, sweet puppy
that through a confluenceof circumstances, figured out that
they can boss the other puppies aroundand you can change that pretty easily.
So 100%,I’m no better than the next person.
You cut me, I bleed, right?
I'm always looking,What's this puppy going to be like?
(16:36):
Which one is the one that'sspeaking to me?
But even I really have to check myself
whenever I find myself starting to thinkthings about a puppy's personality
because it can really interferewith my ability
to objectively work with that puppyand do the best I can for that puppy.
(16:58):
I mean, for sure you have to seewhat's in front of you with these puppies.
So when there's a behavior,if the puppy is running
roughshod over the other puppiesor the puppy does seem to be a peacemaker
or the puppy does seem to have bodyhandling issues.
100% you you don't ignore that.
(17:19):
You take note, but you assume
that the behavior is malleable.
The point is you just don't ascribe
a bigger personality trait to the puppy
based on what you're seeingin the whelping box
or when the puppies are very youngbecause that could potentially
(17:43):
keep you from bringing your A-gameto the protocols with that puppy
because you've already made some kindof prejudgment, even a very deep,
almost subliminal prejudgmentabout who those puppies are.
So that's my
professional opinion on this topic.
And I will say the science onthis is limited,
(18:07):
but there have been a number of studiesthat have looked at
temperament testing of puppiesand some starting from neonatal straight
through, trying to develop predictorsof adult personality.
And the only thing that they have found
to have any consistencyin multiple studies
(18:28):
is exploratory behavior,which is interesting.
I love to hear what everyone elsehas found
about exploratory behavior,but I've been sort of tracking it.
And I can say, yes,I do think exploratory behavior does track
pretty much from
as soon as they're they're ambulatory. But
(18:51):
I'm going to be a contrarian here againand say
just because it hasn't been provendoesn't make it not true.
So even though studies have not found
consistent personality traits from, from
birth or puppy
hood onward,it doesn't mean that you're wrong.
If you as a breederhave seen consistent personality traits,
(19:15):
it just means that hasn't been identified
scientifically yet.
My experience is that personality
traits really don't trackwith any degree of consistency,
But you know,your experience might be different.
But again, not to beat a dead horse,
even if it is your experience that maybepersonality traits are consistent,
(19:41):
you still as a breeder arealways are going to do the best service to
your puppies by not making any assumptionsabout their personality
and just working with the behaviorsthat you see in front of you.
So this post also generateda lot of discussion.
(20:01):
And it was interesting,a couple of people wrote in and said that
the one thing that they have noticed to beconsistent is the level of drive.
But then other people said no,
they didn't see thatthe level of drive was the same.
It seemed likeit's about 50:50 in the group.
(20:22):
Some people saying, yes, some people aresaying no to the drive being consistent.
Now, here's one person who says,I knew the personalities
of my litter of sevenby the age of four weeks.
The notes I have from that weekshow them as they really are.
I didn't ask her a follow up question,and I don't know
if she's had more than one litter,but that's interesting.
You know, and actually that would bea really interesting thing to do,
(20:45):
is to start to make sealed predictionson what you think
they're going to be based on four weeksand start seeing how that comes out.
As long as you don't let that affecthow you interact
with the puppiesas you're going through the protocols.
Well, here's someone who writes in.
She's reading all of this going backand forth about, yes, you can tell.
(21:07):
No, you can't tell.
And she says,So it might be somewhat a guess.
And who knows when trying to place puppieswith their families
and then hope for the best and crossfingers.
Well, yes, it is.
It's a bit of a conundrum, isn't it?
We wish that we had a crystal balland could see the future of every puppy.
It's not so.
(21:29):
Certainly
all of these observations are validby the time those puppies
are going to their homesat ten, 12 weeks old,
you've got a pretty good pictureof those puppies.
And statisticallyyou're going to do a good job
placing those puppies at that age. It'sall part of it.
The puppy testing is part of it all.
(21:49):
Your puppy rearing protocols,
what you observed about them duringthis is part of it.
The things you observed about themfrom the time they're in the whelping box.
I mean, all of it is going intothis information bank and most of the time
we do make very good decisions,but nothing is ever going to make it 100%.
(22:10):
And I don't think any one thing
is going to be something that you can seeprospectively and see exactly
what trajectorythat personality trait is going to take
for the rest of that dog's life,especially very, very young traits.
They're valuable, taken in total with allthe rest of the information you have,
(22:33):
but they're like data points,none of which make any sense
except with referenceto a lot of other data points.
I just want to close this
podcast by
saying, I don't want to leave youwith the impression
that I'm against this kind of conversationabout
how early personality traits track
(22:57):
my sort of crusade is to to impressupon breeders
the importance of keeping an open mind
and not assigning labels to puppies,
because, as we discussed,that does not serve the puppy well.
And it also can make youas a breeder crazy with worrying
about puppieswhen there's nothing to worry about.
(23:18):
That having been said,
I really enjoyed this threadand I enjoyed everyone that wrote in.
There were great comments,lot of food for thought
and I hope we have the discussion againmore in the future.
If you like this podcast,
you'll love our Puppy Culture bundles.
We have bundles for breeders.
(23:40):
Bundles for puppy owners, bundleswith courses, bundles
for show puppies, bundles for pet puppies.
Check them all out at puppyculture.com.
Well, that's all for this time.
Thanks for listening.
Bye bye.
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