December 23, 2025 • 17 mins
This episode is about the possible reasons why very young puppies sometimes shiver after big sensory experiences, especially after eating food from a dish for the first few times.
We discuss:
- The neurological organization function of shivering
- Different theories about shivering after new experiences, such as being put in a new room or eating food for the first time
- How shivering may prime the puppies' sensory system for “wonder”
Visit our website www.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 CulturePotluck podcast.
You bring the topics,
we bring the conversation.
This episode's topic is about puppies
(00:22):
that shiver after new big sensory
experiences, particularly after eating.
And I'm not goingto read the original post
because the topic came upin the comments on the post.
But what I'll say generally is thatthe post was
(00:44):
a video of a three and a half weekold puppy
that had just eaten a mealand was vocalizing.
And the puppy also happened to be sort
of trembling or shivering.
And a number of people wrote in, well,you know, the puppy's too cold.
He needs look, he's shivering.
(01:04):
He needs a heat source.
And the original posterreplied, it's 75°F in the room.
Should be warm enough. It was not a breed
that was extremely small or tended to runcold.
In fact, it's a breedthat probably runs hot.
So I mentioned that shivering is commonwhen puppies are first
(01:27):
consuming food on their own,or even just drinking milk on their own.
And I used to think that it was
because the food was too coldor the room was too cold.
But no matter howI adjusted those variables,
no matter how warm I made the room,no matter how warm I made the food,
even if I added like a snuggle safeor a heat source,
(01:49):
nothing seemed to make a difference,
at least not with those first few meals.
Meanwhile, I started noticing
in our discussion groups that
breeders were writing in and reporting
that their puppies were shakingor shivering with other kinds
(02:10):
of new big sensory experiences, thingslike being carried into new room,
placed on a new surface, given some sortof new tactile object or toy.
And of course,
often also in response to first foods.
The thing is,
these events were happening
(02:33):
generallybefore the initial fear response,
and they did not appear to have any
noticeable emotion componentother than maybe the discomfort
of the the shaking or trembling.
And I've come to believethat this is just a sensory
integration response, especially
(02:56):
because these breeders,these other breeders have reported
similar responsesaround this age to any new big
sensory experience.
The discussion aroundthis was super interesting.
And I want to share some of these commentswith you.
Here's one we have always referred to this
(03:16):
as the meat shakes,as it consistently happens
after the first few mealsof meat milk slurry.
And then someone else said, yup, this.
We see it in neonatal kittensaround the same age from the same thing.
Meat shakes.
(03:37):
Yeah.
A fewpeople mentioned seeing it in kittens,
and at least one other member reported
seeing it in goats as well.
Here's another.
Never saw it in our first 23 letters,but in current litter,
two of them did that during the first weekwhen I started to give them food,
(03:57):
they shivered after eatingmaybe 15 minutes, then slept peacefully.
Always the same. Two pups.
Normally I give puppies their first mealwhen they're 3.5 or 4 weeks old,
but this time the litter was bigand mama didn't have much milk,
so I started warmed starter mooseplus goat milk
(04:18):
when the pups were twoand a half weeks old.
I didn't see it any more afterthe puppies were three and a half weeks.
Me talking again.
Let's put a pin in that.
Could there be an age differential?
Here's another one.
I suspect it's a physiological responseto increased blood
(04:40):
flow to the GItract to aid digestion of the new food.
At this age, the puppies have an immaturesystem, to mean consistent
or adequate hemostatic pressurein response to altered blood flow demands.
So they shiver as they have changedperipheral or other blood flow.
(05:00):
That's just my theory.
I don't know if there's any truth to it,but it makes sense to me.
And then somebody responded.
That was my take as well.
I also noticed that their feet felt cold.
So me again, interesting
blood being diverted for digestion
(05:21):
and the immature systemfor maintaining hemostatic pressure.
Interesting. Yeah.
Could be.
Especially with the sort ofsmoking gun of the cold feet.
Here's another one.
I'm not a breeder,but I did use Puppy Culture
because my breeder used itand recommended it.
So I read and learn and learn and read.
(05:44):
I do have an adult autistic child
and she had the same phenomenonas a young girl.
Her clinicians explained it to meand forgive me if I do not use
the most technical terminology,but here's the summary.
When nervous systems are in the middleof a major growth phase called
the transitional period,during this window, sensory pathways
(06:10):
touch and smell, proprioception,
are rapidly turning on.
The brain is shiftingfrom primitive reflexes
to early conscious processing.
The nervous system is still learning how
to integrate new information smoothly.
A brief shiver is the nervous systems wayof calibrating itself
(06:34):
when something new entersthe sensory world.
This is often calleda transient sensory integration tremor.
The brainstem,
thalamus, cortexhandoff is still stabilizing.
The shiver is the bridge.
The process is galvanizing the pathwaysthat give rise to being open
(06:58):
to a world of wonderment.
Yeah.
I mean, it makes a lot of sense.
Sensory integration tremor.
It it does seem like a match.
But note that in humans at least,
the sensory integrationtremors are brief and transitory.
(07:19):
Puppies tend to shake for a good stretch
after eating or having a big experience,
but I definitely thinkthat this is describing
at least a component of what's going on.
You know,there's also this concept of frisson
which is the chills and tremorsthat you get with tremendous
(07:40):
emotional experience,like listening to music
or just having any kind of likewatching a movie that is very emotional.
The goosebumps that you get.
In any event,
when the parasympatheticnervous system is activated,
it can cause this kind of releasethat causes the body to shake.
(08:04):
And eating something good
and pleasurable,especially if it's never happened to you
before, definitely could activatethe parasympathetic nervous system.
That'swhy training with food rewards has such
a strong positive effect.
In human babies,I've heard this called the want shiver.
(08:27):
If you give a baby something new,especially something they like.
It can definitely elicita shaking or shivering response.
But again, in humans at least,
these are usually very short duration,just like that.
As she described it,that sort of little bridge.
In puppies.
It tends to be of a longer duration,but I'm just going to say,
(08:50):
let's add sensory integration tremorto this list of things
that could it could either beor could be contributing factors.
Here's another comment.
After food makes sense,
need to be in a parasympathetic state
to quote rest and digest, unquote.
(09:12):
And then she put up a quote here.
Parasympathetic shaking refersto the natural body mechanism
of shaking to release tensionand restore the nervous system to a calm
rest and digest stateafter a stressful event.
It's an involuntary response, also knownas neurogenic tremory, that helps the body
(09:34):
return to a parasympathetic stateby releasing stored sympathetic energy.
Me again.
Essentially, it's an adrenaline dump.
And also just an adjacent topic that I'mnot going to go way down this rabbit hole.
But just because something is pleasurabledoes not mean it's not stressful.
(09:56):
Big emotional events,even if it's positive emotional events,
it it's stressful for the body
to integrate all of this amazing knowledgethat's coming in that,
wow, there's this stuffI can put in my mouth,
and then it goes down on my stomachand it does, oh, wow.
This is amazing.
(10:18):
It's still stress in the senseof taxing the nervous system.
And the body.
Okay.
And here's a different takefrom another member.
Could be.
Interesting topic.
However, shiveringcan definitely be caused
by different physiologic pathways.
(10:39):
Thermogenesis or sympathetic
nervous system activation.
One pathway is just tryingto regulate body temperature.
The other is responding to fearor excitement.
If puppies are shaking whileeating or anticipation of eating,
I'd say that's maybe the same thingas integrating new experiences.
(11:04):
Mine shiver after meals,
which sounds like a common thing,based on the comments.
I think that even in a warm room,
their system just needs to shiver
like someone with a fever will shiver.
Their core bodytemperature drops when they eat food
other than milk the first few times.
(11:26):
Is it possiblethat their thermoregulation system
is just coming online fully at the agewhen they start eating food?
This is a
really interesting comment,because this ties
back to the earlier commentthat someone made
about younger puppiesbeing more likely to shake,
(11:48):
because by this theory,the younger puppies
would have lesswell developed thermoregulation
and be more likely to actually get coldwhen they eat.
It's a really interesting
and appealing argument,but I do have to say,
the puppies that have done it,that I've had, that have done it,
(12:09):
have done it,even when I make their formula
that they're lappingvery warm, warmer than body temperature.
So you kind of have to wonderif this were true,
you know, why wouldn'tthey get the shakes when they nurse?
Why is it when transition to food.
Well, here's another theorythis breeder writes in and I quote.
(12:33):
It's called gluttony.
This is why pups should have a dish each.
So not to overeat.
Slow and steady.
It doesn't happen.
Yeah.
At least 4 or 5 breeders wrote inand said they felt the shaking was caused
by overeating.
And interestingly, all of those breederswere bull terrier breeders.
(12:59):
I mean,there were a couple hundred responses,
and it's not like it was mostly bullterrier people.
It was proportionatelyprobably the same amount of bull terrier
people as there are bullterrier breeders to other breeders.
So it's not like the bull terrierpeople were overrepresented,
so we got a lot of differingpoints of view from them.
(13:20):
I mean, it seems like this is a phenomenon
definitely recognized in our breed.
Overeating is not somethingthat I have controlled for,
so I do wonder if it's possiblethat once they're eating on their own,
they're capable ofjust getting more food down
their gullet more quickly,than would be possible while nursing.
(13:45):
The last few litters I've had
have been less eagerto take food early in general
and been less, I would saygluttonous than my previous litters.
So there's that.
Maybe. Maybe there is something to this.
Maybe those puppies
were self-regulating in a waythat some of my other litters didn't.
I also have become a lot more methodicalabout my weaning process
(14:09):
and how I introduce food,
and I tend to build it upmuch more slowly than I used to,
instead of just throwing a plate of slopat the puppies, I'm
adding small amounts of different foodsover time,
so it's possiblethat that's a contributing reason
why I haven't seen itin my most recent litters.
It's not something I've trackedin the past this over eating, but
(14:32):
it's an interesting theory and I'm goingto pay more attention to it in the future.
I was so fascinated by this conversation
that I put up a pollto see how prevalent the phenomenon was.
Now, if I had been clever,I would have given a choice
for no, I've never seen this phenomenon,
(14:54):
but I didn't make that one of the choices,
so I didn't capture that data.
I can say just from the commentsthat were made that many,
if not most, of the total littersin the world do not do this.
And for sure not every litter will do it.
I would say I've seen itin about 25% of my own litters.
(15:17):
So a total of 232people answered this poll.
And here's what they said:
131 breeders, 56% said
that they had seen this phenomenonafter eating, 43 breeders,
19% said they had seen it
when putting thepuppy in a new room or space,
(15:40):
40 breeders, 17%
said they had seen itwhen placing a puppy on a new surface,
nine breeders, 4%
had seen it when a puppies lifted, six
breeders, 3% noticed itwhen meeting new people.
And then two breeders, 1% of the total
(16:03):
saw it, when giving puppiesa new toy or sensory object.
So this was a really interestingdiscussion.
If you're on any of our Facebookdiscussion groups,
please do stop byand share your experience.
If you're not already partof our discussion groups,
you can go to our fanpage, Puppy Culture on Facebook.
(16:24):
We did have this discussion there as well,
but I can't recommend enough that you joinone of our discussion groups.
You don't need to be part of our courses
to join the Puppy Culturediscussion group on Facebook.
And if you ask anybody who's part ofthese groups, they're going to tell you,
these are great, safe spacesfor intelligent
(16:45):
conversation about dogs.
If you liked this podcast,you'll love our breeder discounts.
Breeders.
You can get your puppy owners offto the right start,
and also get a nice discountwhen you buy four or more copies
of our Puppy Courseor any of our Puppy Owner bundles.
Check them out at puppyculture.com.
(17:09):
Well, that's it for this time.
Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.
And this is a Puppy CulturePotluck podcast.
You bring the topics,
we bring the conversation.
This episode's topic is about puppies
(00:22):
that shiver after new big sensory
experiences, particularly after eating.
And I'm not goingto read the original post
because the topic came upin the comments on the post.
But what I'll say generally is thatthe post was
(00:44):
a video of a three and a half weekold puppy
that had just eaten a mealand was vocalizing.
And the puppy also happened to be sort
of trembling or shivering.
And a number of people wrote in, well,you know, the puppy's too cold.
He needs look, he's shivering.
(01:04):
He needs a heat source.
And the original posterreplied, it's 75°F in the room.
Should be warm enough. It was not a breed
that was extremely small or tended to runcold.
In fact, it's a breedthat probably runs hot.
So I mentioned that shivering is commonwhen puppies are first
(01:27):
consuming food on their own,or even just drinking milk on their own.
And I used to think that it was
because the food was too coldor the room was too cold.
But no matter howI adjusted those variables,
no matter how warm I made the room,no matter how warm I made the food,
even if I added like a snuggle safeor a heat source,
(01:49):
nothing seemed to make a difference,
at least not with those first few meals.
Meanwhile, I started noticing
in our discussion groups that
breeders were writing in and reporting
that their puppies were shakingor shivering with other kinds
(02:10):
of new big sensory experiences, thingslike being carried into new room,
placed on a new surface, given some sortof new tactile object or toy.
And of course,
often also in response to first foods.
The thing is,
these events were happening
(02:33):
generallybefore the initial fear response,
and they did not appear to have any
noticeable emotion componentother than maybe the discomfort
of the the shaking or trembling.
And I've come to believethat this is just a sensory
integration response, especially
(02:56):
because these breeders,these other breeders have reported
similar responsesaround this age to any new big
sensory experience.
The discussion aroundthis was super interesting.
And I want to share some of these commentswith you.
Here's one we have always referred to this
(03:16):
as the meat shakes,as it consistently happens
after the first few mealsof meat milk slurry.
And then someone else said, yup, this.
We see it in neonatal kittensaround the same age from the same thing.
Meat shakes.
(03:37):
Yeah.
A fewpeople mentioned seeing it in kittens,
and at least one other member reported
seeing it in goats as well.
Here's another.
Never saw it in our first 23 letters,but in current litter,
two of them did that during the first weekwhen I started to give them food,
(03:57):
they shivered after eatingmaybe 15 minutes, then slept peacefully.
Always the same. Two pups.
Normally I give puppies their first mealwhen they're 3.5 or 4 weeks old,
but this time the litter was bigand mama didn't have much milk,
so I started warmed starter mooseplus goat milk
(04:18):
when the pups were twoand a half weeks old.
I didn't see it any more afterthe puppies were three and a half weeks.
Me talking again.
Let's put a pin in that.
Could there be an age differential?
Here's another one.
I suspect it's a physiological responseto increased blood
(04:40):
flow to the GItract to aid digestion of the new food.
At this age, the puppies have an immaturesystem, to mean consistent
or adequate hemostatic pressurein response to altered blood flow demands.
So they shiver as they have changedperipheral or other blood flow.
(05:00):
That's just my theory.
I don't know if there's any truth to it,but it makes sense to me.
And then somebody responded.
That was my take as well.
I also noticed that their feet felt cold.
So me again, interesting
blood being diverted for digestion
(05:21):
and the immature systemfor maintaining hemostatic pressure.
Interesting. Yeah.
Could be.
Especially with the sort ofsmoking gun of the cold feet.
Here's another one.
I'm not a breeder,but I did use Puppy Culture
because my breeder used itand recommended it.
So I read and learn and learn and read.
(05:44):
I do have an adult autistic child
and she had the same phenomenonas a young girl.
Her clinicians explained it to meand forgive me if I do not use
the most technical terminology,but here's the summary.
When nervous systems are in the middleof a major growth phase called
the transitional period,during this window, sensory pathways
(06:10):
touch and smell, proprioception,
are rapidly turning on.
The brain is shiftingfrom primitive reflexes
to early conscious processing.
The nervous system is still learning how
to integrate new information smoothly.
A brief shiver is the nervous systems wayof calibrating itself
(06:34):
when something new entersthe sensory world.
This is often calleda transient sensory integration tremor.
The brainstem,
thalamus, cortexhandoff is still stabilizing.
The shiver is the bridge.
The process is galvanizing the pathwaysthat give rise to being open
(06:58):
to a world of wonderment.
Yeah.
I mean, it makes a lot of sense.
Sensory integration tremor.
It it does seem like a match.
But note that in humans at least,
the sensory integrationtremors are brief and transitory.
(07:19):
Puppies tend to shake for a good stretch
after eating or having a big experience,
but I definitely thinkthat this is describing
at least a component of what's going on.
You know,there's also this concept of frisson
which is the chills and tremorsthat you get with tremendous
(07:40):
emotional experience,like listening to music
or just having any kind of likewatching a movie that is very emotional.
The goosebumps that you get.
In any event,
when the parasympatheticnervous system is activated,
it can cause this kind of releasethat causes the body to shake.
(08:04):
And eating something good
and pleasurable,especially if it's never happened to you
before, definitely could activatethe parasympathetic nervous system.
That'swhy training with food rewards has such
a strong positive effect.
In human babies,I've heard this called the want shiver.
(08:27):
If you give a baby something new,especially something they like.
It can definitely elicita shaking or shivering response.
But again, in humans at least,
these are usually very short duration,just like that.
As she described it,that sort of little bridge.
In puppies.
It tends to be of a longer duration,but I'm just going to say,
(08:50):
let's add sensory integration tremorto this list of things
that could it could either beor could be contributing factors.
Here's another comment.
After food makes sense,
need to be in a parasympathetic state
to quote rest and digest, unquote.
(09:12):
And then she put up a quote here.
Parasympathetic shaking refersto the natural body mechanism
of shaking to release tensionand restore the nervous system to a calm
rest and digest stateafter a stressful event.
It's an involuntary response, also knownas neurogenic tremory, that helps the body
(09:34):
return to a parasympathetic stateby releasing stored sympathetic energy.
Me again.
Essentially, it's an adrenaline dump.
And also just an adjacent topic that I'mnot going to go way down this rabbit hole.
But just because something is pleasurabledoes not mean it's not stressful.
(09:56):
Big emotional events,even if it's positive emotional events,
it it's stressful for the body
to integrate all of this amazing knowledgethat's coming in that,
wow, there's this stuffI can put in my mouth,
and then it goes down on my stomachand it does, oh, wow.
This is amazing.
(10:18):
It's still stress in the senseof taxing the nervous system.
And the body.
Okay.
And here's a different takefrom another member.
Could be.
Interesting topic.
However, shiveringcan definitely be caused
by different physiologic pathways.
(10:39):
Thermogenesis or sympathetic
nervous system activation.
One pathway is just tryingto regulate body temperature.
The other is responding to fearor excitement.
If puppies are shaking whileeating or anticipation of eating,
I'd say that's maybe the same thingas integrating new experiences.
(11:04):
Mine shiver after meals,
which sounds like a common thing,based on the comments.
I think that even in a warm room,
their system just needs to shiver
like someone with a fever will shiver.
Their core bodytemperature drops when they eat food
other than milk the first few times.
(11:26):
Is it possiblethat their thermoregulation system
is just coming online fully at the agewhen they start eating food?
This is a
really interesting comment,because this ties
back to the earlier commentthat someone made
about younger puppiesbeing more likely to shake,
(11:48):
because by this theory,the younger puppies
would have lesswell developed thermoregulation
and be more likely to actually get coldwhen they eat.
It's a really interesting
and appealing argument,but I do have to say,
the puppies that have done it,that I've had, that have done it,
(12:09):
have done it,even when I make their formula
that they're lappingvery warm, warmer than body temperature.
So you kind of have to wonderif this were true,
you know, why wouldn'tthey get the shakes when they nurse?
Why is it when transition to food.
Well, here's another theorythis breeder writes in and I quote.
(12:33):
It's called gluttony.
This is why pups should have a dish each.
So not to overeat.
Slow and steady.
It doesn't happen.
Yeah.
At least 4 or 5 breeders wrote inand said they felt the shaking was caused
by overeating.
And interestingly, all of those breederswere bull terrier breeders.
(12:59):
I mean,there were a couple hundred responses,
and it's not like it was mostly bullterrier people.
It was proportionatelyprobably the same amount of bull terrier
people as there are bullterrier breeders to other breeders.
So it's not like the bull terrierpeople were overrepresented,
so we got a lot of differingpoints of view from them.
(13:20):
I mean, it seems like this is a phenomenon
definitely recognized in our breed.
Overeating is not somethingthat I have controlled for,
so I do wonder if it's possiblethat once they're eating on their own,
they're capable ofjust getting more food down
their gullet more quickly,than would be possible while nursing.
(13:45):
The last few litters I've had
have been less eagerto take food early in general
and been less, I would saygluttonous than my previous litters.
So there's that.
Maybe. Maybe there is something to this.
Maybe those puppies
were self-regulating in a waythat some of my other litters didn't.
I also have become a lot more methodicalabout my weaning process
(14:09):
and how I introduce food,
and I tend to build it upmuch more slowly than I used to,
instead of just throwing a plate of slopat the puppies, I'm
adding small amounts of different foodsover time,
so it's possiblethat that's a contributing reason
why I haven't seen itin my most recent litters.
It's not something I've trackedin the past this over eating, but
(14:32):
it's an interesting theory and I'm goingto pay more attention to it in the future.
I was so fascinated by this conversation
that I put up a pollto see how prevalent the phenomenon was.
Now, if I had been clever,I would have given a choice
for no, I've never seen this phenomenon,
(14:54):
but I didn't make that one of the choices,
so I didn't capture that data.
I can say just from the commentsthat were made that many,
if not most, of the total littersin the world do not do this.
And for sure not every litter will do it.
I would say I've seen itin about 25% of my own litters.
(15:17):
So a total of 232people answered this poll.
And here's what they said:
131 breeders, 56% said
that they had seen this phenomenonafter eating, 43 breeders,
19% said they had seen it
when putting thepuppy in a new room or space,
(15:40):
40 breeders, 17%
said they had seen itwhen placing a puppy on a new surface,
nine breeders, 4%
had seen it when a puppies lifted, six
breeders, 3% noticed itwhen meeting new people.
And then two breeders, 1% of the total
(16:03):
saw it, when giving puppiesa new toy or sensory object.
So this was a really interestingdiscussion.
If you're on any of our Facebookdiscussion groups,
please do stop byand share your experience.
If you're not already partof our discussion groups,
you can go to our fanpage, Puppy Culture on Facebook.
(16:24):
We did have this discussion there as well,
but I can't recommend enough that you joinone of our discussion groups.
You don't need to be part of our courses
to join the Puppy Culturediscussion group on Facebook.
And if you ask anybody who's part ofthese groups, they're going to tell you,
these are great, safe spacesfor intelligent
(16:45):
conversation about dogs.
If you liked this podcast,you'll love our breeder discounts.
Breeders.
You can get your puppy owners offto the right start,
and also get a nice discountwhen you buy four or more copies
of our Puppy Courseor any of our Puppy Owner bundles.
Check them out at puppyculture.com.
(17:09):
Well, that's it for this time.
Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
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