Episode 1 - Is the “Wallflower” Puppy the One for You?

​The person asking today’s question finds herself torn… she’s very attached to a particular puppy in a litter, but also feels like that puppy does not interact a lot with the rest of the litter. 

This person has previous experience with a puppy that was somewhat retiring within her litter, and that puppy grew up to be reactive to other dogs. The person is hoping that this new puppy will be her next big performance prospect, but she’s worried about winding up with another reactive dog that she can’t run in dog sports. What should she do?

​What it boils down to is three questions:

1. What can we tell about the temperament of a puppy by the way they interact with their littermates?
2. Does the behavior of a puppy toward her littermates predict the way she’ll will be as an adult?
   
3. How do I choose the best puppy for me if I want to do dog sports?
   

​In this episode I tackle those questions, give some practical tips for selecting a performance puppy prospect, and talk about emotionally untangling yourself from the “ghosts of dogs past” when picking a puppy.

​Listen wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe so you never miss an episode!

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Further reading and citations to the referenced studies and findings

What's The Significance of Puppy Testing? Shifting Your Lens For Better Results - Madcap University
​Jane Messineo Lindquist (Oct 2018)

Breed-Dependent Differences in the Onset of Fear-Related Avoidance Behavior in Puppies - researchgate.net
​Mary Morrow, Joseph Ottobre, Ann Ottobre, Peter Neville, Normand R St-Pierre, Nancy A. Dreschel and Joy Pate

TRANSCRIPT

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist, and this is a Puppy Culture Potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the discussion.

So the purpose of this podcast is to bring you highlights of our puppy culture discussion group. We get so many great questions and there's so much to say, and I've always wanted to share more with you than I possibly could do in writing.

So this is a way of doing that. What I'm going to be doing is sort of cherry picking key posts that really sparked a lot of great discussion and talking about them on the air. So let's jump right in with our first post because it's a great one.

I'm going to read this post that came into the puppy culture discussion group and it goes like this.

I'm noticing that the puppy that I want to keep seems like the least social in the pack. She isn't usually searching out play with her siblings and doesn't win any little play battles. She often resorts to running away than laying down. This makes me sad. This behavior reminds me a lot of my other pup that I got at nine weeks.

The breeder told me she was the same socially as the others, but it was pretty obvious to me in the videos I was seeing that she was not usually involved in the sibling play times. I still ended up getting her and she has been 100% fearful of dogs from the beginning. We manage it really well and had she not been living with a dog trainer, I'm not sure she would be as successful as she is.

Anyway, the puppy I want to keep really has my heart, but I'm concerned my pick puppy may be a similar scenario. Long story short, how often have you experienced the least social to the siblings? But super people social puppy become dog reactive in the future. The puppies are five and a half weeks old.

So that was the original post. That was the original question that she wrote in. Then I asked a follow up question, two follow up questions. Number one, what is it about this particular puppy that you find so compelling, and what are your plans for this puppy? These are Border Collie puppies. And her answer really was just as far as what she saw in the particular puppy was just that there was a connection right from the beginning.

And I can't argue with that because we've all felt that right as breeders, where we just hold that one in our hands and you're just like, “Oh, I know you, you're mine”. So there's that. But then she also said that she wants this to be her next big performance dog and also carry on her breeding program. So I just love, love this post because it gives me a chance to talk about so many things, at least four big topics, and also my personal experience.

So the four things that we're going to be talking about with this are, number one, predictability of temperament from, from puppy hood, fear periods, my personal experience with those two things, metrics for choosing a dog and also the ghost of dogs past. So let's just talk briefly about her top level question, which is the predictability of temperament. So how indicative is whatever she's seeing now, how much is that dispositive of what the puppies ultimate temperament is going to be?

And this has really been studied a lot, and it's been studied in some pretty deep, you know, very well designed studies. And, you know, there really is not any consistent predictability of, of temperament at any stage in puppy hood on adult, you know, temperament you can't really predict. No matter what anybody tells you, there's no sort of magic wand or magic looking glass that you're going to be able to see into the future.

That's not to say that, you know, we don't have things that we look at, but really, as far as being 100% predictable, there isn't. I have written about this and I will put a link to that article up on the website if you want to dig down into some citations. But suffice it to say these really early behavioral characteristics really just do not track with any predictability into adulthood.

Okay, So now let's look at the facts of what is in this post. So first of all, what jumps out at me is that these puppies are 5.5 weeks old, five and a half weeks old. Normally, I would say my puppies could be experiencing their initial fear response at this age. And that certainly could affect, you know, how a puppy behaves.

So I really don't, I try not to make too much judgments at all about my puppy's temperaments until much older, but especially around this time, you can really see some sort of almost outlier behaviors that will pass quickly. Okay, so just to recap, fear period, Right. Do you know how do you know if it's a fear period or if it's maybe something more like a personality dimension?

And the hallmarks of fear periods are that it's the acute onset, meaning a sudden onset, of fear of the familiar. So it's not a generalized fear. It's like they've walked past that little, you know, pig statue every day of their life. And one day they just whoa, they're afraid of it. That is transitory, meaning to say it passes quickly without any behavioral interventions.

So again, if I saw a puppy at five and a half weeks old that I thought was displaying some kind of behavior, like maybe not jumping into the fray, maybe acting a little weird, if that was sort of a new development, I would certainly not put too much stock in it and I'd wait to see if it just passed on its own within a couple of days and I would say we get this question, I mean, regularly, a couple times a month, somebody writes in with a puppy around five weeks or around eight weeks that is suddenly displaying fear. And it has always of the ones that wrote into us, it has always turned out that it was a fear period and it passed without any major behavioral intervention. So, you know, that's one thing that jumps out at me.

Not only would I not judge a five week old puppy because they're too young to really know, but, you know, they could be in a fear period. So that's, that's something. Now, as far as my experience with this, I mean, you know, there certainly are outliers that are just really displaying, let's say, either pathological behavior or they're just so amazing from such a young age that you just know.

But, I mean, 98% of the puppies kind of fall into that middle ground where they're, they're just puppies. You know, You really don't know. You really don't know at this age. And certainly the most retiring puppy has turned out to be the most bold in my litter and vice versa. You really can't say. And I do also have to say that a lot of people wrote in with very similar, you know, a lot of breeders wrote in on the same page, similar story, like you really can't tell and it changes so much in five and a half weeks is really too young, you know, to know.

So I've even had puppies much older, 10 to 12 weeks, actively avoiding engaging with Littermates and to the point where I had an eye on them and they turned out to be, I mean, really not just okay, but some of the best dogs I ever bred. Again, it's not like, oh, the ones that don't interact are the best or, you know, it's just there's no discernible real pattern to it.

What I will say, a lot of times when you have a puppy that like that that doesn't want to react, sometimes the rest of the litter are just hooligans and the puppy knows it. And or, the puppy can just be developmentally a little behind the other puppies, maybe just physically not quite as robust as the other puppies not able to hold their own.

And you know, maybe they just don't have that that how shall I say, like drive, I guess, for lack of a better word, to jump in the fray when they're smaller and less, they have less facility, physical facility. So again, it just all kind of funnels down to the same thing, which is that you can't put too much stock into what you're seeing at this age.

But I do have one thing that I have noticed that so far, at least is dispositive, not for a puppy that's going to grow up to be reactive, but for a puppy that is going to turn out to be a totally amazing and fabulous puppy. And that's the big hairy dog test. Now, bull terriers are not known for being, you know, dog tolerant. They're just generally, you know, we're always breeding toward them being better, but they have pretty significant same sex aggression and, you know, they're not indefinitely tolerant of other dogs. And their play style, frankly, is terrible. And most dogs get annoyed by it. So we're always looking for that sort of unicorn bull terrier that is going to be, you know, have all the joie de vive of the bull terrier, but yet not be just a butthead.

So I have noticed that, well, first of all, let me say we always have a big hairy dog over. That's like one of the rites of passage, as you saw that in puppy culture with the with the Newfoundland. We have friends that have Leonbergers. We always try to have something big, intimidating, hairy, just something that's really going to be a lot for them.

And we do that somewhere between 6 to 10 weeks. We now tend to do it a lot earlier than we used to, but suffice to say, suffice it to say we have this big hairy dog over and I have found that the puppy that shows the very least hesitancy about the big dog, the one that just runs right in and is like, “Oh, I have just, you are wonderful, I've been waiting my whole life to see something like you”, that's an awesome puppy. And that puppy is going to be stable and stay stable and be good with other dogs. That doesn't mean that the other puppies aren't going to be. It's just that that puppy, there's always that one puppy in the litter that is just at the head of the pack and just delighted to see the big hairy dog.

And that's going to be my most stable puppy. Is that true of everyone? I don't know. But that is the one thing that so far I have seen that's pretty dispositive about this one dimension of dog reactivity. So again, just to sum it up, I would not say that you can predict dog reactivity by the big hairy dog metric, but you can probably pick an outstanding puppy using the big hairy dog metric.

Now I'm going to talk about metrics for choosing a performance dog. That is also something that comes up a lot like how do I know you know which dog to pick for performance? Listen, I have it all my friends that do performance have it. We're always looking for that dog that that is going to be able to do performance, have the emotional stability and talent to do it.

And here's what I'm going to say. If you're an agility person, you know that agility itself, honestly, it's it's the behaviors are not that hard to teach, right? I mean, it's rare that it's really a training issue that's holding a team back. What holds most teams back are behavioral issues, particularly environmental sensitivity. And that is very much a genetic issue.

I mean, assuming that you're going to do all the right socialization, which I really think most people that get a performance prospect puppy are, you know, they're very invested in this and they are going to do all the right foundation training, they're going to do the socialization. But, you know, there's a genetic component here that you really are not going to be able to change a lot.

You can knock the edges off of it and socialization and early exposures do go a long way. But the baseline level of social pressure that the dog feels in public is hardwired into them. So when you're looking at that litter and trying to pick your next big performance prospect, you're balancing that talent and drive against whatever you're going to have regarding emotional environmental sensitivity.

So to sum it up, if I were looking for a performance prospect, I'd be looking for the dog that absolutely is most comfortable in his own skin in public. That would be the number one trait I would be looking for. And then I would pick a dog with structural soundness, good angulation and good feet. If you have that sound mind in a sound body, you can build talent and drive because you won't be stuck in behavior mod camp or physical therapy for most of the dog's career.

So again, circling back to my original poster's question, is this puppy that the original poster is talking about, that puppy? I can't say that's for her to decide, but I will say if you are committed to a performance dog and something that's going to carry on your breeding program of performance dogs, I think that you might have to put some of your emotion about this particular puppy aside and try and be objective.

Look at them again at ten, 12, 16 weeks. I find for my breed, 16 weeks is a much better age to look at temperaments than eight or ten weeks. They really still can change a lot. I find by 16 weeks I kind of really, really know who they are. So again, you know, if you had a choice to run on a couple of puppies, I'd run a couple on and see how they look at 16 weeks.

So let me close this discussion about this particular post with some comments on the ghosts of dogs past, because if you remember what really is upsetting this particular person is that she has another dog that she loves very much. But the dog is reactive and it didn't, you know, reach her expectations. And, you know, first of all, I would comfort her by saying there's a couple of things that are different here.

Number one, you're talking about a 5.5 week old puppy versus a nine week old puppy. I mean, you knew at nine weeks when you saw that puppy that the puppy wasn't tracking the way that you really wanted it to. You got you got time on the puppy that you have at home, I mean, if the puppy's looking weird to you, what, nine weeks? That's maybe a different discussion. But 5.5 weeks, you know, that's a lot of pressure to put on this poor little puppy. I feel you right, Because we've all been there like we have these experiences and we just don't want it to happen again. But what I'm going to say is don't project onto these little puppies your past problems.

Give them a chance. Be open minded. They all deserve that chance. And again, you know, you have to parse out how much of this was you and how much of it was the puppy meaning to say if you walked right into a situation where you knew that that puppy maybe wasn't going to be ideal. I mean, you know, that that that is not something that you you need to worry about because you can control that right now. You know better.

So I don't I don't want to say this as an admonishment or blaming you more to the point that you know how to avoid this. Right. You've learned your lesson. So, I wouldn't worry about it. Now, the other thing I'm going to say is that, unfortunately, there are a lot of emotional black boxes, right? So puppies, as they're developing, they have genetic black boxes that you really can't look into.

Okay. So they're going to be the genes are going to be activated as the puppy matures, as the environment interacts with the puppies. And, you know, things can change a lot for the better or for the worse. And, you know, it's really like a box of chocolates, you don't know what you're going to get. It can look good on the outside, but, you know, sometimes you get a surprise.

But that is part of what it is to raise something from puppy hood. If I were looking for a puppy for performance or for anything else for that matter, I would be looking at the temperament of the parents and ideally, if I could, the grandparents. So if I have four grandparents and two parents with the kind of temperament that I want, I feel like I'm stacking the deck very much in my favor with that puppy.

I think that obviously you have to look at, you know, you can't you can't ignore obvious red flags with the puppy and you're going to try and pick the best puppy at the time. But I think that as far as those, again, genetic black boxes that you don't know about that are going to come online later, your best indicator is going to be the immediate ancestors.

Now, that all having been said even then, you know what I'm always saying, like I say in my breeders course that dogs have a low investment and high assortment evolutionary strategy, meaning to say they have litters, so they really don't have a lot of investment in each individual puppy. And their strategy is to have a high assortment, a high assortment of of, you know, physical characteristics and a high assortment of personality types.

And, you know, they only need like one of those puppies from that litter to live for them to be replaced. And if two live well, that's great. So they can afford to kind of mix things up. If they have nine puppies, they're always trying to spread their, you know, spread their money all over the table. As breeders of course, we're always trying to concentrate genetic characteristics, but you know that we're always working against nature with this.

So what that means to you if you're buying a puppy, is you have no guarantees. And my performance friends and I have had this discussion many times and if you really, really A. Can't have more than one dog or can't keep a bunch of dogs. So you know if you're getting a puppy and if the puppy washes out, then you can't do performance and B. You absolutely performance is your number one thing. You've got to do it.

You know, your best bet is to get a retired show animal because by three years old, you know what that animal's temperament is going to be? I mean, the animals reached stable emotional maturity. I think some breeds like maybe Rottweilers, it might even be a little bit later like four. But normally, by the time a dog is done with their show and or breeding career, you know, you know what you're getting.

Now, yes, you're going to miss out on all that agility foundation or obedience foundation that's really fun to do when they're quite young. But I'm going to say on the positive side of this, you know, just going into a show ring and ignoring other dogs and again, becoming just just so environmentally stable, just so emotionally non-reactive to environments, I mean, that's huge.

That's really kind of the best training you can have. The best foundation, emotional foundation, groundwork you can have for a performance dog. This is not applicable to this original poster, I would not say, but I'm sure a lot of people are listening to this and wondering for themselves, you know, how do they pick their next dog? And so, you know, my answer is look at the grandparents and the parents.

Take the puppy that seems to you to be the most emotionally stable and comfortable in their own skin at the time when the breeders placing the puppies and run with that puppy. Or if you just really can't, you just need a sure thing, you just need to know everything, get an adult dog, preferably a retired show dog.

So if you want to read the original post and all the really great answers that were posted by all the breeders and other people that wrote in, I'm going to put a link up on the show page to the original post and you can read it there.

Well, that's it for this time. If you have any questions or something you'd like me to talk about on the air, join us on the Puppy Culture Discussion Group on Facebook or visit the show page at madcapradio.com and drop your question there.

Thanks for listening. Bye bye.