Episode 14 - Growling Puppies - Should You Be Worried?

2/29/2024

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

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

EPISODE 14 - TRANSCRIPT

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 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 temperaments and have been going through the Puppy Culture process like little pro’s.

One thing we've noticed over the last week is if they want to hop down when a puppy owner or friend is holding them, they'll do a little frustrated growl or bark. I hesitate to say growl, though I'm sure you will understand it's more of a “let me down” kind of 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? Is this something we should be concerned about?

Okay, this is me again. So first I'm going to sort of address this particular case. And then second, we're going to have a discussion about what is normal in terms of growling when restrained. So here's the quick answer.

In this particular case, you know, it's interesting. It's a very common thing that for some reason, pet people insist on restraining puppies that don't want to be held. Even very experienced dog owners will reach and grab and restrain puppies. And working on conditioning and emotional response to restraint is super important for breeders. We have several protocols on this for breeders in Puppy Culture and also Shaping Emotional 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 is that you do want to counter condition that natural response of aversions to 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 address this also in depth in our puppy course at Madcap University, we go into detail about the exact ratio of reinforcement that you should have depending on how your puppies reacting.

We have protocols for picking up and interrupting puppies, feeding them, putting them down. So it's not like I 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 puppy out of the puppy, nor should you expect to. Sometimes they don't want to be held. Sometimes they would rather 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 diagnostic of anything. It is unreasonable to expect them to 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 often surprisingly tone deaf to this and are just not open to hearing what the puppy is telling them.

So my follow up question for 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, which is why the behavior came as a bit of surprise.

We find all the litter highly tolerant and attachment seeking, but I guess we recognize that seven week old pups are generally less interested in a nice cuddle than noodling around most of the time.

Exactly. I think, you know, in this case and this is what I advise this breeder, you might look more at what's going on with the person who's holding the puppy and evaluate if they're being responsive to what the puppy is telling them.

So I think really while yes, absolutely we counter condition this. Absolutely. That is the whole basis of Shaping Emotional Responses. But in this particular case, this is a teaching moment for the puppy owner. This is a moment to teach the puppy owner what is a reasonable expectation for a puppy this age. So let's go back then and talk in more general terms about a seven week old puppy growling at you when you restrain it or do something that they don't like.

I mean, not all puppies will push back against restraint with a growl. Some will go catatonic, some will just squirm, some will wine. 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 start with the root cause of the issue, which is that puppies don't want to be restrained. This is the fundamental issue, okay? Because people appear to think that with training and Puppy Culture, puppies will somehow not feel the normal range of puppy emotions. And I'm telling you, the vast majority of puppies just don't like to be restrained and they don't like to cuddle.

Not much. No training is going to change that in a young puppy. On the whole, most puppies would rather be on the ground doing stuff, biting you or playing with other puppies. That's just a natural fact and not a problem that has to be fixed. It's where they are developmentally. They look cute and you want to cuddle them, but they don't much like it.

So let's just establish that almost no puppy wants to be restrained. So the puppy, the growls at you for restraining him is not fundamentally different than the puppy that just squirms or the puppy that goes catatonic or the puppy that whimpers. The internal state of the puppy is the same. The difference is what tools the puppy feels he has at his disposal to communicate that internal state to you.

The difference between a growl and a squirm is difference in degree, not kind. So should you worry about the puppy that growls at you? Well, for sure. It's information. It tells you what that puppy is going to reach for when there's conflict. So it's not like it's meaningless information. But again, the overwhelming chances are it's totally normal. Most breeds are hardwired to push against conflict.

When you look at the breed standards of most breeds, most dogs did at one time fulfill some kind of either guardian or hunting function that required them to stand up in fairly daunting situations with courage. Those are the puppies that are going to growl at you when you restrain them against their will, you know? And then you have puppies that don't push back this way.

But again, those puppies are still feeling that same feeling as 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 you that they want to get down and my advice is restraint protocols aside, okay, put the puppy down that 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, you start building a lack of trust and the puppy does not believe he's being heard. And your primary job in that first year to 18 months of life is to build trust.

And that takes time and repetitions over time. We'll come back to that. You see, context is everything with this. For sure, there are times when that puppy, I'm telling 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 say the puppies are in the back yard. The landscapers are here to mow the lawn.

You're getting picked up, you're getting put away. You can grow if you want. I don't care. It's my way or the highway and it's happening now. Okay, But you're having a puppy party let's say, there's a roomful of new people and all the puppies littermates are there? There's new equipment, I mean, it's tantamount to an assault to restrain a puppy that does not want to be held under those circumstances.

That puppy wants to get down and explore and play. And finally, you can't discount that that puppy that's squirming, growling, wants to get out of your arms, may actually have a bodily need. I have definitely seen puppy owners just continue to hold and forcibly restrain puppies that desperately had to go to the bathroom. So, you know, in sum, the overriding rule is don't force it, don't grab and clasp a puppy that does not want to be held.

Do your restraint protocols, but do them in discreet training sessions. Don't expect a seven, eight, ten, 16 week old puppy to enjoy being held all the time. You know, I realize how fundamentally we all want to cuddle with our puppies. They're cute, but they're not cuddly. I'm sorry. Cuddling is something that develops as the puppies curiosity and drive to explore and play drive wanes and his trust in you increases.

It's truly a developmental thing that you facilitate by putting money in the relationship bank. And the first rule is not to be making withdrawals from the relationship bank by restraining unreasonably. Again, you do a lot of pick up feed, 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 pick you 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. It's a developmental thing that's going to it's going to smooth out over that, you know, that year, that year to 18 months.

Okay. And you're just going to wake up one day and the puppy that growled when you were stranded growled when you're trying to his nails growled when you know, when you were trying to do anything, interrupt him. You know, one day you're going to be like, wow, I can't believe it. That puppy used to growl at me. So you really have to look at this as a developmental period and not a specific problem that you have to fix.

But I know when you hear that growl, especially as a puppy owner, even if you yourself are doing something totally unreasonable to the puppy, it's scary because it's just you're afraid. You're afraid that you're probably going to be aggressive. And all I can tell you is this that I have definitely seen my share of behavioral issues. And I can tell you right now that the puppies that ultimately turned out to have behavioral problems were not the puppies that growled when they were restrained. That has not been, you know, something that sorted with puppies that had behavioral problems.

I have to say I have a personal feeling about this topic. This topic strikes close to home for me because when I was a child, I didn't, 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 parents maybe being a little more progressive, understood that and appreciated me for who I was. 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 going down. And I fought it pretty hard and 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. But, you know, when I was a child, it was a little horrifying.

And I turned out to be a person that I think has things to offer the world. And I'm affectionate. So it's not like it was a you know, that that natural inclination for children to be more interested in doing things than being hugged and restrained 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 reasonable that children, that puppies, you know, they sometimes just really don't want to be restrained.

All right. Now, all that having been said, there are definitely behavioral outlier puppies. There are puppies that really just hate physical touch to the point where it's pathological. That's beyond the scope of this podcast. But suffice it to say that if you as a breeder are not experiencing puppies growling at you when you hold them, but suddenly when puppy buyers show up or your friends show up, the puppies are growling at them.

That's not 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. This is a really huge trust issue that you have to earn over time. There are definitely protocols that will facilitate that process and that's what we're all about in Puppy Culture and our films and our puppy courses.

But there is not a protocol that's going to speed up that process very much. You can't really, you know, skip that 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't want to be restrained. In the meantime.

In our house, puppy taming is Mark's job. He gets on the couch, he tames those puppies. Okay? It takes, you know, a year. It takes a year. And then one day the 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 puppy holding still, it's amazing. And then somewhere around 18 months, I mean, they're taking a nap with him on the couch while he reads his phone.

So I've been through it. I've been through it. A number of times. And again, there's nothing wrong with the puppy that doesn't want to be restrained. So I'm going to read you one comment that was on that post that I thought was quite good. She said;

I agree with Jane wholeheartedly. My breed is a giant breed, so I really discourage my visitors picking up puppies at all.

I don't want the puppies to become used to being held. I do welcome them to get down on the ground with the puppies and let the puppies climb in their lap and let the puppies go to sleep in their lap if they choose. But I'm very picky with the rules I ask of my visitors. My biggest concern is because of the size of my puppies at seven weeks old.

If one is too wiggly and someone were to drop them, that might be something that they would not easily recover from. I think your puppies are perfectly normal.

And then the last thing that someone wrote in was actually a recommendation for two whole dog journal articles that are very similar. In fact, I think they're kind of 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 Journal and they're both called Work That Body. And it's just a punch list really for puppy owners about how to approach dogs and puppies. It's really good. So I think that's a good thing to put in your your toolkit to share with your puppy owners.

So I want to wrap this all up with a word on handling this with our puppy owners. Okay. So I think we have to address why puppy owners do this. And even, as I said, very experienced puppy 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.

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 bond right there. There's so excited, they're so charged and they're so really desirous of forming that bond with that puppy. And we're primates, right? So we just physically want to clasp them to us and on some sort of very deep cellular level, we feel like this is going to facilitate that bond.

And I think as breeders, we have to help the puppy owner see how magical it is to let the puppy come to them. Okay. How magical it is to listen to the puppy and how the puppy is so much more open to that bond when we let go. You have to let go to receive. It's a very Zen thing and 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 and don't restrain the puppy and 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 be sensitive to that.

You really have to reassure those puppy owners that that bond is going to come, but it's just not going to be instantaneous, maybe in the way that that they hope it's going to be. So in sum, I definitely recommend that you do all the restraint protocols. You have your puppy owners do all the restraint protocols that you show your puppy owners how to handle puppies, that you demonstrate it, that you give them handouts with lists of how to handle puppies.

But, you know, I also think alongside this you need to acknowledge the emotional component of this. Show your puppy owners how letting go of that puppy actually increases the puppies approach, how sitting passively and just allowing the puppy to come toward you is magical. If you can satisfy that emotional component for the puppy owner, it's going to go a long way to giving them the space to be able to be empathetic toward their puppies.

If you liked this podcast, you'll love our breeder 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 culture and you want to get started, visit us at puppyculture.com and check out our bundles.

Well, that's all for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.