Episode 16 - Puppy Assessment Tests: Can They Help Match Puppies With Owners?

3/20/2024

This week’s question is about using temperament testing to help match puppies with owners:‌

"Temperament Testing: I have someone interested in our litter and training the pup for a potential therapy dog.

They want to train him to do deep pressure therapy for her anxiety.

She grew up helping train hunting dogs and they have trained rescues, so I know she can do this if we get her a good match.

So how do you find someone to do temperament testing?"

In this episode I explore:

The origins, benefits and limits of puppy assessment tests
How to use the information gained through the tests
How to find a good puppy tester

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

EPISODE 16 - TRANSCRIPT

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

Well, today's topic is one that comes up all the time. Temperament testing for puppies to help breeders make better placements for their puppies. So here's the question:

Temperament Testing. I have someone interested in our litter and training their pup for a potential therapy dog.

They want to train him to do deep pressure therapy for her anxiety. She grew up helping training, hunting dogs and they've trained rescues. So I know she can do this if we get her a good match. So how do you find someone to do temperament testing? I talked to someone who was recommended to me, but when I asked to set an appointment and for details, she said she would, quote, teach me to evaluate my own puppies, unquote.

Which means we aren't talking the same language. Based on what I know from Puppy Culture. And she said she would come out between five and six weeks, which seems early.

Okay. There's just so much in this. But let me start breaking it down and let's just start with reviewing what we have in Puppy Culture on puppy testing. If you have not seen Puppy Culture already, we do cover it.

Go to puppyculture.com, check out the original Puppy Culture film. We talk a lot about puppy testing. But let me summarize. Running puppies through paces with a novel person in a novel environment gives you some insight into where those puppies are at that time. Okay, so it's a snapshot in time. It's not necessarily predictive of adult temperament at all.

In fact, probably not. Probably not going to be at all helpful for what this querent is asking for, which is to predict which puppy will be best suited to be a deep pressure therapy dog. Now, the predictive value of puppy testing has been studied and has been uniformly found to have little to no predictive value. The one personality dimension that apparently does track from puppy testing to adulthood is exploratory behavior.

Now, I'm going to say right here, I've written an article on this. It's in Madcap University. If you go to the resources section, I did do an article on puppy testing and it's called Shifting Your Lens for Better Results. So you can get all the citations to all the studies. But trust me, this has been studied. Puppy testing not predictive of adult temperament in any reliable fashion.

But what is very predictive of adult temperament is how the puppy is raised in the first year of life. And when you look at the most important personality dimension for a pet owner or a therapy dog, it's lack of aggression and a puppy being frightened by a person or a dog in the first year of life has been to have a high correlation with later human and dog aggression.

So what does that tell you? That your focus should be on empowering your puppy owners to protect their puppies? Keep your puppy owners from making mistakes with their puppies. Do not allow puppies to have a bad experience in the first year of life. That ultimately is going to be a lot more predictive of adult temperament in the most important sense, which is lack of aggression than any puppy testing.

Okay, now that I've laid that out, why do we even do puppy testing? Well, it is helpful. It's very helpful to know where those puppies are before they leave your house. We do puppy testing at seven weeks old and we're going to discuss that more about what age you should do it at. We do puppy testing at seven weeks old and that gives me three more weeks because I normally place puppies at ten weeks old.

That gives me three more weeks with those puppies to work on whatever I feel needs work. If the puppies are a little funny about a novel environment or a novel person, I know, I have to double up on that. If the puppies, let's say, have a little bit too much drive on the on the toy drive. I know I have to work on a little impulse control with that.

I can get myself a game plan for those last three weeks based on what I see in that puppy test. Now, you also may be able to identify outliers, but sometimes not. I definitely have had puppies, entire litters, in fact, that really couldn't even be tested, that they went for the puppy test and they were terrified and wouldn't do anything and wouldn't do any of the tests.

And all of those puppies turned out to be outstanding dogs. Again, we're going to come back to the age thing. I think some of that might have had to do with them perhaps being in a little bit of an early fear period. But sometimes you can identify true outliers, puppies that are just like so unbelievably pathologically sensitive. But in my experience, it's very rare that you're going to identify them with the puppy test.

Another utility, I would say, of puppy testing as a breeder is to see overall trends. I'll give you a for instance, I would bring my puppies always at seven weeks old for puppy testing and I had certain expectations that they would walk right in like they own the place, nail everything, not be overly aroused, be very friendly to strangers, not be put off by any kind of sound, be curious by all the startling things.

And this was my expectation. And then I used a dog from England, and this was at a time when you could do a true outcross still, because the importation of semen was not as ubiquitous as it is now. Our world gene pool has become very homogenous because of the ready availability of semen from all over the world. But at this time it was a true outcross.

So there was nothing related between the dam and the sire. And my first litter out of that was astounding. They were terrified. They were so sound sensitive. It was a completely different world than I'd ever been in. And ever since I have added those genetics into my line, I have noticed that overall, my puppies are softer and require more early socialization because they are a little more fearful than my puppies previously were.

Okay, well, not to sidebar too much, but let me just say you may be wondering, well, why why didn't you just discard that line like once you did that breeding and you had those puppies that were so soft, why did you continue down that line? And the reason is that the reason I brought in those genetics was because I had dogs that were extremely bold and very forward and friendly with people.

But, you know, I had some sharpness with other dogs and I really didn't want that. I wanted something a little softer. So breeding it's a bell curve, okay? You can't just cherry pick the one trait that you want, which is maybe being a little softer and a little more docile and not get a little bit more fearful. It comes with the territory.

So moving on, because that's another podcast. My point ultimately is that as a breeder, I've seen a trend, a trend over many litters of softness that I've made adjustments for in my socialization program that has had a good outcome. So puppy testing for me as a breeder is an invaluable resource, but as a breeder, as a placement tool, it is virtually useless in my experience.

So let me circle back to the original poster's questions. And one of one of the things she said was that the puppy tester was going to teach me to evaluate my own puppies, and she felt that wasn't that wasn't what she was looking for. That wasn't what we prescribe in Puppy Culture now. I do think there's room for both things.

I do think that taking your puppies off premises with a novel person and putting them through their paces is extremely helpful, as I've mentioned, as a breeder, so I know what I need to work on so there's that, which is not what this tester apparently is is going to do. However, I do think that this breeder is in the best position of anyone to choose this puppy, and I don't know the details, but potentially, if this were a person who was very well versed in service dog placements, potentially this person could help this breeder identify the specific traits that she should be looking for when making these placements.

So let's break this down. What exactly is going to be expected of this dog? If I were you, I would list out the exact behaviors. So deep pressure therapy. I'm not a service dog person. I'm not familiar with it. But I looked it up on the Internet and quick over quick, this is what I came up with. The dog has to lie on top of a person, rest their head, either on the person's chest or shoulders or arm.

So it's literally putting pressure on the person. They have to either do this on cue and or do it in response to changes in heartbeat or respiration. Putting aside the fact that puppy temperament does not necessarily track with adult temperament as a breeder, you already know which puppy is probably going to be the best, at least the day that that puppy goes home.

You know which puppy is going to be the best at doing those things? You know which puppy is most likely to crawl on top of you? Which puppy is the most checked in to you and your emotions? That's not something that's going to change or be identifiable by a puppy tester. I'll also say you cannot discount the chemistry between the puppy owner and the puppy.

I have definitely had puppies that were super checked in to me and other people and I made a plan to place them with a particular family. And when that family showed up to meet the puppy for the first time, the puppy didn't really like them or connect with them. I changed my placement plans for those puppies because of that.

Certainly puppies can be more attracted to their breeders than new people because they have such a history with their breeders, especially if you're doing Puppy Culture, you're working with those puppies, you're training those puppies, those puppies are checked in to you. You're really connected emotionally with those puppies. But when you have a puppy that seems attracted to people in general, but not the specific people who you've intended to place the puppy with, that's a different thing.

That's when you need to change your course. And the same is true in reverse. If you observe the owners and the puppies together, you can get a really good read on which pairs are going to click. Just an aside, I do not let people pick their puppies. Most of the times my puppy owners show up on the day of pickup and that is the day they find out which puppy is theirs.

If you're going to be placing puppies with a very specific purpose in mind, like therapy or performance, then you do need to hold them longer and make no promises to anyone until they grow up enough to show some of their true colors. And that's probably at least 16 weeks old. Service dog organizations that do this professionally grow up a lot of puppies and only a percent of those puppies make it into the program.

Puppy testing originated in service dog organizations. They are the experts on this. They have huge colonies of dogs. They have millions and millions of dollars in endowments. They have a vast staff of experts to raise these puppies, to work with these puppies, to test these puppies. And still 30% of the puppies that are chosen to go into the service dog training program after they puppy test them, do not make it through the program.

They wash out of the program. So with all of that immense expertise and resources and a very narrow gene pool that has been bred for hundreds, if not thousands of generations for this specific purpose, and they still can only get it right seven out of ten times. It costs a small fortune to raise a professional service dog to maturity.

The estimates out there are anywhere from 40000 to 100000 to raise a professional service dog. So if there were any way to know for sure at seven weeks old which puppies would be successful before those organizations are dropping a hundred grand on training them, those organizations would have a 100% pass rate. They would have found the way to predict it.

So what I'm saying is that what you're asking for, which is a reliable way to predict which of your six, seven, eight or ten week old puppies will be good as a service dog does not exist. If it existed, the service dog organizations would be using it and have 100% success rate. So now my specific advice to you as a breeder is this. Do your puppy testing and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that.

Definitely do your puppy testing so you can know what you have to work on in that end, part of the time that you have the puppies. As far as placement, I would have the person that needs the service dog over with the puppies and observe them and pick the best fit. My advice to you is also to counsel the person that you're making the best choice possible for them.

But there are many variables, and you can't guarantee or predict that this puppy will eventually fill its intended role. For me. I would not place a puppy with someone that specifically wanted that puppy as a service dog and a service dog only. I would make sure that they would love and keep the dog no matter what. You very well may have a different model for your breeding program and you may have a line of people waiting to take the washouts from the puppies you place as service dogs if they don't work out.

And that's fantastic. I don't have that. And I just think it's something to keep in mind when you're placing a puppy as a service dog, that there's a real potential that it will not work out. And you have to be proactive about what the game plan is going to be. If and when that happens.

I think the overall message that I have is if someone wants a service dog and has to have a service dog, they need to purchase an adult fully trained animal or at least an adult where we know the temperament and the dog's natural abilities.

I'm not saying that you should never place a puppy with anyone that wants a service dog or wants to train it as a service dog, because we all know that not everyone has 100, 200,000 lying around to purchase a fully trained service dog. But all I'm saying is be aware that there really is no way to predict if it's going to work out.

And if it doesn't work out, what's the option?

Okay. So back to the specific question, which is how do you find a good puppy tester? Because we've established that puppy testing does have utility for a breeder, maybe not the utility that the querent was hoping it's going to help you place that service dog find that perfect service puppy, but it still has utility.

So how do you find a good puppy tester? I would say your local kennel club is going to be a great place to start because you're going to have a lot of breeders there. And they are the kinds of people that would be doing this or have someone do it for them. Word of mouth is the absolute best because anybody can frankly say that they do it.

You just want somebody that's going to not scare your puppies because that is your number one criterion for choosing a puppy tester is that they're gentle, that they will not scare the puppies, and that if at any time any part of that test is the puppy seems scared, resistant, hesitant, but that puppy tester will will stop the test and just sit down in the middle of the room and cuddle the puppy.

I have definitely had this happen where the puppies just could not be tested and the puppy tester just had to sit in the middle of the room and cuddle the puppies and that is the right thing to do, particularly if they're doing the volhard test. You know, there's a lot of sort of aversive things in there. There's scaring them with the umbrella.

There is holding them on their back. There's the sudden sound. Again, most of my puppies like you saw in Puppy Culture, they take this with complete aplomb. But I have had puppies that didn't. And the tester stopped the test. A bad experience with a puppy tester is predictive of potentially having human and dog aggression as an adult. It doesn't matter whether they're in a fear period.

It's worse if they're in the fear period, but still they're super impressionable at this young age. And having a bad experience of this at this age can really imprint on them. So, number one, when you're asking around for good puppy tester, don't ask like who's going to be able to help me predict which puppy to place where? Ask who is gentle and considerate and has good dog sense and will not scare your puppies.

Finally, I want to come back to age because the volhard test was very specific about the exact age at which you should do this test. And I think if it's one thing we definitely have figured out since then, it's that developmental periods between breeds on average can differ as much as two weeks, if not more. So, you know, for some puppies at seven weeks old, they're still firmly in their curiosity, period.

For some other puppies, they could already be in a fear period. In my own litters, I have observed the, the second fear period, the so-called eight week fear period, happened anywhere from as early as just over seven weeks, all the way up to nine and a half weeks. So I think if I had to give you some advice, it would be to know what the trends are in your breed.

When the average time of onset of fear, period, second fear period is and scheduled the test 3 to 4 days before that. However, be flexible. Do not be afraid. If you suddenly see one of the hallmarks of a fear period which is acute onset of fear of the familiar. Don't be afraid to pull chocks and say we're not doing the test.

It's not worth it.

So rolling back to the original post where she said the assessor was going to come out between five and six weeks. Yeah, I mean, that does seem early, especially in a breed like golden Retrievers, which I believe is fairly neotenous, but in some other breeds that are very precocious, that might not be unreasonable.

I think the thing that you have to watch out for is somebody that's very dogmatic about this is the age when we do it, and this is the same for every litter, and this is how we're going to do it, because that's just not true. And if you have a forward thinking puppy tester, they should be more flexible than that.

If you liked this podcast, you'll love our breeder course at madcapuniversity.com. Puppy owners, we have a puppy course for you too at madcapuniversity.com.

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