Episode 2 - Raising Two Puppies Together: Is Littermate Syndrome a Real Thing?‌

Today’s question comes from a viewer who’s wondering how early puppies need to be separated from their littermates to avoid the dreaded “Littermate Syndrome.”

In this episode, I tackle that question and discuss key issues around “littermate syndrome.”‌

• Is littermate syndrome a real thing?‌
• Is it ever a good idea to keep two littermates?‌
• ​If you do keep two littermates, how can you successfully raise them together?‌

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

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​Referenced Courses and Titles

ENROLL TODAY

ENROLL TODAY

BUY NOW

Further reading and citations to the referenced studies and findings

There’s No Scientific Reason to Believe Littermate Syndrome Exists - IAABC Foundation
​Kayla Fratt, CDBC.

TRANSCRIPT

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist, and this is episode two of the Puppy Culture Potluck podcast.

Today's question comes to us from a breeder, but it's a topic that we get a lot from breeders and puppy owners alike, and that is questions about littermate syndrome.

So a quick description of littermate syndrome, in case you're not already familiar with the term. Littermate syndrome is when two littermates grow up together, so they're never separated, they, they live in the same household, they grow up in the same household, and then at some point they start displaying a variety of undesirable behaviors, which we'll talk more about. And the thought is that the fact that they're littermates and the fact that they were never separated means that they formed a superior bond with each other, that they bonded more closely with each other than with their owners.

And that sort of lack of attachment and superior bond that they have with their their litter mate is the root cause of these problems. So I'm going to read you the post and then we're going to talk generally about littermate syndrome. And then my specific advice to this breeder and I want to say before I read it that the breed is Clumber spaniel and that will become important as we go through and talk about this more. So here's the post.

I am keeping both of my bitch puppies in my litter. That having been said, one of the girls is going to be going to my co-breeders home and will be swapping them out occasionally. Ultimately, having them both end up with me. Is there a timeframe that will be recommended to ensure good development? I found this article to be interesting.

Now, the article that she linked to is an article that basically outlines, you know, the whole nightmare of littermate syndrome and the pitfalls of littermate syndrome. We'll come back to that. And then I asked a follow up question, which is for her to sort of flesh out for me what she means by swapping them out occasionally and ultimately having them wind up with her.

And her answer was they were going to separate them and trade them out in the first year of their life. Ultimately, to have them wind up after a year old living with the the original poster. I had some specific advice for her in this situation, but I think we need to speak a little bit globally about littermate syndrome first, and first we have to talk about the word syndrome, because a syndrome really is just a group of symptoms that consistently occur together or a condition characterized by a set of associated symptoms.

Right. It's not it's not really like a disease or a genetic condition. So a lot of times people say littermate syndrome and it means kind of a lot of different things. It can mean two puppies that are bonded, quote unquote, to each other and don't have any interest in humans. It can mean two puppies that fight relentlessly. It can mean puppies with separation anxiety.

It can mean puppies with neophobia, meaning to say fear of the novel, which is, you know, what we try and counteract with socialization practices. So it's kind of a ... it's a little bit like fading puppy syndrome in the sense that it's this whole catchall of I don't know, we kept two puppies and then there there's all these problems, so we're thinking it's because they're littermates. So up on the show page, I did put up an article, an excellent article that Kayla Fratt wrote for IAABC that would be the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants Journal. So it's a peer reviewed scientific journal about why there's no reason to believe that Littermates syndrome exists. Everything that people describe as littermate syndrome is really just sort of like sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

It's just under socialization and not having invested the amount of time that you need to individually into each puppy and the fact that they happen to be littermates, I mean that that really is irrelevant. So what littermate syndrome really is, it's two puppy syndrome. It's it's to under socialized puppy syndrome. So I'm going to say there's no such thing truly as littermate syndrome.

But before you get excited and say, “Well, that's great, now I'm going to put a double deposit down and get two puppies”, I want to talk to you about this because you really do have to make a huge commitment if you're going to have two puppies of the same age or you will wind up with some of the kinds of problems that people describe with littermate syndrome.

Breeders run on multiple puppies all the time. I mean, we do it. We do it without any consequence because normally when we're grading a litter and going through a litter, you know, some of them are going to go with pets very early. And then it's sort of like an elimination process that you want to run them on. You want to see how their temperament develops, you know, what kind of personalities they have, how the bites come in.

For some breeds, it might be coat and color. There could be a lot of different things, right? So we do it routinely and we don't encounter problems, but it takes a huge commitment because you have to do everything that you would do with one puppy and you have to do it individually with two puppies. As my friend Magda, who breeds Norwich terriers, is always saying, when you have two puppies, you have three puppies, you have puppy number one and you have puppy number two and you have puppy one two, which is the puppies together.

So that puppy one two thing, regardless of whether they have any relation to each other or not, just having two puppies of the same age, they're going to behave and interact with the world very differently than individually, and they have to learn to navigate the world individually. So that means what does that mean? That means as a puppy owner, you have to sign up for two puppy socialization classes. Okay? You can't bring them both together to the same class, even if you have another person in the class because they have to learn how to navigate the world without the support of their litter mate.. number two, a littermate or just age conspecific okay, so, so you know, they have to learn to stand on their own and not have that support of their housemate litter mate, whatever it is, that puppy, their own age.

In the same way that when we're first bringing puppies out, right. I talk a lot in Puppy Culture and also in our With Open Arms Puppy Course about how it's great to have a lead pony if you can, an older dog that the puppy can model on sort of look to for you know environmental cues like “Oh I guess we don't have to be worried about this, the big dog is fine” in the same way that that's important at a certain early stage in socialization, you also separately, the puppy has to learn to navigate life on their own.

It has to happen. So two puppy classes. Okay, definitely two puppies socialization play times. You have to sign up for separate socialization, play times. Even the times when I've been pressed and had to bring two littermates to class, I would work one littermate and then put that litter mate in a crate and then work the other littermate.

So again, they they stood on their own. But I never let them do the play session together because two puppies, you know, of the same age in the same household will pack up and, you know, can think they're ten feet tall against the other puppies and really pack up on the other puppies. It's not fair. And once again, it's not teaching the puppies to sort of navigate the world on their own.

So you're going to have that. You're going to have to have two puppy classes. You're going to have to have two socialization experiences every day, again, like we say in Puppy Culture and in the puppy course, that period of time, from the time you get that puppy home through 12 to 14 weeks, you should be taking that puppy new someplace every day.

Every day that puppy should be getting out. If you have two puppies, that means you have to make two individual trips. So you know you're going to go to the garden center. You, I suppose you could have them in the car together, but you're going to have to take one puppy out, do your whole socialization experience, put that puppy away, and then take the other puppy out and do that whole socialization experience.

So, you know, it's time consuming. And again, even if you have a helpful spouse or human offspring that's of an age that they can be helpful to you, it doesn't matter. The puppies can't do it at the same time. Now, I mean, theoretically, you could tag team and one could take one vehicle and go one place and another could take another vehicle and go another place.

But I'm just emphasizing for you that this is double it is double work.

House and crate training. Again, in our Puppy Culture With Open Arms course we give a whole protocol from start to finish for how you set up, starting with what we call area P, which is the puppy's designated area with the litter area and an open crate and work your way up to sleeping in a crate at night and being totally house trained.

You need two setups if you're going to keep two puppies. I mean, you need two complete set ups. You can't have them just together in the pen. So that's another big thing.

Training, each puppy needs individual training time each day, so you have to practice your things like your leash walking, your whatever your tricks are, whatever you, sit down, stay all your things that you're going to do and, well, show handling too.

If that's if that's something that you want to do with your puppies. Agility, obedience, whatever it is, you have to do it twice every day. And so, you know, what I'm kind of boiling down to here is that for the average, even very motivated pet owner ... no, why? I mean, you don't need two. One is much better. I mean, if for some reason you wind up with two, there's every reason to think it's going to work out fine if you're willing to put in the effort.

So it's not like there's some magical, littermate syndrome that's going to make your puppy turn out badly or puppies turn out badly. But why would you do that to yourself? It's just it's a lot of work and it's unnecessary. If you, you know, if you really want to get more than one, you know, I recommend at least a year, preferably 18 months between the two puppies.

I mean, you really want to be past most of your development. And, you know, you're more tough developmental periods, which, you know, by the time they're 18 months to two years old, they're a little more settled. It's a little less you know, you're, you're hitting a few less potholes by that point. So that's my advice, as far as littermate syndrome, it doesn't really exist per se, but certainly keeping two puppies can be a disaster if you don't put in the individual work that you need to for each puppy.

So now I'm going to talk about my specific advice to this breeder, because that was just general littermate syndrome advice and more, I'd say, directed toward your puppy owner or your novice breeder that maybe isn't aware of the kind of work that it's going to involve. So this bringing puppy is very interesting, is bringing a puppy or a young dog back in and out of the house.

Your success with that is going to be very breed dependent. In fact, your whole two puppy syndrome is going to be very much breed dependent and it's going to depend a lot on how much intra-dog same sex aggression is in your breed. Now this breeder is breeding clumber spaniels, which to my knowledge are about as dog friendly and non-reactive and mellow as you can get.

So I would imagine for her, I mean, it's going to be a great experience to, you know, sort of pass this puppy back and forth between her house and her co breeders house, which, by the way, if there's pet people listening, we do this all the time. We split up. Even if we have really big litters. A lot of times we will split the litters as soon as they're weaned, you know, before they're of the age to be placed just between two co-breeders, just so that we can give more individual attention to those puppies as they're coming up to the age what we're going to want to start really interacting and training with them.

So this is not at all an unusual arrangement. I mean, certainly if a dog's going to be shown, it's coming in and out of the house with handlers. I mean, we do this kind of stuff all the time. Now with my breed, bull terriers, it's very interesting because even if I take a dog out for a week to, you know, go to an away dog show and I come back, I have to do a whole reintroduction in the back yard between that dog and the other dogs, because I've had literal dogfights just walking in the door, in the driveway even, when they see each other, you know, it's like, “hey, who are you? I don't recognize you”, but, you know, I'm coming from a breed where there's significant same sex aggression. So my experience and the advisability of someone with a bull terrier doing this is much different than a clumber spaniel.

Now, her specific concern was at what age does she need to get that second puppy out of her house to avoid the two puppy syndrome?

And, you know, I think after listening to this, it would be obvious to anyone that really it probably depends more on how much time you have to spend with the puppy than anything else in the sense of, you know, when you find that you have a full time job, you're running out of time. You can't sign up for two puppy classes.

You know, the puppies ready to move on to that and you can't do it. That's the time to get that puppy out to the second person who's going to be able to do the work with the puppy. So that's the number one thing, you know now also. So I mean, sorry, circling back, let me just say. So that would be normally whatever time you would normally place the puppy.

And when I say normally, I'm not talking about a backyard breeder, normally I'm talking about a breeder who does something like Puppy Culture or the equivalent, because obviously, you know, there's millions of really good breeders out there, never even heard of Puppy Culture. But something like that, a program like that where the breeder is doing some, you know, some work, training the puppy and placing them at an appropriate age where you're kind of splitting the difference between the expertise of the breeder holding on to the puppy and working with it a little bit longer, and the need for individual attention from from the puppy owner.

So what is that age? I mean, just I don't know, in a clumber spaniel. It's a rare breed and not one that I honestly have really had a lot of personal experience with at all. But I can tell you it does vary a lot. Okay, So like for the Bull Terriers and I would say there are a lot of breeds around ten weeks old is is probably the age when you just kind of see them start to look out of the weaning pen and they're sort of like they're no longer really part of that group.

You know, they're looking for their people, right? They're looking to make that connection with the human being and not be part of this organism that's a litter anymore. And, you know, you see glimmers of it maybe at eight weeks, but they're still kind of little babies going back to each other. But with my puppies, by the time they're 9 to 10 weeks, I mean, they're looking for their people.

You can see it now with the Norwich terriers, my friend Magda breeds, you know, they're still nursing at 12 weeks old. I mean, they're so neotenous meaning to say so puppy like for so long their developmentally way behind the bull terrier. And then on the other hand, you have German shepherds like Rebecca Pinkston and Suzanne Shelton are always talking about in the Puppy Culture discussion group where, you know, nine weeks old, I mean, they're starting to take on their littermates and seriously mistrusting novelty.

I mean, it's a much more natural kind of breed that way. So it's they're developmentally ahead so for them maybe a little earlier would be when they would place their puppies. But the long and short of it is, you know you're really balancing two things. You're balancing your resources as a breeder, you know, how much time do you in your household have to devote to this puppy or these two puppies, if you keep two.

And you know what, at what age is your breed emotionally developed enough to want to want to leave, to be emotionally stable enough to leave? And that can vary a lot. I mean, seriously, by as much as three weeks between breeds. And that's something, you know, that is just a constant theme and something that I've learned so much about through the Puppy Culture discussion group is just the amazing, you know, diversity between breeds.

And that, so, so often we speak in absolute terms about something like littermate syndrome or best age to place puppies or you name it. And there really is no one answer. It's more it depends on the developmental period that that puppy is in and breeds can vary. It's been documented as much as 16 days. And anecdotally, just in our observation, I would say it's more like three weeks that they can really vary that much.

So thanks to that poster for sending in that question that gave us a chance to touch on some really cool topics. If you want to join the discussion or ask me something that you'd like me to talk about on air, join us on the Puppy Culture Discussion Group on Facebook or visit the show page at madcapradio.com.

I'll be posting the links to the studies that I talked about there, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.