Episode 21 - Puppies Who Don't Bond With Their Owners

7/30/2024

This week’s podcast is about puppies and owners who can’t seem to bond. The original question is long, so here’s the gist of it:‌

“Functionally Mac is excellent. Crate/House training/Obedience excellent…He sleeps through the night. He is great at puppy classes...He is good with other people and dogs…He was good at the vets. No problems so far with loud noises or anything like that…The problem is that we have been unable to build a relationship with him. He doesn’t respond to affection at all. We find it hard to make his tail wag. He will briefly let us stroke him, but this usually ends with a bite. He is unwilling to let us pick him up. He will play enthusiastically with toys, but this will quickly progress to biting and frenzy…We have had rescue dogs before, we have had puppies before, but we have never experienced this lack of relationship…we have tried everything we can think of to improve the relationship... We fear that the situation will become worse”

In this episode I explore:‌

The three most common causes of “non-bonding” between puppies and their owners
When to take back a “non-bonding” puppy and when to try to work to keep the puppy in the home
If keeping the puppy in the home is appropriate, strategies to improve relationship and bonding between puppies and their owners.

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

EPISODE 21 - 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 puppy placements, where the puppy does not bond with the owners and it's a long one. Buckle up. But the details are important.

This is a beagle puppy placed at eight weeks old. The puppy is currently 12 weeks old.

And here's what the question is that the breeder wrote in:

Advice please. Never had a puppy returned and would like to offer the puppy the best training based on the message from the family.

And here's what the family wrote to the breeder.

Functionally. Mac is excellent. Crate/house training, obedience. Excellent. And coming along well. He sleeps through the night.

He's a great puppy at classes. And the trainer says he learns at a million miles an hour. We've made sure to socialize him. Prior to full vaccination we took him to car parks where he would sit in the crate in the back of the car to be exposed to people's sounds, sights, etc. We took him to garden centers and supermarkets.

He's good with other people and dogs when we're out. He was good at the vets. No problem so far with loud noises or anything like that. He's experienced pheasants, squirrels, various birds, tradesmen, repairman. We've had visits from family. He's the garden hose drip dipping for carrots, water generally. We believe he is well socialized. We make him sit before he has food.

He is not demonstrating resource guarding or aggression. He's fit and healthy. The local vet checked him out. He loves his food and is putting on weight. But he's not overweight.

The problem is that we have been unable to build a relationship with him. He doesn't respond to affection at all. We find it hard to make his tail wag.

He will briefly let us stroke him, but this usually ends with a bite. He's unwilling to let us pick him up. He'll play enthusiastically with toys, but this will quickly progress to a biting and frenzy. We've tried both more and less play with no improvement. He doesn't show any symptoms of fear or aggression, such as hackles, raised, growling, tail, either down or to erect.

He bites. And this has escalated from puppy biting to more definite biting and now holding and drawing blood. He will leap at our legs and bite for no apparent reason. We've discussed this with two trainers and use their recommended techniques, but this hasn't worked. We don't think it's attention seeking. We don't think it's aggression. It may be some kind of dominance, but we don't know.

We've tracked his sleep to ensure that he does not become overtired and he gets around 18 hours per day. He settles well and sleeps in his crate, but nowhere else. Even though there are various comfy alternatives. This may be a clue. Each day we've done play, training, socialization and habituation, which he's very good at. Perhaps because there's no relationship, we can't fix the biting.

We've had rescue dogs before. We've had puppies before, but we have never experienced this lack of relationship. We hate doing this and we are very upset that it has come to this. We wonder if we've done something wrong, but we've tried everything we can think of to improve the relationship. Our prime concern is the best care for Mac.

We want him to have the best chance for the future. We are very sad that we can't fix this relationship problem. We fear that the situation will become worse.

Okay, so generally, this is me again. I have a rule in my discussion groups that we don't take third party accounts of situations. Right? So if it's a breeder writing in saying, Hey, my puppy buyer says that my puppy, their puppy is doing dominance biting or some such nonsense, what's what shall I tell them?

I'm always like, we need the puppy owner to write in because I can't diagnose what's going on through a third party story of what the behavior is. I mean, they're just there are too many questions I have to ask. I have to know the exact behavior. I took this question because it's a little different, and I'm going to address it from the angle of as a breeder, when you get a story like this, what what should your plan of action be?

Okay. So regardless, we don't know really anything about this puppy. But regardless, what do you do as a breeder when you get a story like this? And as I said to her, let's just start with what she probably already knows, which is that she's going to have to take this puppy back and observe the puppy herself and draw her own conclusions, because there is just no way to know based on the owner story, what's going on here.

I mean, we have some clues, but we truly don't know. This is a puppy you're going to have to take back. You're going to have to live with the puppy for a while. And I guarantee it's going to become obvious very quickly what's going on. Okay. That having been said, I'm going to talk about a few things that this could be. What would be the likely things that would be in the back of my mind as I'm running this puppy through its paces And by far the most common cause of this kind of return is puppy owner expectations, not matching puppy behavior.

And I think we can talk more about it, but there's a lot of clues to that in the story that these people, for whatever reason, just don't seem to understand what a puppy is. They're reading it as a lack of relationship when it's just a puppy. You know, they want to pick up the puppy. They want to cuddle the puppy.

The puppy is not interested in that. It's a puppy. The puppy then protests and bite when they pick the puppy up because the puppy doesn't like being picked up. Puppies generally don't like being picked up a lot. The puppy wants to play, not cuddle. And you know the puppy owners read this as no relationship. I did a whole podcast on this exact topic.

Episode 14 Growling Puppies. Should you be worried? And I highly recommend that you go back and listen to that if you haven't already. But suffice it to say, it's super common that puppy owners will just pick up puppies when they do not want to be picked up and legitimately they don't want to be picked up. But the puppy owner, for whatever reason, feels this is the bond.

They're reaching for the puppy because the bond is that they can clasp that puppy to them.

So that would be the most likely scenario here. It’s just the puppy owners expectation do not match what a living, breathing puppy really is. Adjacent to this idea is what my friend Lorelei Craig calls the training straight jacket, meaning to say that a lot of puppy owners think that they can train the puppy out of the puppy, that if they just make the puppy behave, if they can make the puppy sit before it, it eats its dinner or sit before patting or sit before accessing resources that somehow this puppy will not do normal natural puppy behavior like bite and yes, bite and hard sometimes and draw blood and and jump up and grab and tear your clothes. And then the more the puppy expresses this natural puppy behavior, the tighter the straight jacket gets, the more the the puppy owner doubles down on on. I can train this out of the puppy that I can modify this behavior. And then frustration increases in the puppy and yes, it converge on aggressive displays in that case.

This is often the result of the puppy owner going to a dog trainer who maybe is not a breeder, maybe is not extremely well versed in young puppies, and the dog trainer, it, you know, takes it on face value. Okay, the puppies biting you. Let's stop the puppy biting you. And here's how we can stop the puppy from biting you.

But that's treating the symptom and not really the disease. And the disease here is that the puppy owner just doesn't understand normal puppy behavior and has unreasonable expectations. In actual fact, the puppy owner just needs to be told that this is normal behavior and it will pass if they can just manage it.

I also did a podcast on this one episode 15 Mentors for Puppy Owners. Do we need a new kind of professional? I do recommend if you haven't heard that one, you also go back and listen to that one.

Okay, so after unreasonable puppy owner expectations, or I should say unrealistic puppy owner expectations, the most common reason for something like this happening is a mismatch between the owner and the puppy. Puppies sometimes do like some people more than others.

Nothing wrong with the puppy. Nothing wrong with the people, just not a good match. A smart puppy that learns quickly and is a go, go, go wanting to do things puppy, is not a good match for your sweet care bear family with kids that they have, you know all this warmth and love and hugs to give the puppy, but you know, not a lot of individual training and interaction time.

I have definitely seen puppies who just don't bond with the family because it's a mismatch. But those same puppies bond deeply with another family and those families bond deeply with another puppy. I have had this happen to me in my own breeding program. It's like putting on a cozy oversize sweater on a beautiful summer day. There is nothing wrong with the sweater and nothing wrong with the day, but they just don't go together.

Somewhere in between all of this, we would have to define normal for a beagle in terms of bonding. I don't have a lot of experience with beagles, but what I have observed is that their quirky, quite humorous, especially when they don't want to do something. I've also not observed them to be overly cuddly dogs. I think their behavior is adorable, especially when they pitch a fit when they don't want to do something.

But you know, it's not for everyone. And if you have a puppy owner who is hoping to get something a little more dufus-y golden retriever-y this can be off putting the first time they go to move the beagle or make the beagle do something. The beagle just sort of says no. So there could be a breed specific incorrect expectation on, on the puppy owner's part and again what might be normal for one breed in terms of bonding and willingness to cuddle and play and be patted. You know, it might be very different for another breed.

But again, this is where the the breeder is in the best position to take the puppy back and assess whether the puppy is within normal or an outlier behaviorally.

Now, look, I would guess based on that history, that it's going to be one of those two things that we talked about or two and a half things.

It's either going to be incorrect expectations of a puppy on the puppy owners part. It's going to be they don't know what a beagle puppy is and it's a normal beagle puppy or it's going to be just that. It's it's a mismatch. The beagle is a smart puppy that wants to go, go, go do play, learn. And the owners just want something that they can, you know, put in a purse and carry around.

So I do think in this case, that's probably one of those things. But again, when I'm taking a puppy back, I'm going through all the possibilities. Another possibility is maybe the puppy really is a little bit different. I do think that dogs are on a spectrum similar to the human autism spectrum, and I have observed that dogs, puppies that have sensory integration issues where they don't really like to be touched much. That does often sort with emotional attachment issues.

So that that would sort of track with a little bit of what the puppy owners relating here. The puppy not wanting to wag its tail or be touched or held. If it is truly outside of breed, normal and puppy normal. I mean, this puppy could have a touch of what would be doggy autism, I guess you'd call it.

And those kinds of puppies sometimes do wind up needing something equivalent to an occupational therapy type thing for their sensor, sensory integration issues, and those puppies are likely to be more aloof, but they can also be really delightful puppies. My Ruby, who is, was, the grandmother of the Puppy Culture puppies, she was probably on this spectrum. She was an amazing dog to do things with, but she really did not have a lot of use for me if I was not actively sort of entertaining her.

So if we were training, going someplace, doing a walk, competing, I mean, she was the best, but cuddling on the couch, you know, not so much. I would not trade the world for my time with Ruby. I learned so much from her and I loved her so deeply. But, you know, if I was the kind of person that was just looking for a dog to cuddle on the couch with and watch TV, yeah, I really would not have liked that dog at all.

And finally and I'm going to put this way down at the bottom, like, you know, you got maybe a half of 1% chance in most cases of this happening. There could be something really wrong with the puppy. The mean the puppy could really have some kind of serious personality disorder. But in my 20 odd years of breeding, I think I've had one puppy that I would say was just really wrong in the head like that.

So it absolutely can happen. But again, there's nothing in this history that these puppy owners have given you that that would lead you to think this would be the case. You always have to have it on the table, but I don't think that's the case here.

So now I want to go back to some of the comments and it was interesting. A lot of people said, well, the puppy hasn't been in the home long enough and they're not giving it a chance. And, you know, a lot of people were sort of on the side of working with the puppy and the owner and trying to keep this puppy in the home. And it's an interesting thing because I struggle with this myself, both advising people and in my own experience.

And I'm just going to say there's enough red flags in this history that as a breeder, I'd be taking this puppy back. I mean, let's just start with the D-word, right? Dominance. Where they’re, they’re saying they've done absolutely everything. Everything, everything. And still the puppy is like this and it must be dominance. I don't get a feeling like they really like the puppy at all.

And I get the feeling from this letter that they're really just almost trying to make themselves absolve themselves of guilt for returning this puppy to really just say, Absolutely, I have done everything and we don't like this puppy. We still don't like this puppy. And when you start reaching for the dominance thing, that worries me as a breeder because it tells me, okay, they're going down a bad path, that I don't want that for my puppy.

Also, you know, an eight week old puppy, you're making the puppy sit before it gets its food. I don't agree with that. I mean, if the puppy does sit, boy, that's adorable and fun, but it sounds like they've got a very tight training straight jacket on this puppy and they're just, they're doubling down. They're making it tighter. And that really can lead to bad results with these puppies and honestly can breed aggression eventually.

So, no, for myself, I would not want to be keeping this puppy in this home. I'd want to be taking this puppy back. Now, if you got the same letter from a person who's crying and telling you how much they love the puppy and how much the puppy means to them, but still the puppy seems to bite them and it's so upsetting.

And you know that that's a person that you can talk them off the cliff and just go to their house and say, look, I mean, this is the normal puppy. It's fine. But these people, I don't know what to tell you. They don't like the puppy. Get the puppy out of there.

One thing about this post that I really loved in the comments was how many dog trainers wrote in saying they don't even breed dogs, but they follow Puppy Culture and the discussion group because they learn so much about puppies and how many dog trainers said; Absolutely. We see it all the time that people come to us wanting to train these behaviors out and we're like, How about you just enjoy your puppy and let the puppy be a puppy? So I did find that very encouraging that so many dog trainers, even who are not breeders, seem to have a very good grasp of what the real issues are in cases like this.

A number of other people commented that they've had the puppy only 30 days and according to the post, they did an awful lot with the puppy. Maybe it was too much activity. Again, I don't think the activity per say is an issue. I think it's the attendant emotion around the activity, the intent of the activity, which is to somehow make this puppy not be a puppy, not to be the puppy that it that it is that to make the puppy be something else by just running it off its feet.

And yeah, in that sense, sure too much activity but I don't think with these people doing less activity is going to change the picture.

Now, but here's something great and I'm going to read this comment. Just being a hound person, not an expert by any means, he may need activities that simulate hunting, behavior, search and find things in the yard and around the house.

He may be overstimulated in ways that he doesn't understand or like and not stimulated enough in the hound instincts. Some hounds can seem rather detached from people, especially those with high prey drive. This is really interesting. It would not change my advice about wanting to take the puppy back because I just want to stop the bleeding here and I don't want to get a messed up puppy back and I'm afraid that these people are going down that road.

But, you know, sometimes showing the puppy owners how to appreciate what's exceptional about their puppy can help. So things like invite them to take their puppy to a nose work class and let them see their puppy doing an activity that speaks to his soul. And you know, some people, when they see that it it can speak to them like it can light them up and make them see just the magic in their puppy.

I'm not saying all people because again, some people it's just we want a puppy to sit on the couch with. We really don't care that this puppy is magical in some other way, but it's a possibility that they might learn to appreciate things about their puppy that aren't readily apparent to them. When the puppy is doing puppy things like biting them and not letting them pick them up.

This reminds me of Fathom Berger's book written almost 100 years ago now. I guess, where he was dealing with guide dog colonies and guardian homes and one of the rules in the guardian homes was that these retrievers that they couldn't hunt with them, that they would raise the puppies and they could not let the puppies do any kind of hunting activity because they felt that that would make them too wild, to be good service dogs.

But, you know, naturally, some homes just disobeyed. And it turns out that the homes that disobeyed this and allowed the dogs to hunt the puppies to grow up hunting, that those puppies did better in the program. So, again, there's something about allowing the animal to do its thing that it was bred to do, to let its soul wake up and do that thing can spill over into more amiability and success in other parts of life.

Ah yes. And somebody else commented, And I am really remiss for not putting this upfront that if the puppy truly does not like to be touched and it's outside of breed normal, and if the puppy really is an outlier in that regard, we have to rule out any kind of veterinary problem with the puppy. I didn't mention it simply because based on the history, it doesn't jump out as the first thing, but it goes without saying, okay, that you first eliminate any kind of medical issue for the behavior problem.

I'm just not convinced that it's a behavior problem. So I didn't mention eliminating physical causes first, but so noted. Yes, you're right. The first thing you have to do is make sure if there is a behavior problem, that it's not caused by anything medical.

I want to close this by saying my heart goes out to this breeder because it just really stinks to get a puppy back this way without even knowing this breeder. I don't know you. I never met you. I know you don't need to take this puppy back right? I know you're busy. I know you've got more on your plate than you can already handle, and you're getting this puppy back. But trust me, it is the right thing to do. Because the only thing worse than getting a 12 week old puppy back is getting a six month or a year old puppy back that actually has been messed up.

So it's the right thing. I'm sorry. Being a breeder sometimes feels like you're running a board and train, unfortunately. But if it makes you feel any better, we've all been there.

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