Episode 23 - How Early Can You See a Puppy’s Personality? Breeder Observations and Advice

10/2/2024

This week’s question asks what the earliest is that breeders have observed consistent personality traits in a puppy:

“Out of curiosity, how early have you noticed personality traits developing in your litters that did stick around until the time they went to new homes or even beyond?

(Caveat: I know a puppy's personality truly doesn't settle until they are much older which is why temperament tests aren't predictive of adult temperament as we learn in PC.

This is just for fun / curiosity and because my current litter seem to be showing consistent temperaments at only 3 weeks and my last litter didn't really start to show that until around 5 weeks!)”

In this episode I discuss:

Various breeders’ experiences with early personality traits.
Why adult personalities will often seem inconsistent with puppy personalities.
Practical advice regarding breeder observation of early personality traits.

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

EPISODE 23 - 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 early indicators of adult personality. And here's the question:

Out of curiosity how early have you noticed personality traits developing in your litters that did stick around until the time they went to their new homes or even beyond?

I know a puppy's personality truly doesn't settle until they're much older, which is why temperament tests aren't predictive of adult temperament, as we learned in Puppy Culture. This is just for fun/curiosity. And because my current litter seems to be showing some pretty consistent temperaments at only three weeks and my last litter didn't really start to show that until around five weeks.

This is a great question because what's maddening about this is that for sure, sometimes puppies are born, who they are. In literal answer to her question, I have had puppies who were not even all the way out the birth canal, and they were already showing me who they were. And that remained consistent throughout the life of that animal.

But for every one of those, there's five puppies that I thought for sure we're going to be one way, and turned out to be a completely different way. I think as breeders, it often feels to us like personality traits are extremely consistent from birth. But I also think that there's strong confirmation bias going on. It's, it's emotionally satisfying.

And we remember the puppies that tracked very consistently, and we also remember those aspects of their very early behavior that are consistent with the adult behavior. So there's a little bit of hindsight being 2020 when we're looking at these very early personality traits and how they track with adult behavior. I also think it's possible that you can see personalities very early, but exactly how those personalities are going to express themselves is variable because you just can't extrapolate how that personality is going to look like in behavioral terms.

As an example, Bijou. I do remember in the whelping box, she was always the peacemaker. If the other puppies were squabbling, she'd be like, Hey, come on, guys. Can't we all just get along? And, you know, she'd get visibly upset when the other puppies squabbled. She'd get in the middle of it. She’d try and calm everyone down, and she's still that way.

But she's also not above being the troublemaker herself. If it suits her, she gets terribly upset if the other dogs have disagreements. But if she's on the couch sitting next to my husband and Theo wants to get up, she has no problem growling at him and telling him no. So, yes, she is consistent from the time she's been in the whelping box, she's been the peacemaker, but only in the sense of not wanting the other dogs to argue.

She's got no problem starting trouble herself if it's in her interest to do so. Now, that's not something that we saw in her as a baby puppy, But you got to think about it. Three week old puppies, you know, they don't really have possession of anything. They don't really have a strong sense of self in that way and ownership.

So, yes, you can see some personality traits, but only in that very small portion of the dog's psyche that is even available for examination at three weeks old. There's so much more that's going to come online. There are so many other desires, drives, just abilities and brain development that just literally doesn't exist yet when they're very young. So extrapolating how what that looks like, that three week old personality to an adult, you know, you're hardly going to be above random chance much of the time.

The other thing about Bijou is that she grew up to be extremely soft, which was not at all how she presented as a puppy. But when you think about it, it can be a natural extension of being uncomfortable with conflict. So again, I can Monday morning quarterback her personality at three weeks old in the whelping box and see all of her adult personality traits in that puppy behavior.

But I really don't think I could have guessed prospectively how she would have grown up based on what I saw in the whelping box. Because again, that peacemaker attitude that she had could have developed into a dog that completely defers from conflict like Daphne was. It can be a dog that will avoid conflict like Bijou, she has no axe to grind with anyone, but if she's crossed, she has no problem standing up for herself.

You could wind up with a dog that just really is afraid of other dogs and dislikes being around other dogs, you could wind up with a dog that has fear aggression. I mean, all these things are possible. It's like the Nile Delta, all these fingers coming out of this personality trait. You have this personality trait of being uncomfortable with conflict.

Okay? And that we can say the dog has, but how is it going to express itself in a three week old puppy? It might be peacemaker in the whelping box, but to take that and say, well, this is what the dog's going to be like when it grows up, you know, you really can't say you might have guessed right.

And then that's your confirmation bias. You say, Oh yeah, you see, I knew, but you really don't know. Another puppy in one of my litters was one that I definitely from the whelping box flagged her for being extra and I was keeping a close eye on her. She was the worst with handling. I could not get a good CER on her with nail care.

She was not above growling at you if she didn't want you to do something. And all I can say is she grew up to be magical. So sweet and gentle, easy to care for, great with body handling, obsessed with small creatures, other dogs, people, cows, nothing but love for everything in the world. And is a super easy dog.

Yes. She went to a great home with great people. But really, that only accounts for so much. Look, as I might add, her puppy behavior, I can't see the dog she's become. And I would not say that that is the only time that I flagged a puppy for potentially being a little bit more problematic that the puppy has turned out to be not only okay, but absolutely magical even on a litter level, I do not see consistency with puppy behavior and adult behavior.

Daphne's second litter was the absolute most mellow litter ever. I called them my civilized puppies. I remember thinking how we would never have any trouble with any of them because at ten weeks old they didn't guard things from each other. They never squabbled, they never made a mess. They were house trained. They were completely even and calm with any outside person or dog.

But two of those puppies grew up to have pretty severe same sex aggression, which is not, oh, how shall I say, pathological in our breed. It's, you know, same sex aggression can be normal in bull terriers. And one of them was reactive to small dogs, which again, you know, maybe that could be within normal range. But I never would have predicted that in this litter of all the litters I had, I would have thought that litter, we'd never have those problems.

Now, that having been said, at least on a litter level, there are some overall traits that differ tremendously from breed to breed. So it's not like you don't see anything in these puppies at this age. It's just that if you never met a Vizsla, an adult Vizsla or an adult Bull Terrier, and then you saw a litter of Vizsla in the whelping box at three weeks old and a litter of bull terriers in a whelping box at three weeks old, you definitely would say, well, these are not similar. The behavior would be very different.

But I don't think that you would be able to extrapolate what they would be like as adults. And that's my point about this.

Now, why am I such a killjoy when it comes to this topic? I mean, really, what's the harm if breeders one look at puppies and say, oh, look, I see this puppy is doing this and it that means the puppies are going to be like that.

Or, you know, looking back on it and seeing consistencies and seeing personality traits that tracked. There is a reason. There's a reason I'm a killjoy about it because in my observation, a lot of breeders go through a lot of emotional turmoil and potentially do a lot of harm to their puppies by ascribing bigger personality traits to puppy behavior, meaning to say the puppy that maybe you can't get a good CER on the nails as easily, I don't think labeling that puppy as the ‘difficult one’ is helpful.

I think just saying this puppy right now at this point in time has not developed enough food drive to overcome the natural distaste that the puppy has for having their nails done. So often times it's just simply you can't balance that classical conditioning seesaw properly where you have to have something emotionally more salient to give them in order to counter condition something that they don't like.

If the puppy is too young, really still nursing, doesn't like food much for whatever reason. A lot of times you can't get a good CER on them because you don't have anything to give them in exchange for the thing that they don't like. And that usually is a developmental thing. So it's something that if you just remain calm and wait it out and keep trying day after day, you're going to see that turn around.

But if you jump to the conclusion that, oh, this puppy has body sensitivity issues, you're going to tend to get stuck and not be willing or think of really continuing to believe in that puppy and work with that puppy. And that's really what I want to save breeders from, because breeders write in a lot worried about puppy behavior. It causes a lot of consternation and it causes a lot of anguish for the breeder and it can potentially hobble the puppy with a label that can be damaging because when you start believing something about a puppy, that a puppy is a certain way, it unfortunately can become a self-fulfilling prophecy because you're seeing that in the puppy and inadvertently sort of not, I wouldn't use the word reinforcing, but supporting that sort of view of the puppy.

Another thing that we get a lot is people writing in saying that they have a bully puppy, a puppy that's dominant on the other puppies or rough or aggressive to the other puppies. And I'm telling you, 99 times out of 100, it's because the puppy is developmentally a little ahead of the other puppies, maybe a little bigger than the other puppies.

Maybe not bigger, but maybe just more agile. A lot of times the puppy that gets their legs under them first figures out, Oh, I can run roughshod over these other puppies. And you know, when you're talking about puppies in the well being barks, the difference of two or three days is is huge. And that puppy that maybe just gets their legs under them a little bit sooner and can run roughshod over the other puppies learns that lesson and now reaches for that as a go to.

So behaviorally it can start to create a personality, but it's easy to change that as a breeder. It's easy to take that puppy out, give them some time with adult dogs, not ones that are going to correct the puppy, but adult dogs that are good shapers that will shape that puppy down just so that puppy learns that, Oh, I can't just get what I want by force. I have to learn social negotiation.

Now, if instead of just remaining calm and doing this and I'm just going to put a footnote here, Suzanne Shelton's article Weaning Pen Riot's, you can find it in Madcap University under free resources, under articles, weaning pen riots. We go into this in detail. But the point is, if you don't just look at it sort of dispassionately as just this is what's happening and this is how I change it.

And you ascribe a personality to that puppy and say, Well, this puppy, he's a dominant, and that's Ralph. He's a troublemaker. He's dominant. It makes you not want to try and change it. Right. Because now you think, well, this is just the way this puppy is. Okay, so now this puppy is a bad puppy or is a dominant puppy or he's a troublemaker puppy.

So we're going to have to find a home that is going to be able to deal with a troublemaker. And, you know, it just in nine times out of ten it's just not true. It's just a perfectly good, sweet puppy that through a confluence of circumstances, figured out that they can boss the other puppies around and you can change that pretty easily.

So 100%, I’m no better than the next person. You cut me, I bleed, right? I'm always looking, What's this puppy going to be like? Which one is the one that's speaking to me? But even I really have to check myself whenever I find myself starting to think things about a puppy's personality because it can really interfere with my ability to objectively work with that puppy and do the best I can for that puppy.

I mean, for sure you have to see what's in front of you with these puppies. So when there's a behavior, if the puppy is running roughshod over the other puppies or the puppy does seem to be a peacemaker or the puppy does seem to have body handling issues. 100% you you don't ignore that. You take note, but you assume that the behavior is malleable.

The point is you just don't ascribe a bigger personality trait to the puppy based on what you're seeing in the whelping box or when the puppies are very young because that could potentially keep you from bringing your A-game to the protocols with that puppy because you've already made some kind of prejudgment, even a very deep, almost subliminal prejudgment about who those puppies are.

So that's my professional opinion on this topic. And I will say the science on this is limited, but there have been a number of studies that have looked at temperament testing of puppies and some starting from neonatal straight through, trying to develop predictors of adult personality. And the only thing that they have found to have any consistency in multiple studies is exploratory behavior, which is interesting.

I love to hear what everyone else has found about exploratory behavior, but I've been sort of tracking it. And I can say, yes, I do think exploratory behavior does track pretty much from as soon as they're they're ambulatory. But I'm going to be a contrarian here again and say just because it hasn't been proven doesn't make it not true.

So even though studies have not found consistent personality traits from, from birth or puppy hood onward, it doesn't mean that you're wrong. If you as a breeder have seen consistent personality traits, it just means that hasn't been identified scientifically yet. My experience is that personality traits really don't track with any degree of consistency, But you know, your experience might be different.

But again, not to beat a dead horse, even if it is your experience that maybe personality traits are consistent, you still as a breeder are always are going to do the best service to your puppies by not making any assumptions about their personality and just working with the behaviors that you see in front of you.

So this post also generated a lot of discussion. And it was interesting, a couple of people wrote in and said that the one thing that they have noticed to be consistent is the level of drive. But then other people said no, they didn't see that the level of drive was the same. It seemed like it's about 50:50 in the group. Some people saying, yes, some people are saying no to the drive being consistent.

Now, here's one person who says, I knew the personalities of my litter of seven by the age of four weeks. The notes I have from that week show them as they really are. I didn't ask her a follow up question, and I don't know if she's had more than one litter, but that's interesting. You know, and actually that would be a really interesting thing to do, is to start to make sealed predictions on what you think they're going to be based on four weeks and start seeing how that comes out.

As long as you don't let that affect how you interact with the puppies as you're going through the protocols. Well, here's someone who writes in. She's reading all of this going back and forth about, yes, you can tell. No, you can't tell. And she says, So it might be somewhat a guess. And who knows when trying to place puppies with their families and then hope for the best and cross fingers.

Well, yes, it is. It's a bit of a conundrum, isn't it? We wish that we had a crystal ball and could see the future of every puppy. It's not so. Certainly all of these observations are valid by the time those puppies are going to their homes at ten, 12 weeks old, you've got a pretty good picture of those puppies.

And statistically you're going to do a good job placing those puppies at that age. It's all part of it. The puppy testing is part of it all. Your puppy rearing protocols, what you observed about them during this is part of it. The things you observed about them from the time they're in the whelping box. I mean, all of it is going into this information bank and most of the time we do make very good decisions, but nothing is ever going to make it 100%.

And I don't think any one thing is going to be something that you can see prospectively and see exactly what trajectory that personality trait is going to take for the rest of that dog's life, especially very, very young traits. They're valuable, taken in total with all the rest of the information you have, but they're like data points, none of which make any sense except with reference to a lot of other data points.

I just want to close this podcast by saying, I don't want to leave you with the impression that I'm against this kind of conversation about how early personality traits track my sort of crusade is to to impress upon breeders the importance of keeping an open mind and not assigning labels to puppies, because, as we discussed, that does not serve the puppy well.

And it also can make you as a breeder crazy with worrying about puppies when there's nothing to worry about. That having been said, I really enjoyed this thread and I enjoyed everyone that wrote in. There were great comments, lot of food for thought and I hope we have the discussion again more in the future.

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