Episode 36 - Is the Fear Genetic? Tough Decisions about Keeper Puppies

12/9/2025

This episode's question is about what to do when your “keeper” puppy starts showing significant fear issues:

"I’m really sad about my situation. I don’t want this to reflect poorly on my small breeding program that I’ve poured so much time, thought, stress, money, and emotional energy into ... my keeper puppy is now showing pretty significant fear issues. I was hoping to keep this puppy and eventually use her in my program.

My biggest concern is that this is genetic fear and she will not outgrow/overcome it. This is depressing me quite honestly, and I’m feeling very deer-in-the-headlights about how to move forward."

In this podcast I address:

How to tell if a fear issue is a developmental or genetic issue and what the line is between normal and pathological fear
My personal experiences and outcomes in this area
Words of encouragement for small program breeders, with thoughts for surviving emotional setbacks and staying in the breeding game

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

Transcript - Episode 36

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

This episode's question is the third in my temperament versus behavior and selecting breeding stock trifecta. The other two episodes are episode 28 and our last episode, episode 34.

I strongly recommend if you can go back and listen to episode 28, because that's where I talk very generally about the limits of modifying genetic behavior.

But here goes. Here's the question. Buckle up because it's a long one. But I think it's all relevant.

I'm posting anonymously because I'm really sad about my situation. I don't want this to reflect poorly on my small breeding program that I poured so much time, thought, stress, money, and emotional energy into. I recently got to keep a puppy for my own breeding finally, after years of waiting. All the puppies have been raised with Puppy Culture. We also do Volhard temperament testing and various socialization and enrichment activities. I raised these puppies so I know exactly what they went through and how much effort was put in.

Well, my keeper puppy is now showing pretty significant fear issues. The puppy is almost 14 weeks old. I noticed changes several weeks ago. The puppy has been going on outings very regularly, meaning several times a week. The first time I noticed significant fear was when two dogs were barking very excitedly and jumping on a fence. It completely panicked the puppy who took off running with tail tucked. She was in a fenced yard and ran all the way to the fence door, where she desperately tried escaping.

Since this incident, my puppy has been terrified of people and dogs in general, but also randomly other things at times. She won't allow people to approach her at all. I enjoy hiking, but if someone's coming towards us on the trail, she panics and tries to bolt. She doesn't allow any interaction with people outside of my home, and she's even leery of guests in our home.

She was very well socialized, with tons of people on and off the property with her litter mates. If I pick her up and carry her, she panics and tries to jump out of my arms as we pass by people. I can feel her heart beating a million miles a minute. Note that I do not force any interaction. She's also terrified of other dogs besides the ones she lives with.

Aside from the barking incident, she's never had a bad experience with other dogs prior to her sudden fear of them. I had her out recently on a walk on a calm environment. An old golden retriever passed by leisurely and she tucked her tail and bolted to hide under a car. There's a German Shepherd that lives next door that barks quite frequently.

She's fine with his barking, but any other dog barking sets her into a panic. We did do the sound habituation with the litter also. Most recently, I pulled my car up to our back gate. All the dogs came running up to the gate except her. She talked her tail and bolted as fast as she could to the other side of our very large yard.

After I got out of the car, she was afraid of me and was peering at me from behind a tree. After she realized it was me, she cautiously approached and it took her a minute to accept me. I'm at a loss for this behavior. I have never had a single puppy owner report back fear problems with any of my puppies.

I'm very dog savvy with a ton of experience. Yet here I am with this puppy that most people would assume was grossly under socialized. This situation is really bumming me out. I'm not sure where we go from here. Some people are saying keep exposing her. Some say keep her home for a few weeks. At first I thought this was a fear period, but it seems to be lasting way longer than just a few days and is pretty generalized to a lot of instances and not specific to any particular thing.

I was hoping to keep this puppy and eventually use her in my program. My biggest concern is that this is genetic fear and she will not outgrow or overcome it. This is depressing me, quite honestly, and I'm feeling very deer in the headlights about how to move forward.

Okay, this is me again. First of all, my heart goes out to this breeder. I don't normally take these kinds of questions, and I don't normally publish these kinds of posts because essentially it's an entire case history that needs a consult. But because the behavior is apparently extreme at a very young age, I feel like some general observations can be made, and this could be at least a teaching moment.

So the question specifically is whether she should keep working with this puppy in the hopes that the puppy will grow out of this and become a valued part of the breeding program. I have experienced this exact scenario, and for what it's worth. This is what I decided and how it turned out for us.

My fearful puppy was also my pick and the fear issues began at around the same age. Gorgeous. Sweet puppy. Tested unremarkably on the puppy assessments, suddenly started becoming fearful at around 12 weeks old. Despite her robust socialization up until that point and my continued efforts to work with her, she rapidly became more and more fearful. Now, I don't know if everyone knows this, so I'll say it that I am also a professional dog trainer as well as a breeder.

And I have a rule in my dog training program called Get to Zero, meaning to say whatever you're working on, whether it's counter conditioning, fear, or teaching a normal dog to do a down stay. You have to get to a place where the dog doesn't have so much emotional interference that they can't be counter conditioned or they can't learn.

If a dog is afraid of vacuum cleaners. You have to start with the vacuum cleaner far enough away that they barely notice it. You just want enough sound so that the dog definitely hears it, but they do not react to it. If you want to teach it down, stay. You start in your living room, then move to the back deck, then the back yard, then the front yard, then a familiar place that's not your home and systematically work your way up to a busy venue with other dogs and people around.

If you are reasonably competent trainer and your dog is clinically normal, this will be a fairly systematic, straightforward process. There may be small regressions here and there, but your zero point will be moving forward in a somewhat linear fashion. If you haven't overbid where your zero point is and flooded the dog and wound up sensitizing him instead of counter conditioning him.

This is a process that should move forward without a lot of effort or drama. You can't rush it, but it should be fairly predictable where your zero point is and that zero point should be moving forward, not backward. When you see a dog who, despite having had excellent early socialization, becomes suddenly fearful of the familiar, around 12 weeks old, your first thought, of course, is that this could be a late fear period. But when, despite gently working with the puppy, the zero point keeps regressing instead of moving forward. And when that happens over the course of weeks, not days, now we start to think about it being a pathological problem that might need pharmaceutical support.

My puppy that was fearful started with not wanting to go for a walk on the front acres of the property. Despite working with her gently and giving her the space to do things on her own without forcing her, she got worse and worse. First would not walk all the way down the driveway, then would not walk down the front walk then would not come off the front porch, then would not go out the front door and my puppy, like hers, had similar fears about just about everything else.

I only used the front lawn example because that's how we first noticed it. So now by five months old, we had a puppy that absolutely could not get to zero. There was literally no place in the world where she was not afraid. We could not work with her to counter conditioned her because there was no place to start.

So when I see a dog who has no zero point and or the zero point changes without any predictable antecedents, I feel pharmaceutical support is indicated. Now, I'm not a veterinary behaviorist. I'm not going to talk about prescription or what you prescribe, but you can't work with a dog that is literally afraid of life and whose triggers are routine things in life that you can't shield them from or control.

So now it's time to go see a veterinarian or a veterinary behaviorist. We chose to put that puppy, my fearful puppy, on an SSRI medication, and the transformation was almost miraculous. Within two months after being on the medication, she was so much better that we were able to take her with us to a dog show. We didn't show her.

She just came along with the pack for the ride and it was a big specialty. And of course, everyone noticed how beautiful and sweet she was. And everyone told me I was crazy to place her, that I should show her and breed her. But they only saw her on drugs and I knew who she was underneath all that.

It's just my personal feeling that I don't want to breed dogs that need Prozac to function, even if they're wonderful when they're on Prozac. It's also my feeling in general, that I don't really need to show a dog that is not breeding stock, even if that dog is a dog that could win a lot in the show ring.

I prefer to move on to the next generation and let everyone, including the dog, get on with their lives. This is not a rule and I don't think badly of people who show dogs that won't be bred, but take it for what it's worth. That's my position. So in this case, we place that gorgeous puppy with a nice family in New England in a rural area.

She never really did great on walks in unfamiliar areas, but she was truly their heart dog and she could not have been better for them. Helped raise their grandchildren. Wonderful with visiting people and dogs. Secure in her own home, but never was going to be a dog that was going to do well outside of her house. They wrote to me all the time and said they know she did not fill my hopes and dreams for my breeding program, but she was the best dog in the world, and they thank me again and again for bringing her into the world.

That dog passed away just recently and the family is really almost inconsolable. What a great dog, but not a dog I'm going to put my breeding program.

So that's a long way of saying I would probably consult with a veterinary behaviorist and see if they felt an SSRI medication might be indicated for the querents fearful dog. If the drugs make a big difference, then I would engage in a systematic counter conditioning program socialization program in the coming months and get her into a suitable quiet pet home.

To you, this might be a disappointment, but to the people that get her, it could be the most wonderful thing in the world. Breeding is, frankly a lot about shouldering this kind of disappointment. I could go on for days about the best and show potential puppies that I bred, that have not worked out temperamentally, that have died and that have disappeared with capricious co-owners.

My ultimate advice is to get the puppy evaluated by a veterinary behaviorist and decide what's going on. Then take the best of that litter for your breeding program, even if it's not the one you hoped it would be, and move on.

Before I sign off on this one. I want to emphasize how much really and truly my heart goes out to this breeder because I feel everything she's saying.

The amount of effort that modern dog breeders put into each individual puppy, and the amount of hope that we place in our small breeding programs is immense. And it does set us up for some emotional, hard times, because ultimately, it's not really realistic to have a small breeding program and expect that everything emotionally is going to work out for you the way you hope it might.

You know, dog breeding at least fanciers for for purebred dog breeding was traditionally the realm of the rich. I mean, rich people bred dogs. They or or commercial breeders bred dogs, and they had hundreds of dogs in a kennel with a staff. And it was not, you know, as an emotional venture as it is for us today because the dogs didn't live in their house, they lived in a kennel.

They picked the best ones that they had a better ability to be clear eyed about things and less invested in each individual animal. I think that is a better way to build a really good breeding program. It's not something that I could do because I'm in this because I love my dogs. I they sleep in my bed at night.

They're each dog has a career long after their breeding career. They're a treasured part of the family. It's it's not for me to have a kennel of 100 dogs, but I'm just telling you right now the kind of emotional letdown that she's feeling. I've been there. We all have. This is what it is to have a small breeding program.

So, you know, it's oft said that people get into breeding and then within five years they get out. And why is that? And people want instant gratification and yadda yadda, and I, I disagree. I think that a lot of it is just unrealistic expectations. for very small breeding programs and the expectation that if you breed two good dogs together, you're going to get ten good puppies.

I mean, you have to be ready to accept the emotional blows and they're going to be there. I'm not saying that everyone has what it takes to accept those emotional blows and keep going with the small breeding program, and it's no harm, no foul. There's no shame in it, if you're just like, I just want to have some pets, I can't do this but understand that God is looking at the population genetics of dogs, and you're going to get whatever the roulette wheel gives you, and sometimes it's not what you want. Of course, selecting the best genetic stock in your small breeding program and moving forward. Good dog to good dog. You're going to make progress, but it's not going to be linear and you're going to have emotional setbacks if you're attached to those dogs.

I mean, you can be attached to them as much as you want, but I mean attached to them in the sense of attached to the idea of using those dogs in your breeding program, either because you love the dog or because you just put a lot of hope in this particular breeding. So I really give this woman a virtual hug because obviously she's doing all the right things by these puppies, and she's a good breeder, and she wants to do better with her temperaments, with her program.

And we need people like her. And I want her to continue. But I think sometimes the only way you can continue is to understand that you can't solve every problem, and things aren't always going to work out the way we want them to.

If you liked this podcast, you'll love our booklets. We have puppy exercise booklets. Be your puppies advocate booklets. Booklets on the pros and cons of spaying and neutering puppies.

Check them all out at puppyculture.com. well, that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.