Socialisation, habituation, neutralisation, raising, developing, growing. Blogs about future-dogs.
Clover had her puppies on Tuesday 6th of November 2012. Six puppies, 3 boys and 3 girls. All good weights, healthy, happy, strong, drinking well. They have been given temporary names, because I find calling puppies “1st boy” and “3rd born” and “last born” tedious. This post is just to show you some puppy pictures. Enjoy!
First born, “Alfalfa”, bitch.
This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.
Dunbar is big on socialisation, and thinks that breeders should put a lot of effort and attention to socialising their puppies. While breeders will select the best genetic combination, socialisation and training will seek to fix any deficiencies in the genetic package. He thinks many breeders are ‘not doing their job’ and are producing ‘lemon’ puppies. Good breeders, through socialisation, produce puppies that like being handled and like all people.
Clover: Pregnant but active.
Puppy buyers need to know that all breeders are not created equal, even if producing pedigree dogs. A pedigree is not a socialisation history, and (to Dunbar) a socialisation history is more important than their pedigree.
Breeders are responsible for training puppies until they are 8 weeks old. They should be selling well-socialised, housetrained, and chew-toy trained puppies. (And if they are, they can charge twice as much for one – Dunbar’s motivator to breeders!) By 8 weeks, the critical period is half over! So breeders really need to be doing something.
A puppy that is exhibiting fearful behaviour at 8 weeks or earlier is problematic. At 8 weeks, a puppy should run up to all people – men, women, and children. Continue reading
This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.
You didn’t have to be at Ian Dunbar’s seminar long to understand that Dunbar had a pretty big crush on Kong toys! To me, I think he was a bit biased – I think there’s a bunch of other chew toys highly appropriate for a similar purpose. But Dunbar mostly focused his attention on Kongs.
He suggested that every household, especially puppy households, should have Kongs, and advised that the largest dog in the household should determine the size of the Kong.
Photo © Ruthless Photos.
Why use Kongs?
Dogs who eat Kongs will automatically perform a bunch of desirable behaviours (and cease to display undesirable behaviours) by being given a Kong that serves as a distraction of sorts.
When dogs are eating from a Kong, they can’t be barking, they’re normally laying down, and the motion of eating decreases their stress. Eating from a food toy increases a dog’s confidence in being alone. Basically, they reduce behaviour problems by training your dog to create ‘good habits’.
Dunbar also argues that Kongs increase food drive, and encourage the dog to only chew ‘food wielding items’ (summed up in, “Why would I chew the furniture? It doesn’t have food in it.”). Continue reading
This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.
Dunbar is big into socialisation. He believes a puppy should meet 100 people before it is 8 weeks old, and 100 people in its first month in its new home. That is, a puppy should’ve met 200 people by the time it is 16 weeks (4 months) old. Dunbar believes in recruiting these people by whatever means possible in order to prevent fear behaviour. As he rightly points out, fear behaviours are easier to prevent in puppyhood than they are to ‘fix’ in adult dogs (which he calls a big project).
Dobermann puppies being socialised to handling by many different people. Photo © Ruthless Photos.
Socialising a puppy is easy, and enjoyable. It teaches the dog to enjoy people (and so it doesn’t want to bite them) and teaches the dog to enjoy being hugged and petted (or restrained and examined).
One of the joys with puppies is that they can be flooded. Throwing a party, and encouraging people to wear costumes, is okay! As is taking them to venues with a lot of things happening.
One of Dunbar’s take home messages, particularly to breeders, is not to worry too much about diseases. Parvovirus is spread by poo, and he thinks that asking visitors to remove shoes before entering the house is sufficient enough prevention. He defines the floor of a vet carpark or a vet clinic is high risk, but that’s about it. I very much agree with Dunbar in this regard: The risks of not socialising is much more likely to kill a puppy (i.e. behavioural problems) than parvovirus.
Puppy classes are nice, but are not good enough to adequately socialise a puppy alone. New puppy owners should put a lot of attention into making that puppy, at the very least, socialable with family and immediately family, or anyone who visits the house on a semi-permanent basis. This means that they are less likely to give the puppy at a later date, and so the puppy stays at its original home forever. Puppy classes aren’t the answer to this, but adequate and extensive socialisation is!
This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.
New puppy homes need to have a long term confinement area set up ready for their puppy’s arrival. The idea is that, by using a pen setup in this way, the puppy will self-toilet-train and self-chew-toy-train. It also helps to teach the puppy to be alone. Long term confinement areas are designed so puppies learn where to pee and where to chew, and how to be alone. Basically, a pen like this allows a puppy to make correct choices, and so be successful in achieving appropriate behaviours.
Dunbar advocates for puppy pens to be set up with the bed far away from a toileting areas, as puppies are naturally inclined to toilet away from their sleeping area.
This pen has several features: