At the moment, I am raising my first litter. The puppies are only two weeks old, but are already using calming signals during intensive handling sessions.
The most obvious of which is yawning. I don’t think I have seen a puppy yawn once in the whelping box – all have yawned while they are being handled. Obviously, the puppies are not merely tired.
For those who are unaware, “Calming Signals” is a term coined by Turid Rugaas to describe behaviours that communicate discomfort or stress. One of them is yawning, and my puppies are clearly displaying this behaviour. Another is the ‘look away’. I am certain that taking photographs of these puppies would not be so hard if this signal wasn’t mastered yet. I have also seen the occasional lip licking, though not with enough conviction that I am convinced it is a calming signal.
I guess my interest in posting this observation is the very early stage of this yawning – why are puppies this young yawning?
There is some debate about whether calming signals are for the benefit of the other animal (e.g. another dog) or actually work in calming the dog down who is displaying the behaviour. It could be proposed that, at this stage, the puppies are only interacting with their mother. I have doubts whether they are using these behaviours to solely communicate with her. So perhaps calming signals are working in these young puppies to calm them down?
Perhaps our pet dogs need calming signals in preparedness of interacting with humans. This raises questions about the origins of calming signals. Do wolves make calming signals? How about some wild dog-like species, like New Guinea Singing Dogs or Dingos? Could this very young display of calming signals be as a result of puppies having to interact with outsiders sooner than their wild cousins (considering that puppies ‘in the wild’ would be in a den for several weeks)?
This is a simple observation, but it makes you wonder – what’s the point of yawning when you’re two weeks old?
(Turid’s website is Calming Signals Community. For more information about Calming Signals, you can access DogWise.com’s selection of Turid Rugaas books. I can personally vouch for the fantastic “On Talking Terms With Dogs” DVD, though the rest of her resources are yet to be dissected.)
Hi I have read Trudi’s books etc. too and found them very interesting.
Another thought on the yawning signal. have the pups started to get their teeth. I found with my Curlies that they yawned when their teeth (molars) were coming through.
Just a thought.
Good luck with the pups
Congratulations on being the first comment on my blog!
Wow. This is really interesting. I never really thought about the age at which dogs starting using calming signals.
I think it’s interesting too. There has not been too many developments on this front, though, in terms of calming signals (my pups are 4 weeks now). They are starting to behave more like dogs, now, and interacting with their dad, etc. So now they actually have someone other than their mother to try to communicate with!
My thinking is that if calming signals are instinctive in dogs, rather than a learned behaviour, then possibly your own phrase holds the most pertinent information – “are already using calming signals DURING INTENSIVE HANDLING sessions”.
A two week old puppy/wolf cub in a den situation away from humans probably has no need to perform calming signals toward its mother or littermates, but if the instinctive potential is there and can be triggered when the puppy is under stress (and being handled by a human is, understandably, stressful), then perhaps you are triggering the latent potential for calming signals.
It is, of course, important for neonatal pups to be handled – “Animals left undisturbed during neonatal development were found to be consistently more emotionally reactive as adults” – however the level of stress they are subjected to is important – note the word “mild” in the following quote… “Early neonatal handling involving as little as three minutes a day and exposure to various mild environmental stressors, like changes in ambient temperature and movement (gentling), may have positive impacts on a puppy’s resistance to disease, emotional reactivity, and mature learning and problem solving abilities (Morton, 1968)”. However, if overdone the opposite effects can occur and puppies can become ‘emotionally thin’ (my term) – “…there may be developmental periods when stressful exposure is particularly beneficial and others (e.g., early in the socialisation period) during which small amounts of stress may produced pronounced and lasting detrimental results.”
Quotes above are from Volume One of the Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training” by Steven Lindsay.
Just thought I’d throw those thoughts in.
Not knowing what exactly you consider “intensive” it’s hard to know exactly what may be prompting the response in your pups and also whether or not it is entirely normal and expected or whether it’s a sign they’re too stressed.
All the best with your litter!
Hi Melanie. Thank-you for your considered response. All the puppies have gone to new homes now, and I am left with my one keeper. The yawning mostly occurred when we would try to get photos of the pups individually. They rarely yawned when I just moved them from whelping box to intermittent box back to whelping box. I guess being suspended and lifted is a stressful situation, which is why the puppies reacted. I don’t think I saw the puppies yawn when they had their bellies against the ground.
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HI.. I know this is very old but still it is the only article that seem to talk of this right now.. I am still a bit uncertain about my concerns though. I have a 2 week old puppy and she is very very small compared to her two other brothers. Almost half their size. The mother had 6 pups and 3 died unfortunately, almost the same week of their birth. They were very small and were not nursing well i guess. ( We did tried to save them! We tried everything we saw on internet). So now, again, i don’t know if it is a sign or is it just a calming signal as you said earlier. I was holding the female puppy and tried putting her closer to the mother’s nipples.. but all she did was opening her mouth wide and just turning her head away.. so i don’t know is she gasping for air? is she trying to reach a nipple, is she doing that calming signal.. She is also very sleepy and was not nursing at that time… I have not seen her earlier so I don’t know if she already got her dose of milk just before and she is just sleepy now. but what is strange is that the two others would be very active and ‘run’ for a nipple and then sleep while safeguarding one nipple.. but she just sleep. What to do.. Thanks for your help…
Please take your puppy to a vet, especially considering you have already lost half the litter, and get them to teach you to tube feed. Try to wean onto solid food ASAP.