In the 1960’s, researchers at the University of California-Berkley developed a famous experiment to test how environment affects the ability of rats to navigate mazes. The purpose of the study was to see whether environmental experiences early in life could actually affect brain development.
Their study was based on three groups of rats. One group was raised in isolation from the time of weaning. They were kept in single cages, and the only attention they received was when they were fed and their water bottles were changed. They could not see another rat while in their cages and were kept in a back room where humans didn’t often go. A second group lived three to a cage in a room where they could see human activity regularly. They were not handled or petted. The final group lived in a huge colony consisting of a dozen rats that lived in a large cage with a ton of toys and interesting objects. These rats were also handled and petted.
Within a few weeks of growing up under these conditions, the rats in the final group had remarkable physiological changes. On average,their brains were 5 percent larger than the brains of the rats in the other groups. They were also 7 percent smaller in mass, because their frequent exercise caused them to be more fit and trim.
The rats in this stimulation group wound up clobbering the other groups in their ability to negotiate mazes.
However, it turned out that brain size wasn’t what made these rats so smart. It turns out that this early existence in a stimulating environment had caused their brains to develop more dendritic synapses per neuron than those without the early stimulation. More synapses leads to better problem solving ability as well as having a better learning ability overall.
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What does this have to do with puppies?
Well, quite a bit.
I’ve read in more than one radical behaviorist dog training book that we should keep puppies in sterile environments in which we strictly control their experiences.
I think this is poppycock.
Behaviorism has some value. Don’t get me wrong. Behavioral analysis is a very good tool in social and behavioral sciences. But it does have limit
How dogs and other complex vertebrates learn is much more than reinforcement and punishment. It is part of the puzzle, certainly.
But I think reliance upon these paradigms entirely leads to problems. Dogs are born with drives and instincts, some of which are breed and type specific. You might be able to force-fetch any cur off the street, but it won’t be a stylish working retriever.
You might teach a golden retriever to herd sheep, but it won’t be a border collie. You could teach a border collie to point birds, but it won’t be a trial quality English pointer.
Now, those innate behaviors are ignored in radical behaviorism. In less radical behaviorism, these behaviors are said to be reinforced by a release of endorphins. I don’t disagree with this, but I think it leaves out another part.
Experience is more than reinforcement and punishment. It is about sensing.
That’s what happened to those rats. Their sensory systems experienced things, and their brains grew differently from the deprived groups.
So what does that mean for puppies?
Well, you need to make sure that your puppies come from lines that have been bred for the behaviors you want. No amont of reinforcement or punishment regimes can substitute for innate drives and instincts.
And secondly, puppies need to experience things. We do have the classical critical periods for socialization. Generally, puppies have between 12 and 16 weeks to experience things before they start to develop antipathy towards new things. However, socialization has to go on beyond that, because domestic dogs tend to be able to adapt to new experiences throughout their lives. (This is not the case with virtually all captive wolves.)
Puppies must see, smell, and hear as many things as possible in order to get their brains to develop all of these dendritic synapses that they need to become better learners and problem solvers.
Really, the best place to raise a puppy is on a farm. It can experience so many things that its brain really does get a chance to develop a bunch of synapses. It’s particularly good if the pups can run around off leash and experience these things on their own.
Of course, that is the exact opposite of the ideas one hears in some training circles. A sterile environment is supposedly good for the brain, because the puppies don’t learn to do bad things. Well, that may be true, but their brains are missing out on what their brains really need to become more intelligent animals.
Now, I’m a mostly positive reinforcement trainer. I’m always looking for ways to train dogs without causing them pain or discomfort.
However, I’d rather give them some discomfort and maybe let them experience some risk before I’d let them become nothing more than brainwashed creatures that have experienced only a few things.
I don’t think raising a dog in such away allows their brains to ever reach their full potential.
That’s some “radical” behaviorist who thinks a puppy kept in sterile controlled environments. I wouldn’t even call it “radical”, except in the sense of “radically stupid”. I’m pretty sure just about everyone who knows anything about dogs subscribes to some version of Dunbar’s “100 people by 3 months”recommendation. Most suggest conducting minor stressing with unfamiliar and slight uncomfortable objects/places, to build confidence and resilience and almost everyone has abandoned the notion that you should wait till 3-4-5 months to start “training” a puppy. Given that wonky temperament (the sign of an insecure, poorly socialized dog) is a prime reason for dogs to be given up to shelters, it’s almost criminal to suggest limiting a puppy’s experiences.
The one I’m talking about wrote a book called Ruff Love.
It involves crating a puppy all the time, which is okay for a couple of hours at a time.
I think if you follow that advice, you’ll miss out on the opportunity.
I’m okay with behaviorism, but it’s just one facet of understanding why dogs behave the way they do.
Ruff Love isn’t a training program for puppies, though. I know it’s marketed somewhat that way, but in general, it’s meant to be a program for dogs with serious behavioral problems, and management for aggressive dogs.
Yes, it is– but the book doesn’t make that clear. The subtitle says ‘Relationship Building Program for Your Dog.’
It doesn’t say “stopping bad behavior problems.”
If you raise a puppy that way, I can tell you that you could very easily experience behavior problems later on.
I have a chocolate lab that was never socialized. She was purchased for two teenagers who never did anything with her. They went to school everyday, their parents went to work. When the dog was 5 months old, they gave her back to the “breeder” saying there were behaviour problems. DUH. At this point, the dog was just being given away. (Take the dog…please!!!) I took her in, and realized within 24 hours that I waaaaay in over my head. After many dog classes, we are a very nice dog. I live in a rural area (ie not much chance to socialize) and asked one of our trainers what to do. She suggested driving my dog into the local village to walk her. Sounded simple enough. What a challenge with a dog that had never been walked on a leash! The first day we lasted all of 5 minutes — too much stress for both of us. Now, 2 years later we still go into the village for walks. Me for the exercise and the dog because she likes to meet people.
Come September we plan to take an advanced Obedience Class so that we can do agility training over the winter.
All this to say, that if the dog had just been walked during the two month period that the previous people owned her, none of this would have been necessary. (Mind you, I wouldn’t have a chocolate lab…) :)
Without a doubt, stimulation and interaction results is a wonderful pup. BUt, we are more inclined to be cautious when taking pups outdoors until its been on its mothers milk exclusively for a full 6 weeks and then on and off for two more. And had one booster round of shots by the end of the 7th week. We’ve experienced what PARVO can do to a pup. And with many of the wild animals being coyotes, and foxes. Parvo isn’t going away, so until we are sure the pup is sufficiently shored up with enough antibodies to protect it we highly supervise outdoor time after 8 weeks and prefer not to hike with the pup in the woods until after 16 weeks. It will be on the playground hitting a rock wall or slide with the kids and on the grass lawn, but the farm and woods are off limits until the last round of boosters. PARVO is a killer, and we spent a small fortune to save one of our pup’s life just weeks after we got her.
Again this was probably due to our breeder removing the pups from their mother too soon, or from the mother having a poor immune system to begin with. So for our pups we take the extra precautions.
I’ve actually had parvo hit a vaccinated pup. It’s not unheard of.
However, the AVMA says that pups should start socializing one week after their first round of vaccines and their first worming.
My pup was vaccinated too with it’s first round. That’s why its our opinion, our vet’s theory and a high probability that the Mother had a poor immune system to begin with or the pup was taken off the mother’s milk too soon which is also bad for a puppy’s immune system. As it stands now, our bitch survived it and is a wonderful specimen now, thus when she has her own pups they will be super-immune to PARVO.
Take it one step further. Pups should begin socialization from day one, handled often and around many olfactory stimulations before the eyes open. Many sounds once the eyes open and gradually more until the day they go to homes. Many breeders I know just let momma do everything while the pups are locked up in a pen with her for 7 weeks. Perhaps handling the pups just to move them out of the way to change blankets and clean the whelping pen.
The first inoculations are typically non-effective on a properly whelped pup, since the antibodies provided by mother’s milk should be residually effective for weeks after the pup is whelped. Its the second and third round that are more important. So if you really aren’t sure about the time when the pup stopped feeding from the mother…. proceed to take it outdoors at your own risk.
To each their own, just not my style.
In my own experience, breeders of working retrievers try to expose pups to almost everything they will experience in their working/playing lives prior to their being ready to go home.
In addition to all people large and small and life around the house, this includes woods, grass, mud, rocks, water (swimming, if the weather is good and they are so inclined), bumpers, birds, downed tree branches, big men carrying guns, sunshine, shade, gunshot, quacking, calls for sandwiches, and anything else the breeder can think of. The folks I know have places available to them that they feel are relatively safe. I couldn’t say how old the pups are–old enough to bounce about and frolick, and well before they go home at 8 or 9 weeks.
Similar to explained in the above post, I believe the reasoning is that if the pup is exposed to things during a relatively fearless period surrounded by the people and animals it has come to know and trust, when the environment changes or their hormones/brains/bodies are different, those things–and new things that are similar–will be dealt with with confidence and curiosity rather than fear and caution.
Also, I can’t think of anything cuter than a passel of chubby puppies bounding through a hayfield. It just looks right to me.
Again, this is my own experience, which isn’t huge, but it’s enough I can confidently say it would be the rare working retriever breeder that isolated their puppies from the out-of-doors in the weeks prior to going to their new homes.
On an episode of the defunct Animal Planet show “That’s My Baby,” the birth and a tiny bit of the early existence of a litter of Labradors meant for guide dogs was portrayed.
The dam was kept in a family home for her normal life, but brought to the guide dog school’s kennel to whelp. Puppies were born in a sterile, featureless, isolated tiled room, and there they stayed for eight or ten weeks!
The last shots were the pups being taken home by the volunteer puppy-raisers. The school’s official was telling these nice people that their puppies had never walked on grass, never seen the sky, never seen a car, never this, never that, never , never never …
WTF?!
It’s as if Clarence Pfaffenberger had never existed, Scott & Fuller — every goddamn thing we know about brain development in any social species — all irrelevant.
The puppies in the arms of their foster humans were frozen in fear. These nice people had unknowingly volunteered to try to salvage an already damaged pup and then give it back to these same idiots for “training.”
No wonder the success rates for purpose-bred guide dogs is so low. Much lower than it was in Pfaffenberger’s day.
I am, as some know, a huge advocate of free-range puppy raising. That’s not letting a puppy have the run of the house and get into trouble/danger or develop uncivilized habits. It’s giving him enough liberty in the natural world to learn to make good choices, and develop confidence.
Our first dog, raised in a city apartment, backpacked with us from early puppyhood. That was her free-range opportunity. Not to run amok in the wilderness, but to experience it naturally with her pack of humans.
The “ruff love” types, especially those who keep a dog hostage in order to “enhance performance” are not content with occupying the center of a dog’s universe, which is what most dogs will naturally give to a credible human — they are so insecure and jealous that they must restrict the dog’s self so that they can encompass his whole universe.
Wow. We agree on something related to dog training.
I don’t think the “Stockholm syndrome” method of puppy-raising and dog-maintenance is exclusive to people who claim to be “purely positive” or who witlessly apply a behaviorist rat-in-a-box paradigm to companion dogs.
It goes back a long way, and can be found, for example, among highly competitive OTCH-seekers, who most assuredly are at least balanced in their methods, and in some cases, IMO, quite harsh in their quest for precision. These folks tend to be hard-core pragmatists with no discernable philosophy o’ dog training. Git ‘er done, perhaps. I would not wish to be one of these competitors’ dogs, just as I would not wish to be a ten-year-old Olympic gymnastics prospect.
However …
The injunction to “control the dog’s environment” in order to avoid the necessity of correcting the dog — and to save him from the presumably self-esteem-deflating consequences of the world correcting him, as it tends to do — is near-universal among those zealots who hard-core deny that they ever correct a dog, or that it is ever the right thing to do.
Because a dog-in-a-box can be fantasized as a dog who is not currently learning anything, allowing the pseudo-Skinnerian to imagine that she controls the dog’s universe, and therefore is the dog’s universe.
Perhaps true, for if the dog is sufficiently mentally diminished by confinement broken by bursts of insanely micromanaged “reinforcement” — well, it’s possible that out the other end, you get not much of a dog.
Conditioned response, and not much else.
One of the things I’ve been struggling with describing is the incredible richness of communication in the repertoire of the Montana puppymill survivors. I have never seen dogs who communicated so well, so richly, with so much nuance, and so constantly, with one another and with any human being who will pay attention.
These dogs had to develop this skill. The ones who didn’t are dead. Nobody pulled apart dog fights and drove the combatants to the vet.
Not the way to raise healthy, well-adjusted, well-socialized dogs — but a good example of how a complex environment shapes a complex character, at least in one aspect.
The pups born in custody, in contrast, have had a lot of the adverbs and adjectives and dependent clauses and such excluded from their vocabularies. They are still more communicative than most dogs, but perhaps no more so than any normal English shepherd — which is to say, a lot more than most dogs.
Anyway, the notion that a correction necessitated by a mistake the dog makes is “cruel,” while physically preventing him from ever making a mistake is “good management” is not one that I’m prepared to accept.
I remember that very show, and I was surprised that the black Labrador bitch had so many yellow puppies!
“…not letting a puppy have the run of the house and get into trouble/danger …”
exactly! We initially crated our lab. At night and if we went out during the day. (She ate a hole in the wall near an electrical wire!) Slowly, we started giving her her freedom. We would go out for 15 minutes and leave her out of the crate. Then, leaving the crate open at night. Finally, the big moment — went out for 4 hours. Success!
I don’t believe in crating a large dog for long periods of time. People that crate the dog when they go to work (10 hrs/day) then crate at night (8 hrs) are not dog lovers. It really is cruel to enclose an animal for long periods of time.
Oh Ruff Love, I should have guessed. Have you read it? I think your description of her method is a bit of a caricature. Garrett doesn’t call herself a “behaviorist”. Her method is about solving training (or behavior…) problems, not depriving dogs of development skills. Though as with all methods, people can misunderstand and abuse it. http://www.clickerdogs.com/rufflove.php.
It’s amusing to find advocates for physical corrections whining about a method that doesn’t, using the extreme example. In any debate, these people are OUTRAGED, just OUTRAGED at an observation that physical correctors cause their dogs pain, because such things are only done by nincompoops who “don’t understand.”
But someone who crates her dog abusively is just following the principles of “rufflove”.
Inconsistent much?
I’m not in favor of physical corrections. I don’t use e-collars or any of those things (see some of my criticisms of Millan and Koehler).
And yes, what she believes in is making the dog DEPENDENT and not a problem solver.
http://community.dog.com/forums/p/85551/673299.aspx
I talked someone out of trying it a few months ago.
I’ve read it at the book store.
If you think following such a regime will produce well-rounded dogs, you are mistaken.
I’m not against using clickers. I’m not against training using operant conditioning methods.
In fact, my dogs are trained using nothing but positive reinforcement.
That said, my dog knows what a horse is and how to walk on a gravel road.
The lawn seems like a good frontier to introduce puppies to many things they would encounter hiking with us later on. I can’t say the pups we’ve had are fearful or timid. But I can see where a sheltered pooch for 8 to 10 weeks or more would do poorly on an outdoor excursion.
I guess I’m more at the halfway point. Knowing our playground area offers plenty of stimulation and exercise for kids and pups alike and there is plenty of outdoor things to mouth on for the pups. Just not the things we may find on the trails that could have something contagious and lethal for a puppy with a still developing immune system. Because of feedback on this blog I’ve even started litters getting used to the sound of a starter pistol. There isn’t much fear in them of the outdoors when their new owners take them home, thats for sure.
Some breeders we know alway have a death toll they speak of…. “well out of the 14 pups only 8 lived” or worse tallies. I hope not to jinx myself, but, we’re proud to have a zero mortality in the past 6 years we’ve been doing this. And from what we’re told that’s pretty rare.
Emily S….
I don’t think the crate is a bad thing, especially when used properly. Forcing a dog to be in it for so long is absurd. But when you have multiple dogs it could save you from a dog fight that turns bad when you are out for an hour or two to do the grocery shopping. And over night, if the dog is sleeping? If the dog is going into its crate with a denning instinct, where’s the harm in that. I know my dogs all voluntarily go into their own crates and each others when they want to be alone or when they just want to nap during the day. And that doesn’t require anyone to lock the crate on them. Sometimes a few dogs choose to remain in their crate chewing on a toy or a rawhide when the family is up and about in the morning, and this is with the crate door wide open. Sort of like how our children remain in their bedrooms playing with their toys until breakfast is served.
They are also crated when traveling, because its safer. Ever slam on the brakes with a dog or several dogs loose in the vehicle?
A crate has its purpose. Being a prison shouldn’t be one of them.
How about a forest?
Then a pasture with some horses in it?
How about a pond?
How about letting them see and smell wild turkeys foraging at a distance?
the Horses on the ranch next door and the cows in the pasture behind us usually suffice at about 7 to 8 weeks. Prior to that its children and other dogs along with some rabbits.
And the farmer next door always provides us with the feathers off of his turkeys which we bundle together and allow the pups to play with and mouth on. There are wood turtles, frogs, other creatures in the KOI fish pond and the occasional chipmunks with a lot of courage to approach my children on the playground. And then there are the garter snakes.
We try to avoid the rattlesnakes, coyotes, bobcats and foxes that are always about… well, mostly their poop since that’s basically how PARVO is transmitted. And while we’re at it we stay clear of deer poop,, cow poop and horse poop to keep the ECOLI exposure down to a minimum.
Foxes and coyotes do carry parvo.
You do need to worry more about raccoon poop more, because of this:
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-10370_12150_12220-27261–,00.html
This thing goes beyond Raccons, It affects other creatures the pups can come in contact with.
Fatal or severe central nervous system disorders have been documented for mice, gray and fox squirrels, ground squirrels, woodchucks, nutria, beavers, domestic quail, partridges, pigeons, exotic turkeys, emus, captive cockatiels, captive prairie dogs, foxes, armadillos and porcupines.
Turkey, Squirrel and Woodchuck are on that shortlist. So, more reason to be cautious. This is definitely inter-species and also can affect humans.
It has affected humans recently in NYC:
http://www.wowowow.com/relationships/racoon-roundworm-baylisascaris-procyonis-new-york-city-285149
Which is why I can only applaud my spouse for being so insistent that our children always wash their hands and face thoroughly after outdoor activities. Shoes off in the house, etc, etc. And obviously this has to apply to the little fur babies as well. Unfortunately thats what our world has come to… we’re not paranoid, just careful. Paranoid would be us keeping the pups and kids confined to solitary. The best we can do is maintain limits and boundaries with supervision. Isn’t that what a good parent does anyway?
Thanks I forgot to mention raccons. In fact Ingesting grass laced with raccoon urine killed my sister’s Staffortshire Terrier. Apparently at one time in Massachusetts there was a virus going around that was spread by raccoons in their urine.
The point is. Is areas like where I live, we have to be careful for the sake of the pups. Once they are older they enjoy forest, meadow, farm and lakes to the fullest. So they get as much as we feel comfortable with to limit exposure to things that can kill a pup or a litter of pups.
Fully allowing the pups to nurse as long as possible within 8 weeks and followup booster shots as their boosted immune system backs down from Mother’s milk is how we roll.
In response to “mistake-making” above:
The best retriever trainers know, either by long experience or phenomenal dog sense (usually both), when to allow a dog (of ANY age) to problem-solve, when to teach or shape a behavior, when to correct, and so forth. The dog’s age, experience, aptitudes, attitude, what motivates it, how it has responded in the past and how it’s responding in the moment, recent performance, the weather, and other things I can’t think of now, all come into play.
It’s really pretty amazing to watch someone with experience and who can “read” a dog take over from a less experienced or less proficient handler/trainer and see the different choices that are made in a particular situation.
It’s also maddening. Try asking, “What do I do if…” and you get, “Well, it depends…” and sometimes a long and sometimes a short response, which almost always ends up with, “… you just have to read your dog.”
In general, the better the trainer, the FEWER the corrections, the MILDER the corrections (a whistle sit can be a powerful correction), and the MORE EFFECTIVE the corrections (if they can be called that–at some point, it’s just plain communication and teamwork). I’ve been with trainers you won’t actually think you’ve seen a correction from all day long, and yet there’s a whole lot of training and learning (and very precise and subtle corrections/communications) going on.
It’s endlessly interesting to me, and I don’t pretend to understand even a small portion of it very well.