Study May Be Of Interest To Breeders

[alpha bet]

Our pups are born and raised till 8 weeks or so with the tv, cd player, kitchen noises, other dogs and teenagers. One of the advantages or living in an open plan house. Hasn't seemed to cause any harm physically or mentally. (am prepared to take the risk of infections by getting them out and about as well).

Pups always seem to be very outgoing and new homes are always telling me how easy the pups adapt to new things.

So good to hear that more and more breeders are raising pups at home.

Question to Corvus - do you know how many litters/pups were involved in the study?

[Are You Serious Jo]

Doesn't have to be video, any enriched environment builds good neural networks in infants of any species. Anything that allows manipulation of objects and some degree of control.

[corvus]

I know for a fact that a properly raised puppy will be a confident bold puppy - one that isn't hasn't been socialised and / or is genetically fear based - either is highly undesirable.

Well, that's a fact, is it? Breeders know best.

Alpha bet, I don't have the paper on this computer, so not sure how many puppies were involved. I'll check it on the other computer tomorrow, assuming I remember.

[mita]

But you can only do so much with a puppy that isn't fully vaccinated. I know one of the toughest things for me to handle when bringing home a new puppy has been handling the fear of unexpected things. I don't know what the puppy has seen and what they haven't. All I can do is assume that it's going to be scared of just about everything. I've seen plenty of new puppy owners dismayed and bewildered because their puppy is apparently afraid of the world.

Yes, a UQ study agreed that there's a 'critical socialisation' period for puppies between 5 and 14 weeks of age. Socialisation includes sampling the sights & sounds of everyday life. Good to see this particular study looked at offering audio-visual stimuli. And at a time when there's some restrictions on how far from 'home' a puppy can be exposed to the constant & varied sights & sounds the 'big real world' has to offer.

As someone else said, this study doesn't over-ride the need for touch, smell, sights & sounds of being handled by humans around a real-life domestic setting. Exactly like alpha bet's described

It's just that the study's measured how the puppies' experiences can be extended by playing videos.

Good to see it providing evidence for one more strategy to go into the full 'bag' of socialisation. Beyond the anecdotal.

This is one of the biggest problems for puppies coming from 'puppy farming' type situations. Ignorance about the need for rich socialisation...& total lack of it for young puppies.

Edited July 2, 2010 by mita

[daisygirl]

Our two girls came from the same breeder and were raised in a home environment. They came home like they owned the world, settled down to sleep and never cried, never flitched at anything and were big and brave from day one. They went everywhere with us from shops to camping to dog parks to the beach and never had any problems. I think thats a sign of the way they were bought up as a puppy by a good breeder.