Is Temperament 100% Genetic?

[Steve]

I think if you breed enough litters and watch over a couple of decades taking into account variables its pretty difficult not to put it squarely on genetics.

I have one line of beagles in which the boys use a potty - that is I call it a potty now but when I first saw it about 6 generations ago I was calling it other things. The Male dog refused to poop on the ground .He always pooped in the water bowl. Took me ages to work out what to do about that .I tried all different types of water bowls and made them higher and higher until we got to a point where he would teeter on the fine rim of the bucket to drop his poop in. I gave up and worked out that the only way to manage it was to give him 2 bowls .One to drink out of one to poop in and every day I simply picked up his potty and emptied it .In 15 years I dont remember him ever pooping on the ground and if you took the pot away he would blow up before he would drop one on the ground. He sired several litters and his sons and grandsons and great grand sons and great great grandsons often turn up by about 6 months of age with the same habit.

Now thats not learned behaviour because the boys have never met Toby or randy his son - or each other. ive certainly never trained them in anyway with it - if anything Ive tried to extinguish it. its not a breed thing because Ive had the breed for 37 years and the only time Ive seen it is in that line. different mothers, different places and environment that they were born into . Its not about me or how I raise them as even those he has sired where I don't own the bitch and I dont raise the litter will see a boy now and then who likes a pot to poop in.

Edited June 9, 2013 by Steve

[BC Crazy]

That is really interesting Steve. What bizarre behaviour!!! Definitely genetic too.

I did forget this but my girl's mum is a toy carrier & does carry a toy in her mouth most of the time but she at no time does she suck on it as if she is nursing like Stella does.

I don't know if Stella just mimicked this behaviour some what from her mum or not.

[Steve]

That is really interesting Steve. What bizarre behaviour!!! Definitely genetic too.

I did forget this but my girl's mum is a toy carrier & does carry a toy in her mouth most of the time but she at no time does she suck on it as if she is nursing like Stella does.

I don't know if Stella just mimicked this behaviour some what from her mum or not.

Problem is that its not stuff like that which is put in as info for all who see in several generations time so you can determine if its learned or one off , environmental etc until you get to see it yourself over several generations. Breeders traditionally also don't keep those type of records.if I dont do something to ensure that people know that in that line of beagle which I have bred there is that particular behaviour anyone seeing it in a couple of generations has no clue that Ive experienced it before them and where to look for the patterns. In your case a dog which carries around a stuffed toy isnt usually recorded and passed on so you wouldnt know if its been there for generations or not - and what else it may be linked to etc .You will need to keep her offspring and breed enough litters to know if its a genetic thing but you may have known straight away if those things as well as whether she is a champion were recorded and passed on.

[persephone]

LOL @steves' potty dogs .

there are so many traits which pups show , and which identify them as from a certain family :)

BC crazy .. your pup may well have been born anxious ..but while with her mum & littermates , and in her familiar environment , she was comfortable .

Problems often show themselves after a change of home/owner... when the familiar supports have gone .

[Weasels]

You can never ever untangle genetics from environment for practical purposes though.

Yes you can absolutely. When the lines are known and particular line or mating pair/dog produces a particular trait, that's genetic and can be identified. Problem is, breeders often lie about known traits especially faulty traits like, "oh never had that before in any of my litters" oh really

Point is calling something 'genetic' isn't as simple as it first appears. Heritability is more than just the nucleotides on the chromosomes. We've known the full dog genome for some years now and the main thing it's taught us is humility about how much we don't know about genetics.

[BC Crazy]

Steve, yes some quirks or less important behaviour's are probably not noted.

Pers, from what Stella's breeder did tell me after buying her is that Stel's mum only had the one litter, which was hers & then she was neutered

as she was a terrible mum in as much as she wasn't interested in nursing her puppies at all. So the breeder had to feed them every 2 hours.

When I visited Stella before purchasing her she wasn't in her natural enviroment, at home. She was at a show. I wanted to see what she was like out & about

for that very reason. She was calm then & happy/confident weird isn't it?

Edited June 9, 2013 by BC Crazy

[corvus]

Look, I drew a picture.

This is a simplified version, and just for ONE trait. The black line shows the trait in question as a sliding scale between shy and bold.

The genetic potential of the puppy means they could potentially fall within the range shown by the genetic potential line.

Then the environmental range further refines where on the shy-bold line the puppy will ultimately end up. I haven't added how the shy-bold trait may interact with other personality traits, or the effects pre-birth from the mother's stress levels etc.

Beneath the shy-bold line is the range an owner might be able to successfully manage. So you can't be sure that when you give Puppy A to an owner that the owner successfully managed because you matched the right puppy to the right owner or because you matched the puppy with the right potentials to the owner with the right potentials. There's nothing very exact about it.

Incidentally, I think the failure rates for working dogs I quoted is related to older dogs. Usually they are assessed once as puppies and then most of the puppies are released from the program straight off the bat, but of those left that come back for training at about 12 months or so, 50-70% fail the training.

[corvus]

The point LBD makes is very important. I don't think anyone disputes that there is a genetic component to temperament, but it's not as easy to attribute something entirely to genetics as it seems. And the point I made earlier about validation and definitions still stand.

Terms like "weak nerve" or "strong nerve" are particularly problematic, because you're basically defining traits based on behaviour you like or don't like. If you define temperament as genetic by the behaviour displayed, yet simultaneously accept that environment can alter behaviour, how can you claim that temperament is in fact unalterable and therefore genetic? I have never heard a description of weak or strong nerve that couldn't be explained with a couple of other possibilities that are not based on pure genetics. For example, there are some studies that suggest animals are more resilient to stress if they have a lot of play in their early life, or if they are presented with mild challenges to overcome in early life, or if they watch television in early life, or if their mother's are calm and relaxed during pregnancy. The bounceback Santo attributes 100% to genetics is as far as science is concerned, anything but 100% genetics. Oops.

ETA As far as Stella goes, I think it highly likely there is a genetic component and highly unlikely it is entirely genetic. Erik is in the same boat, really. I never saw him in person before he was sent to us at 9 weeks old, but there were some things he was doing that very week we got him that raised some red flags and I handled him extremely carefully in his first 6 months or so. I can't say what he'd be like if I had handled him differently, obviously. There are some things he's always had a lot more trouble with than most dogs seem to. We trained him extensively from an early age to be better at these things, and he did get a lot better at them, but we're still working with a dog who did not seem able to learn this on his own like other dogs are. Nonetheless, we don't know what he would be like with another family, or living on a bigger property, or in a quieter suburb and so on. We will never know how much of his behaviour is our fault or how much trouble we averted before it could develop. I don't think there's any use in playing the guessing game with this. There are too many potential variables involved and no answers.

Edited June 9, 2013 by corvus

[Wobbly]

It's a twisty knot for sure, and it's very hard to know.

I think Stella's issues are one of those cases where it's surely genetic though. The way you shaped her to LOVE a treadmill says that you have the training skills - you must have been supportive and rewarding in exactly the right measure for her to get that so easily and quickly.

I always think of "hard" or "soft" in terms of a measure of how quickly the dog can recover from pressure or stress. This way it seems at least a bit quantifiable since you can compare like with like - eg a pressure like a given sharp, loud tone and a measurement of time required for full recovery. This is I think very much a heritable trait, influenced by environment, trust in handler etc, but still ultimately heritable.

[Steve]

Look, I drew a picture.

This is a simplified version, and just for ONE trait. The black line shows the trait in question as a sliding scale between shy and bold.

The genetic potential of the puppy means they could potentially fall within the range shown by the genetic potential line.

Then the environmental range further refines where on the shy-bold line the puppy will ultimately end up. I haven't added how the shy-bold trait may interact with other personality traits, or the effects pre-birth from the mother's stress levels etc.

Beneath the shy-bold line is the range an owner might be able to successfully manage. So you can't be sure that when you give Puppy A to an owner that the owner successfully managed because you matched the right puppy to the right owner or because you matched the puppy with the right potentials to the owner with the right potentials. There's nothing very exact about it.

Incidentally, I think the failure rates for working dogs I quoted is related to older dogs. Usually they are assessed once as puppies and then most of the puppies are released from the program straight off the bat, but of those left that come back for training at about 12 months or so, 50-70% fail the training.

O.K. But I think a shy dog is a shy dog ,you can add in environment and owner variables but if its a shy dog no matter what its still a shy dog especially noticeable when its under pressure. Breeds reach maturity and phases at different times so just because a pup doesn't show signs according to a human designed selection criteria which identifies them as being shy doesn't mean it wasn't always going to be shy when it reached maturity. If you don't want shy dogs then you have to select away from them or eventually every one will be shy - a little or a lot doesn't really matter if that's what you are selecting against. If its not shy no amount of environment or owner intervention will make it behave shyly. You cant breed dogs which are shy and expect that you wont get some shy puppies or grand puppies.

If puppies which are coming back at 12 months and that many are failing apart from genetics, environment and owner impact couldn't it maybe just be the method or a criteria being used to assess them when they are young which needs to be challenged as well?

Here's one thing I know for sure. There are a whole heap of well educated experts and hardly any of them from one discipline agrees with an expert from the other. Everything , every answer is reliant on the questions you ask. For example if you were to change the selection criteria for these working dog puppies and you got much better results in 12 months time it sort of makes the idea that its more reliant on environment or owner skills and training more questionable. if you concentrated more on lineage and how many dogs in the dog's ancestry have been successful working dogs rather than assessing them as puppies do you get more success with less impact showing from environment and owners?

So as a breeder I have to take a hell of a long look at the adult dogs which Im considering breeding, I have to take note of what its ancestors did and behaved like and I have to take it all into consideration. If I want to breed dogs into the future which are capable of doing a particular job or filling a role -not frightened of its own shadow , shy or chewing its own tail off - even if that is as sitting on someone's lap and little else I cant make excuses and ignore ANYTHING or excuse it because the owner may have been a rat or Mum wasn't fed a good diet or it was exposed to less than perfect environmental variables.

[inez]

ummmmm interesting link

not only to early death but agression issues as well

http://www.healthy-k9.com/secure/course/breed.php?db=Dogue%20Brasileiro&gclid=CM-U69eM1rcCFUodpQoddWEAww

Edited June 9, 2013 by inez

[BC Crazy]

Wobbley, I think you confirm my thought's with Stella's issues being genetic.

Thanks for the training compliments. Nice to hear once in a while :) I am trying as hard as I can. Giving her 110%. Thats all I can do. Just want to make her life as peaceful as I can :)

[Santo66]

Incidentally, I think the failure rates for working dogs I quoted is related to older dogs. Usually they are assessed once as puppies and then most of the puppies are released from the program straight off the bat, but of those left that come back for training at about 12 months or so, 50-70% fail the training.

Corvus, some USA police dog programs do exactly that.....send pups out to pet homes to be return for assessment at 12-14 months old. The failure rate is higher, but they claim to get better dogs when training and environment of the police puppy program hasn't influenced the raw genetics of the dog with less likelihood of environment and training masking character flaw. This concept was adopted due to some officers injured/killed on duty when their seemingly well trained and eviromentally sound dogs shut down under pressure in attempt to keep the officers safe?.

The same has occurred with some high ranking dogs in bite sports when cross training into civil protection roles.......the dogs trained in prey drive with impressive bites fail in defence drive when pressure is applied to fight off the dog reflective of a real scenario, the dog runs off the field in fear of the opponent. The dogs are lacking in genetic defence/fight drive for a roles greater than sport.

Edited June 9, 2013 by Santo66

[Santo66]

I can see out the window from my desk here, some friends of the people across the road have tail chasing GSD, I have seen the dog several times.......I am watching this dog now continually circling around on the front lawn and wondering if spinners were in the pedigree of this dog from a genetic perspective.......it looks like well structured showline black and tan?

[corvus]

O.K. But I think a shy dog is a shy dog ,you can add in environment and owner variables but if its a shy dog no matter what its still a shy dog especially noticeable when its under pressure. Breeds reach maturity and phases at different times so just because a pup doesn't show signs according to a human designed selection criteria which identifies them as being shy doesn't mean it wasn't always going to be shy when it reached maturity. If you don't want shy dogs then you have to select away from them or eventually every one will be shy - a little or a lot doesn't really matter if that's what you are selecting against. If its not shy no amount of environment or owner intervention will make it behave shyly. You cant breed dogs which are shy and expect that you wont get some shy puppies or grand puppies.

Yes. Shy-bold is considered one of the more robust traits, although technically it's a super-trait. Still, there are problems with it. Mostly revolving around the fact we have troubles standardising testing and still have no way to account for environment and training. If we collect enough data it can to some extent overwhelm those problems, but it doesn't really solve them, if you know what I mean. It just squishes them under the weight of the generalised concept of dog. With some fancy statistical models you can get some interesting correlations out, but at the end of the day you're still stuck with problems related to how you collected the data. Most of the time it has some subjective components. Sometimes it's very subjective. Which is not to say that there's nothing to it, just that it's very difficult to know what is going on. It's exceptionally complex stuff, but yes, if you breed shy dogs you'll get shy puppies.

If puppies which are coming back at 12 months and that many are failing apart from genetics, environment and owner impact couldn't it maybe just be the method or a criteria being used to assess them when they are young which needs to be challenged as well?

Yes, exactly. It's very, very hard to tease the influences apart. When I collected data on this I found that just about everything affected the expression of boldness. I would bet money on things I didn't collect data on also affecting it aside from just genetics. We need better measures.

Here's one thing I know for sure. There are a whole heap of well educated experts and hardly any of them from one discipline agrees with an expert from the other. Everything , every answer is reliant on the questions you ask. For example if you were to change the selection criteria for these working dog puppies and you got much better results in 12 months time it sort of makes the idea that its more reliant on environment or owner skills and training more questionable. if you concentrated more on lineage and how many dogs in the dog's ancestry have been successful working dogs rather than assessing them as puppies do you get more success with less impact showing from environment and owners?

Well, yes and no. But within the field of animal personality, hardly anyone agrees with anyone else, so it's worse than most fields! The reason why agreement is kind of poor is that the data is collected in different ways and analysed in different ways and different data is collected in the first place. There's not much of a solid foundation to build on. The field is kind of still in this exploratory phase it's been in for, like, 30 years. People have been selectively breeding dogs for working positions for a long time, though. From what I can tell just by talking to them and from working with a few siblings, puppy raisers have a pretty huge impact even with litter mates that were both picked for advanced training as babies. It was quite fun comparing siblings and close relatives in advanced training. Lots of similarities, but at the end of the day it's the little details that make all the difference and the reason why one dog can make it while his litter brother does not.

So as a breeder I have to take a hell of a long look at the adult dogs which Im considering breeding, I have to take note of what its ancestors did and behaved like and I have to take it all into consideration. If I want to breed dogs into the future which are capable of doing a particular job or filling a role -not frightened of its own shadow , shy or chewing its own tail off - even if that is as sitting on someone's lap and little else I cant make excuses and ignore ANYTHING or excuse it because the owner may have been a rat or Mum wasn't fed a good diet or it was exposed to less than perfect environmental variables.

You're absolutely right and I think this attitude is very heartening to see in breeders. I feel for you, though, because at the end of the day I think breeders are stuck with a lot of guessing and hit and miss. You have to consider everything may have been genetic because in most cases you don't know what is and what isn't. No one does. That's all I'm trying to say.

[Steve]

O.K. But I think a shy dog is a shy dog ,you can add in environment and owner variables but if its a shy dog no matter what its still a shy dog especially noticeable when its under pressure. Breeds reach maturity and phases at different times so just because a pup doesn't show signs according to a human designed selection criteria which identifies them as being shy doesn't mean it wasn't always going to be shy when it reached maturity. If you don't want shy dogs then you have to select away from them or eventually every one will be shy - a little or a lot doesn't really matter if that's what you are selecting against. If its not shy no amount of environment or owner intervention will make it behave shyly. You cant breed dogs which are shy and expect that you wont get some shy puppies or grand puppies.

Yes. Shy-bold is considered one of the more robust traits, although technically it's a super-trait. Still, there are problems with it. Mostly revolving around the fact we have troubles standardising testing and still have no way to account for environment and training. If we collect enough data it can to some extent overwhelm those problems, but it doesn't really solve them, if you know what I mean. It just squishes them under the weight of the generalised concept of dog. With some fancy statistical models you can get some interesting correlations out, but at the end of the day you're still stuck with problems related to how you collected the data. Most of the time it has some subjective components. Sometimes it's very subjective. Which is not to say that there's nothing to it, just that it's very difficult to know what is going on. It's exceptionally complex stuff, but yes, if you breed shy dogs you'll get shy puppies.

If puppies which are coming back at 12 months and that many are failing apart from genetics, environment and owner impact couldn't it maybe just be the method or a criteria being used to assess them when they are young which needs to be challenged as well?

Yes, exactly. It's very, very hard to tease the influences apart. When I collected data on this I found that just about everything affected the expression of boldness. I would bet money on things I didn't collect data on also affecting it aside from just genetics. We need better measures.

Here's one thing I know for sure. There are a whole heap of well educated experts and hardly any of them from one discipline agrees with an expert from the other. Everything , every answer is reliant on the questions you ask. For example if you were to change the selection criteria for these working dog puppies and you got much better results in 12 months time it sort of makes the idea that its more reliant on environment or owner skills and training more questionable. if you concentrated more on lineage and how many dogs in the dog's ancestry have been successful working dogs rather than assessing them as puppies do you get more success with less impact showing from environment and owners?

Well, yes and no. But within the field of animal personality, hardly anyone agrees with anyone else, so it's worse than most fields! The reason why agreement is kind of poor is that the data is collected in different ways and analysed in different ways and different data is collected in the first place. There's not much of a solid foundation to build on. The field is kind of still in this exploratory phase it's been in for, like, 30 years. People have been selectively breeding dogs for working positions for a long time, though. From what I can tell just by talking to them and from working with a few siblings, puppy raisers have a pretty huge impact even with litter mates that were both picked for advanced training as babies. It was quite fun comparing siblings and close relatives in advanced training. Lots of similarities, but at the end of the day it's the little details that make all the difference and the reason why one dog can make it while his litter brother does not.

So as a breeder I have to take a hell of a long look at the adult dogs which Im considering breeding, I have to take note of what its ancestors did and behaved like and I have to take it all into consideration. If I want to breed dogs into the future which are capable of doing a particular job or filling a role -not frightened of its own shadow , shy or chewing its own tail off - even if that is as sitting on someone's lap and little else I cant make excuses and ignore ANYTHING or excuse it because the owner may have been a rat or Mum wasn't fed a good diet or it was exposed to less than perfect environmental variables.

You're absolutely right and I think this attitude is very heartening to see in breeders. I feel for you, though, because at the end of the day I think breeders are stuck with a lot of guessing and hit and miss. You have to consider everything may have been genetic because in most cases you don't know what is and what isn't. No one does. That's all I'm trying to say.

Thanks Corvus - part of the problem from a breeders perspective is that traditionally this sort of stuff hasn't been recorded and in some cases its been deliberately with held and lied about or in many cases not even considered to be worth mentioning.It certainly hasnt been considered as important as recording where the champions are - and its harder if you want to listen to the experts and outcross rather than breed lines you know and understand where the issues are. Wouldnt be so hard if you knew where the issues were in other people's lines but thats a hard ask. Hopefully this will get better because I do believe the majority of the answer lies in selection.

[corvus]

Incidentally, I think the failure rates for working dogs I quoted is related to older dogs. Usually they are assessed once as puppies and then most of the puppies are released from the program straight off the bat, but of those left that come back for training at about 12 months or so, 50-70% fail the training.

Corvus, some USA police dog programs do exactly that.....send pups out to pet homes to be return for assessment at 12-14 months old. The failure rate is higher, but they claim to get better dogs when training and environment of the police puppy program hasn't influenced the raw genetics of the dog with less likelihood of environment and training masking character flaw. This concept was adopted due to some officers injured/killed on duty when their seemingly well trained and eviromentally sound dogs shut down under pressure in attempt to keep the officers safe?.

The same has occurred with some high ranking dogs in bite sports when cross training into civil protection roles.......the dogs trained in prey drive with impressive bites fail in defence drive when pressure is applied to fight off the dog reflective of a real scenario, the dog runs off the field in fear of the opponent. The dogs are lacking in genetic defence/fight drive for a roles greater than sport.

I'm not really sure what your point is. I certainly don't have very specific information on failure rates in working dog training programs. I'm sure that "civil aggression" or "fight drive" or whatever you want to call it is very important in police dogs, and if the literature is anything to go by this seems likely to be highly heritable in GSDs (not 100%, though, and not so much in other breeds). Doesn't prove temperament is 100% genetic, though. This whole topic comes down to one very important distinction. What do you KNOW and what do you THINK? In science, we don't consider it known until it's been shown with a a few nice, scientifically robust and repeatable studies with statistically significant results. And even then we often find out there was an alternative explanation we hadn't considered.

[Steve]

Too bad that breeders statistically significant results which are robust and repeatable couldn't be given more credibility then.

[corvus]

What statistically significant and repeatable breeder's results?

[sandgrubber]

1370751230[/url]' post='6222534']

ummmmm interesting link

not only to early death but agression issues as well

http://www.healthy-k...CFUodpQoddWEAww

Link leads me to a video error. Please check.