Rather than go on about me, I thought I’d tell you more about what I know and love – dogs and what makes them tick!
We all know that dogs are pack animals, meaning that they live for the group or the proverbial “one for all, all for one”. That very sociability has made it easier for the wolf’s early domesticators to transfer inherent loyalty between wolves to a loyalty towards man. We adore the outcome of that long ago domestication with a passion given to no other domesticated species of animal.
I have been in practice as an animal psychologist for 30 years and the great majority of the 55,000 cases I have treated over this period were of misdirected or inadequate social behaviours. Top of the list amongst pathological social behaviours is aggression towards other dogs. Then there are dogs that bite people, be they strangers or members of the family. If we explore the context in which these undesired or inappropriate social behaviours occur, some general principals on problem prevention become apparent. That is what I will do over the course of my next 2 blog posts.
Socialisation
You may have heard of the experiments by Scott and Fuller in the 1950s. They developed the concept of critical periods of socialisation, implying that there are distinct developmental phases that puppies go through. Failure to form optimum social relationships before the age of say, 16 weeks are said to lead to a permanently damaged or socially incompetent adult dog. Missing out on the touchy-feely social exposures by a puppy will predispose it to become socially incompetent.
Fortunately, my pragmatic experience, over many years, points to so many exceptions to this deterministic viewpoint that I have to conclude that maybe Scott and Fuller were wrong! There are not critical periods of socialisation, rather a continuous learning process that begins at birth (maybe even before birth) and runs into maturity or even old age. Practically speaking, rehabilitation of essentially feral dogs, bought in from the mountains of Afghanistan and where there was little contact with humans still allows these rescued domestic dogs to form trusting bonds with people. The good news about this view is that dogs that are seemingly shy or antagonistic to people and/or to dogs can, broadly speaking, be rehabilitated. So how do we go about this at my Animal Behaviour Centre?
You will have to wait until my next blog post for that! Other topics also still to come:
- Who breeds bad dogs (puppy farms, pedigree breeders and all that)
- Accessibility; who dreams up dog bans and decides where pets can travel, visit and enjoy
- Breed specific legislation (myths and mysteries)
- Dogs that are misunderstood; how changing the shape and colours of dogs affects their social responses.
Roger Mugford BSc PhD
Tags: Dog behaviour, dog psychology, dog socialisation, introductions, roger mugford
[...] are behavioural specifically, but before I wax lyrical on those (or even better, get my colleague Dr. Roger Mugford to do so, as one of the best in the behaviour business). For the moment, I’ll give you the [...]