Being a puppy parent is an exciting and rewarding experience. Like any parent you want what is best for your pup. One of the best ways to ensure your puppy grows up to be a well adjusted adult is to address issues while your pup is young. Some issues are easy to spot and adjust through manners training. However, some issues are behavioral and some may be genetic. Puppy parents are learning so much, so quickly and are often unable to identify what behaviors indicate a behavioral concern. Symptoms of fear, anxiety, or distress may not be as easy to recognize or may be misconstrued as “disobedience”. These behavioral concerns are important to address immediately through counter-conditioning, desensitization, confidence increasing exercises, and at times require medical intervention.
But how do you know if your pup’s behavior indicates that they need additional support? Here are some tips to help you recognize abnormal puppy behavior.
Recovery from Novel Stimuli:
- What Normal Looks Like: From about 3 weeks to 12 weeks, puppies go through a stage when they are actively exploring their environment. They experience little fear at this stage. Novel stimuli may startle them, but in a behaviorally healthy puppy they should be able to bounce back almost instantly. This “lack of fear response” ensures that the puppy learns about his or her environment.
- What Abnormal Looks Like: Your puppy may explore the environment but when a new stimuli appears he or she may not be able to recover quickly. Recovering in this situation is defined as the puppy going back to a calm state and continuing any behaviors the puppy was previously engaged in. When a fearful puppy reacts to a novel stimuli he or she may retreat, hide, or stop taking treats. These fear related behaviors may last a couple of minutes to an hour or more.
Sociability
- What Normal Looks Like: Puppies are social creatures! They are eager to learn about their environment. A behaviorally healthy puppy will have loose body language, loose tail wag, and may try to jump up or lick you. Young pups should not have had negative experiences with humans, so there is no reason for them to fear us. Quite the opposite – they should be jumping for joy when they see a new human.
- What Abnormal Looks Like: We always feel bad for the puppy in the litter that hides in the corner. However that can be a sign the puppy is genetically-disposed to poor stress tolerance. Any puppy that hides when a person comes into the room, does not attempt to approach, and does not try to engage with a person is abnormal.
Drive to explore the environment
- What Normal Looks Like: As mentioned, puppies from 3 weeks to 12 weeks are looking to explore their environment. They are curious at this age, so there should be very little hesitation for a puppy to explore new places. This includes different rooms in your house, the outdoors, vets office, or family homes.
- What Abnormal Looks Like: Puppies who do not get over that initial hesitation over new environments. They may refuse to go outside or even leave the house to explore the hallway. When they are in a new environment they tend to “shut down.” They may not take treats, tuck their tail, refuse to walk, pull towards home or into doorways, and/or become hypervigilant of their surroundings, unable to attend to you when you call their name or make kissy noises.
Handling
- What Normal Looks Like: There’s no time like the socialization period to start teaching your pup to tolerate handling of paws, ears, and veterinary procedures. Your pup may not love having his feet being touched, but general petting shouldn’t be something they actively avoid. Your puppy should enjoy casual petting, eliciting touch and attention. Petting should be something your puppy may ask for and lean into you for.
- What Abnormal Looks Like: Puppies that run away from an outreached hand and do not come back may have fear related to handling. Signs that your puppy is not enjoying being petting include: freezing, licking their lips, ears back, tucking their tail. They may have a stiff body posture or run away once the interaction stops. If you pick them up, they may struggle and attempt to nip you. Puppies naturally like interaction. If a puppy is actively avoiding touch, this indicates an underlying problem that needs to be addressed.
Ability to Learn
- What Normal Looks Like: A puppy’s brain is like a sponge. Your pup should be grasping basic training concepts fairly quickly. You should be impressed with how much your pup can learn in such a short period of time.
- What Abnormal Looks Like: If you have been working on a simple exercise with your puppy and you don’t see signs of progress, your puppy might have some stress. Stress hinders learning. Think of times when you have been stressed. It’s harder to grasp new concepts and retain information when you are too worked up to focus. Safety is more important than learning. If your puppy is focusing on the environment because they do not feel safe, they won’t be able to succeed while training.
If you think your puppy is struggling, we can help. Early intervention is critical to support proper brain development. For information on puppy socialization and development check out our blog post here. This is a critical time in your pups life, let’s make the most of it!