I have been thinking a lot lately about socialisation of puppies and the emphasis that we put on it nowadays. Here is a summary Socialisation: Are we on the right track? of those thoughts, its a bit jumbled I'm afraid, but I would be interested to have your views.
Re: Socialisation and Aggression This is a difficult one, isn’t it. I think more stringent regulation that can come out of incidents such as this most recent one has the potential to criminalise the law abiding majority, spoil their enjoyment of already much regulated doggy activities and alienate dog owners in the eyes of the non-dog community, all without addressing the real problem that is the irresponsible owner who will care not one jot about the additional regulation anyway. I do think that anything that can be done to improve awareness of the need to socialise dogs and how to go about this properly can only be a good thing. I inherited my 100% working Lab, Lady, when she was already 6 months old, so she was already outside of the ideal socialising window and came with some social problems that could probably have been avoided with a better approach at the outset. The most worrying difficulties were over excitability when meeting strangers, especially non-doggy ones (Lady seemed to have an unerring instinct to pick out people who are nervous of dogs), and mouthing. The combination of these together had all the potential of being accused of having an aggressive dog that had “attacked” a stranger. We had real issues dealing with this and it made having Lady off the lead a stressful business at times. We were so worried about these things that we took Lady to a dog behavioural specialist for an assessment. The specialist view was that Lady was very insecure possibly because of her history, but had no aggression in her. Lady is 2 years and 4 ½ months old now and has stopped mouthing pretty much 100%, but it has been a real uphill battle that could have been avoided if properly addressed at an earlier age. She still tends to be a bit over excitable but that is also becoming less of an issue as she becomes more mature. I have also now introduced her to the shoot and lots of other Labs, other retrievers, Cockers and Borders and this seems to have made her in many ways grow up. She behaves well on the shoot with little evidence of nervousness, but she’s only in the beating line at this stage and a long way off picking up. That leads on to her remaining traits in the social run of things. She is very timid meeting other dogs on walks and often goes flat even when the other dog is several hundred yards away. Very occasionally if another dog is particularly dominant she actually runs away from it which is potentially a real problem. Interestingly the “go flat” behaviour does not appear at any time when we meet up before or during a shoot. She comes over as confident and well mannered. Most peculiar. So having read your articles that address all of the above, you get my vote in raising the profile of early, proper and practical socialising of puppies. Anything I can do to help with this please let me know.
Re: Socialisation and Aggression Thanks for your comments David, it's a complex issue isn't it. A tendency to slight anxiousness is not uncommon in working bred labs. They tend to have a more sensitive temperament and I think sometimes need rather more socialisation than their show bred cousins, though they don't always get it! Happily aggression seems rare. It sounds as though you have done a great job with Lady by the way Pippa
