The Cognitive Dog Class 6: Development. Puppy Development: Stacking the Odds for Optimal Potential...

The Cognitive Dog

Class 6: Development

Puppy Development: Stacking the Odds for Optimal Potential

Cognitive Dog - Class 7

Puppy Development: Optimal Potential

Temperament is formed by Nature (genes) AND Nurture (socializing)

• One is often blamed disregarding the other


• Once the genes are selected it is our job to take care of both mental and physical development– Our = breeder, shelter and

then owner along with dog

care professionals


Critical Periods– The window opens and

closes for socialization– Once closed it locks


0 to 12-15 days: Neonatal periodThe Beginning: Touch, taste

Stacking the odds: – Whelping box in a quiet area near life– Den, spare room near household life– Private enough for mama dog but close

enough for humans to hear pups and pups to hear household once hearing begins

– Preferably not a basement or kennel


0 to 12-15 days: Neonatal period Stacking the odds:

– Create mild forms of stress on a daily basis through basic care

• Weigh• Nail trim• Hydration checks

– Mild stress during this period has shown to have positive effects on learning and handling stress later

• Dr Michael Fox 1971 study


2 to 3 weeks -Transition period:

Begins with eyes opening at 10 to 15 days

Changes that occur:– Lapping and Chewing begin– Self-elimination– Hearing 18-20 days

sound startle– Walk not crawl– Agonistic behavior begins– Conditioning can begin i.e. learning


2 to 3 weeks -Transition period: Begins with eyes opening at 10 to 15 days

Stacking the Odds:– Keep in a stable environment– Remain with mother– Provide new surfaces– Provide novel items & toys– Handle and Talk to daily– Nail trims– Weigh


3 to 7 weeks - Canine Socialization begins

Changes that occur: – Fear response begins– Teeth come in – Weaning begins– Learning to be a dog

and how to communicate



Stacking the Odds:– Move to larger as needed keeping in

active area of house to hear household noises

– Still with mom, her choice

– Handle & Talk to daily– Nails & Weights



Stacking the Odds:

– Allow a surface to sleep and play on and a different area to toilet on

– Add an open crate to the pen with soft bed

– Increase individual human attention



Stacking the Odds:– One on one human play time– New toys and items to chew on– Introduce novel objects– Take outdoors

as a group 1st, then 2 by 2, then individually



Stacking the Odds:– Begin supplemental feeding use

multiple bowls to prevent resource guarding

– Introduce other safe household dogs and cats

– Pups meet prospective owners if possible by 5 weeks



Stacking the Odds:– Have visitors of all

types, ages etc. • Controllable Children

– Car Rides– Vet visits, eye checks preferably

before 1st fear period at 8 weeks– Grooming Intro


7 -8 weeks – Human socialization period

Stacking the Odds:

– Separate to eat– Crate time 2 x 2 first

then alone a few days before going to new home– Collar and leash training– Adoption can begin


8 to 12 weeks – Continued human and canine socialization

Changes that occur:

– 8 to 11 weeks: First Fear Period

– Social Dominance begins around week 10



Stacking the Odds – Avoid surgery, traumatic vet visits,

groomer– Ideal adoption time 7-11 weeks– Pups staying with breeder beyond 12

weeks: send off for a weekend with friends prior to 12 weeks absolutely no later than 16 to avoid kennel syndrome (fear in new situations)


8 to 12 weeks –

Continued human and canine socialization

Stacking the Odds – Begin training– Consistent expectations – jumping– Continue careful socializing, support

any fear with treats and patience– Socialize with other safe pups and

known safe adults



Stacking the Odds – Management & Structure – Introduce to any

activity planned on as an adult if possible before 16 weeks

• Boating, Travel• Shows, trials


12 weeks to 16 weeks – Socialization continues

Changes that occur:

– Social dominance stage (begins around 10-11 weeks)

– Possible Increased Independence



Stacking the Odds:– Adoption should be done by 16 weeks– Pups staying with breeder beyond this

time must go for a weekend with friends prior to 12 weeks absolutely no later than 16 to prevent shyness.

– Visit many new places



Stacking the Odds:– Continue to socialize with other safe

pups and known safe adults– Grooming– Training & Prevention– Consistent Expectations– Management & Structure


4 months to 8 months –

Changes that occur:– Flight instinct anytime during this stage:

days to weeks– Some may challenge for leadership not

come when called– Become more

independent– Chewing


4 months to 8 months -

Stacking the Odds:– Management– Training– Consistent Expectations - leadership– Reward behaviors you want manage or

ignore behaviors you don’t want– Continued socialization with dogs,

people, and new places


6 to 18 months -

Changes that occur: – Fear periods can come and go

– Sexual maturity begins, possible increase in aggressive behaviors

– Territorial, object guarding


6 to 18 months –

Stacking the Odds:– Continued Training– Consistent Expectations - leadership– Management & Structure

• Exercise and a job for the dog– Agility, tracking, rally, obedience, breed related

activities such as herding, earth dog, hunting

– Continued socialization with dogs, people, and new places


18 months to 4 years -

Changes that occur:

– Sexual maturity– Territorial behavior

• Can be earlier in some dogs

– Object guarding • Can be earlier in some dogs


18 months to 4 years -

Stacking the Odds:– Continued Training– Maintain Expectations - leadership– Management & Structure

• Exercise and a job for the dog– Agility, tracking, rally, obedience, breed related

activities such as herding, earth dog, hunting

– Maintain socialization with dogs, people, and new places


Finishing up last week...

Natural selection vs. artificial selection...

• Does it have to be either/or? No, and Coppinger even says as much...

• “Two things are happening here with these adaption processes. First, the dogs are evolving more tameable-trainable personalities, and people are facilitating that evolution without ever purposely breeding a single animal. Second, whatever distinguishes the chosen puppy is more likely to appear in the next generation...”

• Dogs may have found a niche in which slacking off was the evolutionarily smart thing to do.

Just ‘cause its there, doesn’t mean its adaptive

Evolved to allow other members of pack to locate dog when running through high prairie grass thus increasing chances dog wouldn’t get separated from pack and lose opportunity to reproduce

The big idea for the evening...

Development: growing the shape of the brain

• “...while the dog is in its first few weeks of life, and growing its brain, it is making the cell connections and re-arranging them in a specific way, according to the signals that are coming from outside. This development predetermines its adult behavior” - coppinger

• “Each behavioral system — fear, submission, investigation, play — has its own rate of development, and varies among breeds. Each is dependent on glandular development and hormone secretions, as well as motor coordination and sensory perception. And each feeds back on the puppy to change not only the shape of the brain...” - coppinger

Coppinger, R. and L. Coppinger (2001). Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution. New York, NY, Scribner.

Growing the shape of the brain...

• “Behavior is (always) epigenetic – above the genes – an interaction between the genes and the developmental environment” -Coppinger

• Genes play a central role in the timing of developmental events, the rate of development, and duration of developmental periods. Small changes can have huge effects by altering when systems come on line relative to one another.

• The resulting behavioral form of the animal emerges from the interaction of the genes and the developmental environment.

• Evolution takes advantage of regularities in the developmental environment, e.g., mom, con-specifics, lack of mobility. The evolving genes rely on those regularities.

Growing the shape of the brain

• “Without a focus on development, any observed variation in behavior within or across populations may be automatically attributed to genotypic differences, when, in fact, it may be a consequence of developmental processes.” -West

• Example of a “social gateway”

• “pattern of recurring social interactions... gating stimulation along different social pathways”

• same population of genes, but reliably different behavioral trajectory

West, M. J., A. P. King, et al. (2003). "The case for developmental ecology." Animal Behaviour 66(4): 617-622.

c Jim Roetzel

Growing the shape of the brain...

• What you see is “the coaction of nature & nurture”

• “evolution involves changes in the developmental system (of which the genes are an essential part) but not necessarily changes in the genes themselves... alterations in development may cause genes to become active in the developmental process that were heretofore quiescent...” -Gottlieb

• In other words, systematic change in developmental context can produce systematic change in behavioral and/or morphological trajectory, without changing “genes”

• Nature and Nurture: each is “on tap” as opposed to “on top

Gottlieb, G. (1991). Individual Development and Evolution: The Genesis of Novel Behavior, Oxford University Press.

Growing the shape of the brain.

• “Behavioral conformation here is a description of the behavioral shape — how the dog moves — when a dog is working”

• “Behavioral conformation and physical conformation, in the final analysis, are one and the same.”

• “It is not that border collies have genes for herding, but rather, because of gene action, they end up with a differently shaped brain than other breeds”


Critical Periods & Imprinting(love of the familiar)

Critical (sensitive) periods

• From Scott & Fuller...

• “...we mean a special time in life when a small amount of experience will produce a great effect on later behavior”

• “The difference between the amount of effort needed to produce the same effect at different periods determines just how critical the period is”

Example: gottlieb’s mallards

• Experience tunes perceptual mechanism...

• Mallards need to hear themselves or sibs vocalize in the shell in order to respond specifically to mom mallard’s call...

Example: Song bird learning...

Bolhuis, J. and L. Giraldeau, Eds. (2005). The Behavior of Animals. London, UK, Blackwell Publishing.

• ‘Innate’ coarse template

• Sensitive period in which they tune template to dialect of surrounding con-specifics

• Months later begin to practice song, matching production to template

Imprinting

• Some species have a critical period in which they rapidly establish social bonds in a process called “imprinting”

• Filial (mom & my buddies) and sexual

• Often different periods for each

• Surprisingly flexible (more about being in the right place at the right time)...

• Probably tuned to certain features, and then use those to build more complete perceptual model

• Probably a type of associative learning

Imprinting...

• Bruce’s theory...

• It is scaffolding that serves to quickly & coarsely identify potential social partners (gets you in the ballpark)

• The world of a juvenile animal is such that even the coarsest mechanism may work most of the time...

• Effect is to subsequently bias attention toward those partners

• Biased attention makes it easier to learn more about characteristics of partners (refine model)

S&F on imprinting in dogs

• “Whether rewarded, punished, or treated indifferently, the young animal of the proper age proceeds to form an emotional attachment to whatever is present in the environment at that time. The essential mechanism appears to be an internal process acting on the external environment. In this way it is indeed quite different from conditioning, which is directly dependent on outside circumstances”

• “To state it more clearly: a young animal automatically becomes attached to individuals and objects to which it comes into contact during the critical period”

Scott, J. P. and J. L. Fuller (1965). Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog. Chicago, Chicago University Press.

Is it all about food?

• S&F and company did experiments in which the dogs were...

• fed by machines, but presumably handled by people

• fed by people, but minimal handling

• punished for approaching people (don’t try this at home)

• raised in field with minimal handling but daily exposure


Is it all about food?

• “might be formed merely by having the person in sight at frequent intervals”

• “feeding is not a necessary part of the development of the social bond...[indeed] feeding by itself does not produce a highly socialized animal”

• “formed an attachment in spite of considerable punishment. We must remember that these were fox terrier puppies...”


When surrounded by other species dogs will imprint on them too...

• Dogs will imprint on

• Cats

• People

• Sheep

• ...

• Note: dogs can imprint on multiple species simultaneously if in an environment with multiple species...

Coppinger: How to grow an LGD vs. a Herding Dog

• How to raise a live stock guarding dog...

• Raise the pup among sheep for its first 16 weeks...

• The effect is that the dog “treats sheep as its primary social companions.”

• How to raise a herding dog...

• Raise it among people & dogs for the first 4 months...

• Introduce it to sheep at 4 months plus...

• Sheep do not become primary social companions, people and dogs are

Motor Patterns & Critical Periods

• An consistent pattern of movement displayed by animals of a species.

• Innate (genes + development), sometimes referred to as “prefunctional”

• You can observe motor patterns, but you can only infer function.

• Examples: eye-stalk, chase, grab-bite, tongue flick...

Coppinger’s rule...

• When motor patterns onset during a critical period, they become incorporated into the behavioral repertoire associated with that period...

• Predatory motor patterns become part of social ‘play’

• In some instances, if motor patterns are never given an opportunity to be expressed during the critical period, they may drop out (permanently) from the repertoire...

• Part of good training is managing the environment

An aside: gene action & developmental

environment


Predatory motor patterns get

incorporated into social play and become a social behavior in BCs

It takes a difference in timing as well as in developmental environment to grow a BC vs. LGD

A wicked interesting idea to noodle on...

• Maybe there is something about the imprinting phase of canids that makes it particularly susceptible to inter-species imprinting...

• Could it be olfactory priming?

Fear

Interplay of attraction & fear...

• “The balanced interplay of attraction and fear is fundamental to bonding and socialization in the broadest sense”

• “Early experience with novelty is crucial for the development of normal exploratory behavior”

Fear develops after imprinting

• Fear begins to appear at 5 weeks and peaks at 8-9 weeks

• At its height (8-9 weeks), fearful experiences may result in lifetime fears (almost like negative imprinting)

• Not the time to go to your neighborhood dog park...

• Fear of the novel (non-fiction ok...)

• novel in novel environments less scary than novel objects in familiar environment

Development of fear...


Fear in opposition to imprinting

• Imprinting and fear work hand-in-hand in the socialization process.

• Fear of novelty develops once imprinting has anchored the familiar.

• It makes sense that the development of fear would trail imprinting

• Learn who your brother is before you learn who your enemy is...

Is novelty bad?

• Animals attend to novelty because it can signal a biologically significant object or event, good or bad...

• Approach (exploration & learning)

• Withdrawal (fear & avoidance)

• One of the great developmental challenges is learning how to balance exploration vs. fear, vis-a-vis novelty

• See an ebb and flow of attraction & withdrawal throughout development

Primary & secondary fear periods

• Primary is at 8-9 weeks

• Life long implications

• Secondary is more diffuse (6 - 14 months)

• comes on suddenly, lasts for a week or two, disappears

• less likely to have long term effects

• cookies and a deep breath: this too will pass..

Fear kicks in much earlier in wolves...

• Coppinger argues onset of “hazard avoidance” motor patterns occurs at 19 days in wolves vs. 8-9 weeks in dogs

• Much shorter window for socialization

• Intensity and length of fear period may be longer

• Wild canids have pronounced secondary fear period around time of sexual maturity


Fox on Socialization & Fear

• “... young wolves that are well socialized at three months will lose their attachment if subsequently isolated. It seems essential, therefore, that social behavior must continue to be reinforced. In the absence of such reinforcement, fear and escape reactions overshadow approach and active submission or “greeting” responses towards humans... Fear of the unfamiliar is the primary obstacle to wolf socialization”

Fox, M. W. (1971). Behaviour of Wolves, Dogs and Related Canids. Malabar, FL, Krieger Publishing Company.

The emerging picture

Co-action of genes and developmental context

• The diversity of motor patterns (frequency, sequence, context in which they are displayed) that marks different breeds arises from diversely “shaped” brains caused by a diversity of gene action...

• genes interacting with developmental environment

• the diversity is a product of natural AND artificial selection

• Exaggerated and suppressed so as to achieve goal...

Imprinting...

• Canids imprint shortly after the transition period and this allows them to imprint across species and thus form social bonds across species

• One consequence is that the imprinting process biases what they attend to, and this scaffolds inter-species learning

• Unclear what the impact of domestication was on imprinting...

Socialization...

• Imprinting scaffolds social learning, but socialization is more than just imprinting

• During secondary socialization, the animal works out the details of living in a social group (made up of those animals on which it has imprinted.)

• learn reliable cues that predict behavior of members of social group

• refine strategies for avoiding conflict

• The longer the period, perhaps the greater the opportunity to form flexible social bonds.

Fear...

• Fear comes on line after the imprinting & socialization process has commenced and is underway

• At some point, it limits the ability to form social bonds

• The later the onset of fear, and the lower the level of fear, the greater the opportunity to form social bonds.

Fear

• Domestication seems to have had 2 effects vis-a-vis wolves with respect to fear...

• The onset of the primary fear period is significantly later, and the period ‘seems’ to be shorter.

• The secondary fear period is significantly later, more diffuse and significantly less intense.

So...

• Imprinting, increased length of the primary and secondary socialization periods, and the dramatic shift and diminished strength of the primary and secondary fear stages, all combine to set the stage for an animal who could...

• easily form interspecies bonds

• easily attend to and learn to use inter-species cues to guide its own behavior

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The Cognitive Dog Class 6: Development. Puppy Development: Stacking the Odds for Optimal Potential...

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