Early separation from mom or breed causing probs?

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Postby Jodi » March 3rd, 2010, 10:04 am

By no means am I an expert in this area, I only have some personal experience, but I would have to disagree with the presenter also. I can't imagine that any being is born with an inherent sense of how to communicate and interact when there are so many tiny little subtle and "cultural" behaviors that can really only be learned...

Not just that, but I think a lot of other emotional aspects of development can be affected as well-and I imagine that that in turn has an effect on social interactions. My brother's dog Tiffany and her sister Sugar were both taken early from mom (or so we were told) and they both exhibit "suckling" behaviors with blankets. When they are overly excited or appear anxious they run and grab their blankets and suck on them-it sounds kind of weird, but they are NOT biting, they are clearly sucking :| A behaviorist we saw said she thought it may be an attemp to calm herself (but then someone also told me it could be obsessive compulsive?). I found it interesting that both girls exhibited this behavior-not sure if it's related.

Tiffany is also DA and similar to Riggs in the sense that she shows NO (or very subtle to the human eye) signs before she "attacks". That's how her foster initially realized she was DA. She was "fine" around his other dogs initially, and then "out of nowhere" she was on top of the other dog for no apparent reason.
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Postby Jodi » March 3rd, 2010, 10:07 am

Also wanted to mention that Sugar and Tiffany were both raised in completely different homes for the past several years and I was only recently made aware that Sugar exhibited the same exact sucking behaviors. Very interesting...
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Postby katiek0417 » March 4th, 2010, 11:28 am

TheRedQueen wrote:
Umm...I still say that he's showing signs...they're just really, really subtle. I say that if we introduced Score to Riggs, that Score wouldn't go anywhere NEAR Riggs...I guarantee you that Score could/would read that body language.


Ya know...I think that, too, when I see the video...Greg said the same thing...they're very, very subtle, but they're there...

Now, to the other topic of conversation...I've gotten puppies at 6 weeks of age...and I've hand-raised a few puppies :rolleyes2: Granted they aren't bullies...but dogs, nonetheless.

I got Nisha at 6 weeks...and I won't say that she has issues with reading body language in other dogs...but I will say if another dog tries to correct her, she takes it as a challenge, and will fight back...but she's always been dominant...so, is that her being unable to read what the dog is telling her, or is it just that she isn't going to be reprimanded by a dog that she feels that she's more dominant than?

That brings us to Rocky. Handraised from 4 days old...he was a major screw up...only puppy...and, yes, he did have a hard time reading certain things from the other dogs...Don't get me wrong...there were certain dogs he could read...but others...not so much...however, I also wonder if some of his issues were due to the fact that he suffered a head injury as a pup and was extremely fear aggressive IN COMBINATION to being the only pup...In fact, handraising him left such a bad taste in my mouth, that I almost chose to put down all 9 of Dru's pups when they were born...

But I didn't...and they were handraised from day 1. Four them were handraised by Kendell and her boyfriend, Josh. Five of them remained here...and those pups (they're only 8 months old now) never showed any of the same behaviors that rocky did...and they still don't. Granted, both Kendell's pups and my pups had a "surrogate" mom (didn't feed them, or anything...but could be around them), but these "surrogates" didn't play that much of a role in correcting them, or anything...and these pups, well, they get along well with the other dogs, they read body language well, are well-rounded...What I DO attribute this to is NOT that they had a "surrogate" but INSTEAD that they had siblings, and learned a lot from their siblings...

Something else that is interesting to me...Dru is female dog aggressive (extremely)...the pups in her first litter, the one that she raised herself, show a lot of dog reactivity (in fact, more than 25% of the 9 pups have some degree of dog reactivity)...this second litter, the one that she had NOTHING to do with...I haven't heard any reports of dog reactivity or aggression...
"Rumor has it, compulsion is evil."

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Cy TC, PSA 1, PSA 2, 2009 PSA Level 3 National Champion
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