Episode 2: Dr. Gayle Watkins, PhD: Good Dog's Summer of Socialization

Learn about the importance of socialization, and what the latest research says about the topic.

Here at the Good Dog Pod, we are all about supporting dog breeders and responsible dog ownership. Good Dog is on a mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them through education and advocacy. The Good Dog Pod provides dog lovers with the latest updates in canine health and veterinary care, animal legislation and legal advocacy, canine training and behavior science, and dog breeding practices. Subscribe and join our mission to help give our dogs the world they deserve.

Dr. Judi Stella: Dr. Stella's research has focused on assessing the behavior and welfare of domestic cats and dogs housed in biomedical laboratories, shelters, veterinary hospitals, and commercial breeding facilities.

Dr. Gayle Watkins: Gayle is the founder of Avidog and renowned Golden Retriever breeder. She is an AKC Gold Breeder of Merit and a three-time AKC Breeder of the Year. Her educational course "Savvy Socialization" is the topic of this week's episode.

Check out Good Dog University's Summer of Socialization here.

In this episode, Judi, Gayle, and Laura discuss what socialization means and how to be effective at it.

Judi talks about the importance of socialization and the impact behavioral problems have both in the dog world and beyond. Dogs with behavior problems have significantly negatively impacted lives (thus also negatively impacting their owners). Preventing these problems is easier than managing them - that’s where socialization comes in.

Historically we’ve focused on socializing our puppies in the first 16 weeks of life - Gayle has developed a socialization course that extends beyond traditional wisdom, drawing on science and her years of experience in the dog world.

Resource: Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog by John Paul Scott and John L. Fuller

Gayle discusses the importance of introductions. Dogs have a hard time generalizing and need a lot of exposure to a lot of different things. "Sit" in the park is a lot different than "sit" in the kitchen!

Gayle gives a bit of background on her course "Savvy Socialization." The course teaches how to build trust in your puppies. There are four types of trust:

• Trust in people,
• Trust environment
• Trust in expectations of them
• Trust in themselves

Transcription:

INTRO: Laura Reeves [0:07] Welcome to the Good Dog Pod! I’m your host, Laura Reeves. Here at the Good Dog Pod, we are all about supporting dog breeders and responsible dog ownership. Join our mission and help change the conversation—because we are all stronger together! Good Dog is on a mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them, through education and advocacy. The Good Dog Pod provides dog lovers with the latest updates in canine health and veterinary care, animal legislation and legal advocacy, canine training and behavior science, and dog breeding practices. Subscribe, and join our mission to help give our dogs the world they deserve.

Welcome to the Good Dog Pod! I am your host, Laura Reeves, and we have a very fun show today here at the Good Dog Pod. We are all about supporting dog breeders and responsible dog ownership. Good Dog is on a mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them through education and advocacy. The Good Dog Pod provides dog lovers with the latest updates in canine health and veterinary care, animal legislation and legal advocacy, canine training and behavior science, dog breeding practices, and a whole lot more. Subscribe, and join our mission to help give our dogs the world they deserve.

Today we are speaking with Judi Stella, who is Good Dog’s Head of Standards and Research and also Gayle Watkins, founder of Avidog. We’re going to be talking about the summer of socialization. Isn’t that right, ladies?

Judi Stella [1:47] Yep! 

Laura Reeves [1:50] Excellent, excellent, excellent! So, Judi, I’m going to have you get started and lay the groundwork for us. Why is socialization important? What does it mean? What does it entail? And then we’re going to talk to Gayle, to give us some information on specifics. You go, girl!

Judi Stella [2:06] I’m really excited to be here to announce the launch of Good Dog University, powered by Avidog! This is our new initiative to provide evidence-based, high-quality, continuing education to our Good Breeder community. The first course that we are offering is Savvy Socialization: New Thinking on Making Great Puppies into Great Dogs. So, this will kick off our Summer of Socialization, and it’s meant to bring awareness to the importance of behavioral health. To date at Good Dog, we’ve been focused on physical health, especially pre-breeding screening tests for inheritable diseases, because we wanted to be sure that we decrease the risk of producing puppies with inherited health conditions. But that’s only part of producing sound puppies that will be lifelong companions and remain in their homes. Behavior is at least—and I would argue more—important to dog welfare and the maintenance. 

Gayle Watkins [2:55] I’d agree with you!

Judi Stella [2:58] For the maintenance of the human–animal bond. This is a topic that’s really near and dear to me. My graduate studies focused on behavior and animal welfare. Much of my research to date has been focused on animal behavior. I spend a lot of time in veterinary clinics and shelters, and I’ve seen first-hand the lifelong consequences of behavior problems and how negatively they impact not only dog wellbeing but also the humans that live with them. Dogs have to be good family members, right? They have to be good citizens in their communities. And it’s well-documented that undesirable, abnormal, or nuisance behaviors as perceived by the owners are poorly tolerated, and if they’re left untreated, they may become dangerous. So poorly socialized, fearful dogs are at increased risk for biting, rehoming, and relinquishment to shelters—and, in some severe cases, euthanasia. Just to put this into a little perspective, how big a problem this is, it’s estimated that anywhere between 62 and 90 million dogs live in U.S. households. (Those estimates depend on the methodology used to calculate them.) About four and a half million people are bitten each year. These are CDC statistics. 20% of those dog bites require medical attention. Anywhere from 150 to 200 thousand children under the age of 14 have been bitten each year. And dog bites account for about a third of all homeowner insurance claims. Each claim averages about $37,000 per dog bite. So that’s pretty severe. That’s a pretty significant public health concern, and also money out of pocket. We have about three and a half million dogs still enter shelters each year, estimated, and of those, about 670,000 are euthanized. We know that behavior problems are the leading cause of relinquishment to shelters. As a single factor, it’s very important that 16% of relinquishments are solely because of behavior, and up to 40% of owners relinquishing their dogs cite a behavior problem as a contributing factor. So, again, a significant number of those dogs have behavior issues. And then euthanasia, unfortunately, is becoming one of the leading causes of death for younger dogs in veterinary clinics. Even if the dog isn’t euthanized, their welfare can be really compromised, especially if they’re fearful or anxious or if their behavior prevents them from engaging in activities outside the home. So if you have a dog that’s dog–aggressive or people–aggressive, especially with unfamiliar people, you’re not likely to take it to the park or take it out for a lot of walks. That’s going to significantly impact their wellbeing. 

And then you have to consider that the human that’s attached to them also is negatively impacted. If you have to euthanize your dog because of behavioral reasons, you’re going to feel guilty. There’s a shame associated with that. There’s also stress and cost associated with just caring for a dog and managing their behavior problems. So this just illustrates how important behavior is and how it contributes to public health and welfare problems, for both dogs and people and the breakdown of that human–animal bond. Preventing behavior problems is a much better and much easier approach than trying to manage them after they’ve developed. This is where socialization comes into play. 

We have been focused on, say, the 3 to 14 to 16 week age since maybe the ’60s, ’70s, with the publication of Scott and Fuller’s seminal work, looking at socialization. Basically what we know is that dogs’ early environment—both their social and physical environment—affects their ability to cope with environments and situations that they encounter later in life. It also impacts the bond that they form with humans and other animals. Historically, like I said, we’ve been focused on that 3 to 14 to 16 weeks of age, when puppies are especially sensitive to their environment and experiences. Their brains are very plastic, and they just experience things in a much more impactful way. (Not to say that they don’t socialize later in life.) This positive, gradual exposure to a wide variety of sights, sounds, smells, people, places, objects, dogs, other animals—anything that they may confront later in life—is known to decrease the risk of the dog developing fear, aggression, or anxiety-related behaviors later in life. 

However, as I spoke to earlier, this hasn’t resulted in the degree of success that we want or would even expect, if that was the only important aspect of the development of behavior. This is where Gayle and her new approach and thinking on socialization enters our story. I’m going to let her discuss that. 

Laura Reeves [7:29] Gayle, I think that this is so important, as a breeder myself, as you are. The work that we put in, our buyers reap that reward, and I think that we have had some information on my other podcast, Pure Dog Talk, about the genetic component of it. But one of the great things about the work that we put in in those early days is that even if there is some sense of a genetic component, we can help compensate for that. Without it, we can’t. Speak to us, dear!

Gayle Watkins [8:02] Absolutely. I think that’s a really important point, Laura, that we always have to keep in mind. As breeders, and eventually as owners, we’re trying to bring out the best in every puppy—however that genetics played out. Because we all know that genetics tend to have a life of their own.

Laura Reeves [8:20] Mother Nature is a wicked mistress, as they say!

Gayle Watkins [8:24] She is! And I always say: If dog breeding was easy, everyone would do it, and we’d all have the perfect dogs. But it’s challenging. So, one of the things that I’ve noticed is all of the things Judi talked about are so important and at least the responsible breeding community has gotten their arms around socialization and understand the importance of it. If you log in online and google “puppy socialization,” I did that a couple of weeks ago and there are 6.8 million websites on puppy socialization. 

Judi Stella [8:56] Are you serious?

Gayle Watkins [8:57] I’m serious. So it is not a lack of information. We have owners who get their puppy and they really want to do the same thing. But one of the things that I’ve noticed (and I don’t know if you’ve seen this, Laura) as I go around the world giving seminars, I talk to people who have well-bred, well-raised, well-socialized puppies that by 15 months of age are reactive to dogs, are fearful of people. These were puppies that were out in a 4-6 month class and were out at shows and doing all these things, or they were going into town and going into puppy class. So, that pushed me to go back to Scott and Fuller’s work. If you’re listening and you have not read Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog, I can’t recommend it more highly. Yes, it was written a long time ago, but it’s a good read.

Laura Reeves [9:59] It’s still true! Nothing in it has changed! 

Gayle Watkins [10:02] Nothing in it has changed, and it continues to be this amazingly insightful work. So when you go back and you take a look at what Scott and Fuller are talking about, and you compare it to what we think socialization is today, you’ll see some really important differences. Today, if you read the definitions of socialization (and they’re put out by all kinds of training organizations and animal welfare organizations), they say that socialization is introducing puppies to a wide array of people, dogs, animals, sights, sounds, places, environments, buildings—you name it. Socialization is the development of social relationships. Puppies do not have social relationships with sights, sounds, buildings, things. So what socialization has become today are checklists. Checklists. “Here. Print this checklist off. Take your puppy out. Introduce it to all of these things.” No conversation about how that’s done. 

Judi Stella [11:11] Yup!

Laura Reeves [11:11] Exactly! 

Gayle Watkins [11:12] Because if it’s done wrong… it’s worse! You have made it worse. There’s very little teaching about what you should be looking for in a puppy, as those things happen. How do you read the puppy’s body language? What do you do if the puppy becomes frightened? One of the things I think we have to remember is fear is a life-saving emotion. It keeps all of us alive. There’s a reason I don’t walk to the edge of cliffs. Because it’s a life-threatening situation! Especially for someone who’s about as coordinated as I am. We have lost what should be happening. What are we looking for as owners? What are we looking for as breeders? How do we guide the puppy, regardless of who this puppy is as an individual, whether it’s a little timid or whether it’s really bold? None of that matters. 

What we need to be paying attention to is how the puppy is taking in this situation. So that took me back to Scott and Fuller. If you read their definitions, what they’re saying about that important, sensitive period from 3 to 16 weeks, they say that puppies are hyper-sensitive to social engagement and the development of social relationships (so that could be with people, dogs, livestock, cats, etc.—but it’s an animal, a mammal of some sort typically, or maybe a bird) and they are hyper-sensitive to what are called agonistic responses. Agonistic responses are negative responses. That’s what puppies are very attuned to. That’s the 7-week-old puppy who meets a strange bitch for the first time and runs up and gets on her head—

Laura Reeves [13:15] And she bites it!

Gayle Watkins [13:16] She hopefully not bites it, but flings him aside and basically said, “We don’t do that with older ladies. That is not acceptable behavior.” That puppy is hyper-sensitive to learn: You know, if you run up to another dog and you climb on its head, that is a bad thing. Don’t do that again! They are not necessarily as hyper-sensitive to positive relationships. They’ll take longer. Those have to be built. So, trust takes a while. Distrust happens much more quickly. If you think about it, that’s what keeps puppies alive. Because they have no social skills whatsoever. They are completely inept at reading dog body language. What is it that teaches them what is the correct response? The reaction of the other dog.

Laura Reeves [14:09] And I’ll tell you an interesting thing: singletons (I’m just dealing with this, with a singleton puppy) or some dogs don’t get this. What you just described about having no clue about how to interact with other dogs, for a dog who did not get that socialization—whether it’s a singleton or from an improperly socialized litter—they are now, in this case, 100 pounds of a year-old dumb-dumb. They get bitten. No clue! 

Gayle Watkins [14:46] Puppies tend (not from all dogs) but they tend to get a pass on total social ineptness. They will get, typically (again, not all dogs but many), corrected without harm. By the time they’re six months old, that pass is gone. 

Laura Reeves [15:01] Revoked!

Gayle Watkins [15:04] Yup! Now the adult dog is really insulted. It would be like us comparing, say, a four-year-old to a sixteen-year-old. We will tolerate that behavior and respond to them in a completely different way. So, Savvy Socialization. Let me go back to introductions, because I think introductions are really important. Introductions to sounds and sights and all of those things. Sensitive-period puppies (that 3–16 weeks old) also generalize really well. That’s one of the reasons we need to do all of these introductions. Dogs as a species don’t generalize really well. Humans do. If you learn how to do your math homework in your bedroom, you can do it in the kitchen or you can do it at the dining room table, because in a human mind, those things are the same. All of us who train dogs know that that’s not true. “Sit” in the kitchen is a very different command than “sit” in the living room, and it is a whole different command than “sit” outside. 

Laura Reeves [16:05] In the park!

Gayle Watkins [16:08] In the park! And people always say to me, “He looked at me like he’s never heard that word before.” But he has never heard that word before, because “sit” in the park is a completely different idea than “sit” in the kitchen! Especially when you’re sitting there with a cookie in your hand! And that cookie has a lot less value in the park because there are squirrels and people and children, etc. The main reason that we want to really focus on introductions during the sensitive-period is that generalization. 

So, say puppies meet three men—two with beards—in that 3–16 week old period. They now know men are good, and men with beards are good! They see women with hats on. They meet two. Now women with hats are really good. At six months, they may have to meet twelve. By two years, they may never generalize. Everyone is individual. So we do want to cram those introductions in during that early period.

Laura Reeves [17:14] Positive!

Gayle Watkins [17:14] Exactly. Those negative responses on the puppy’s part are really important. Fear is an emotion and sensitive-period puppies are strongly attuned to their emotions. That emotion of fear hangs with puppies a long time. So we want to make sure that those introductions are positive for that individual puppy—not for your last puppy, not for the puppy you had when you were a kid—but for the puppy that’s sitting in front of you.

Our focus in Savvy Socialization is what breeders and owners can do to build trust in their puppies. Four types of trust. Absolutely the most important one is trust in people. Most important! “People” in that are their people. You, your family members, and the puppy’s caregivers (the vet, the groomer, etc.). Other people also need to be a part of this, but it’s like concentric circles. Then they have to have trust in their environment. “In their environment” includes dogs, but that’s the diciest one. We’ve got to be really careful there. But that’s the sights, sounds, places, horses, cats—whatever the puppy is going to see in its lifetime. Then they have to have trust in expectations of them. Typically it’s going to be our expectations of them, but it’ll be caregiver expectations (the groomer, the vet). Those are really important, that the puppy knows what’s expected of them and can do it, can give what we are expecting of them. I always say that potty training is a really good example of what you manage until they can do. If we punish them early when they can’t do it, now we’ve breached that trust. And then the last one is trust in themselves. Because that’s what builds resiliency, courage…

Laura Reeves [19:25] And confidence. 

Gayle Watkins [19:26] Exactly. That breeders can do a lot of and owners can do a lot of. Our program is built around how we build those four trusts in puppies, starting with people (starting with us) and then introducing them to the world while always paying attention to their reaction to what is happening. If they are afraid, we should avoid doing two things. We shouldn’t keep pushing them. And we shouldn’t take over. Because if we take over, now the puppy doesn’t trust himself. The only way he can be strong is when you are there. So now we get separation anxiety. We get aggression in yards and things like that. 

Laura Reeves [20:15] I think that, to me, is when I tell people, “Don’t goo-goo that puppy.” If it just reacts to something, hush. Be quiet. Let the puppy figure it out itself. 

Gayle Watkins [20:24] And breathe. Just breathe. Don’t be embarrassed. The other aspect of Savvy Socialization as it goes beyond 16 weeks: We know that the juvenile period (which is from 16 weeks until the puppy becomes an adolescent, which is breed-specific) and adolescence are really important, informative times in a puppy’s life. In the juvenile period, their brain starts consolidating and changes a lot. It is less sensitive to agonistic behavior. That is when they can really get themselves in trouble. And then adolescence, this is where true fears come out. Fears and aggressions. So we’ll get location aggression, naturally, in adolescent dogs. Breed-specific. Most Labradors aren’t going to give you a lot of that. But German Shepherds, [21:19], a lot of those breeds have been bred to do that for years. So if we’re not prepared in the adolescent period to continue to clarify for them what appropriate behavior is, now we get fence-fighting, now we get dogs that are aggressive at home, now we get car aggression, crate aggression, things like that. We get location sensitivity, where puppies become hyper-attached to their home turf and are less comfortable in the rest of the world. It’s a really natural process. We have to be prepared for it. And then the ever-present fear-imprint periods, which I find people are always surprised by. “I did all the socialization! My puppy was a rockstar! At twelve months, suddenly it’s afraid.” 

Laura Reeves [22:05] That’s what happens! It’s a dog!

Gayle Watkins [22:09] Love those teenagers—both humans and canine. But it’s really natural. And if we don’t have the right reaction, now we get those negative emotions and in a puppy, things can imprint for a really long time. That’s basically the underlying philosophy in providing—not necessarily a completely new perspective in socialization—but perhaps an expanded one. On the one hand, we’re going to socialize our puppies and develop our puppies through 15–18 months of age, until they are adults. 

Laura Reeves [22:45] I think that’s really fabulous, Gayle, because on Pure Dog Talk we talked about Avidog and some of the very baby steps. So, the newborns and those things that really blew my mind—and I’ve been a dog breeder since I was seven with my family! Those were really great pieces of information and added to my knowledge. This, to me, takes that and just, as you say, expands it out to the dog owner (instead of just the dog breeder) and gives them the same type of structured ideas and ways to manage that people just don’t have. I think helping people learn is oftentimes even more important than helping dogs learn. 

Gayle Watkins [23:30] I so agree! Poor dogs. 

Laura Reeves [23:33] Judi’s raising her hand.

Judi Stella [23:37] I just want to say: That’s a really, really interesting point and something that I think we need to point out, because we always talk about what breeders can do, what breeders can do. Well, breeders can care for the genetic and the epi-genetic and the maternal stress and the neonatal care. Even that first eight weeks. But that socialization period is another eight weeks. That’s a really sensitive period. And up to a year and a half of age. The breeder and the owner have to partner in making this dog turn out well, to have the behavioral development the way that we want it to go. It’s really, really important that the breeder can play a good role in this, but the puppy buyers have to know that it’s not the breeder’s fault. They also have to play a huge rule in making sure these dogs turn out well! I think that that’s something we really need to point out. Just make it more of a partnership, so we get the dogs where they want to be. Breeders need to support their buyers and help them with this, because it is hard. We all know that 12 to 16 to 18 months is when dogs are more likely to get relinquished, too, because of these behavioral problems. Changing expectations of the puppy buyers to let them know that this is a long process to get your Lassie!

Laura Reeves [24:43] I know Gayle will say the same thing. I tell all my puppy buyers, “You get out of it what you put into it.” I’ll help you. I’ll guide you. I’ll give you direction. But after it leaves my property, now it’s on you. The dog didn’t come out fully formed and perfectly behaved. You have a role in this, and it is a partnership, as Judi said, with the breeder, with the puppy, with the owner. We’re all kind of a team here! And that poor puppy can get some pretty heavy-duty expectations put on it without some of the training that you’re talking about here with the Savvy Socialization. 

Gayle Watkins [25:14] And if you’re the owner and you think, “Oh my gosh. My puppy has to meet 15 new dogs before he’s a year of age,”  and there’s no real screening of those dogs, it’s a recipe for reactivity. It is an absolute recipe for creating reactive dogs. I suspect you all will agree with me that dog parks are a huge—

Laura Reeves [25:42] Nightmare!

Gayle Watkins [25:43] They play a huge role in this reactivity, because no one’s looking at the puppy, at the dog. Everyone’s talking to their friends or they’re on their phone. They’re not saying, “I don’t think my puppy is feeling very good here. We’re going to take a step outside.” Or they do that “buck up, Buster!” or say, “Oh! I think he’s having fun! He’s bolting with his ears pinned back!” 

Laura Reeves [26:12] Learning to read your puppy and seeing this as your job… You would not take your six-year-old child (well, I don’t know that you wouldn’t) to the playground and then walk away and just put it out there with a bunch of pre-teens or teens. It’s just not what you would do. So we need to put that amount of care and attention and real attention on what’s happening with the puppy. Put our emotions to the side. So if we’re embarrassed because our puppy’s afraid or our puppy’s barking—we’ve got to let that go. That’s just not something you can put on a puppy and have it come out the other end in good shape.

Judi Stella [26:52] To your point, too, about saying it’s the individual puppy. We have to let them be individuals, because they’re not all going to be super gregarious, and they’re not all going to want to be the life of the party at the dog park. Some dogs just don’t really like that kind of rough-and-tumble crazy play. We have to respect that and let them be who they are. 

Laura Reeves [27:11] Some of us are wallflowers. Just saying.

Gayle Watkins [27:15] I promise you: If I took my Golden Retrievers to the dog park, they would stand at the gate and look at me like I had lost my mind. 

Laura Reeves [27:21] If I took my Wirehaired Pointers to the dog park, they would terrorize every other dog! It’s responsibility, right? It is changing the conversation. This is one of the things we have said about the Good Dog Pod from the beginning. We’re changing the conversation. The Savvy Socialization allows us to change the conversation and help people empower people to learn how to be excellent pet owners. Being excellent pet owners is what gives you an excellent pet. 

Gayle Watkins [27:53] It also reduces how much you need to do, when you think about it. People are out there just hauling their puppies everywhere. I keep saying, “It’s the quality of those experiences and the trust that you are building as you introduce that puppy to the word.” It’s not that he has to meet 15 horses. He needs to have a really good experience with you and that one horse, or maybe two. But it’s less quantity. It’s less “let’s check all of these off” and it’s more “let’s make each of those experiences a trust-building experience for that puppy.” That’s what will give us better dogs. Because even that timid dog—let’s say you’re not the life of the party, but you’re with your owner and your owner says, “Hey, bud, it’s safe. We are in this together. We are good.” That is what’s going to make a dog say, “I’m good.” But if that owner has breached that trust, now things can be really difficult for the dog. And now it has to do its own thing, which is where fear-biting and aggression and things like that come in.

Laura Reeves [29:13] And, again, I believe it goes back to remembering that the dog reads your behavior. I think this is so important. Dogs need a leader. They need someone to understand, to follow, to trust. If your reaction to “Oh, there was just a guy target-practicing and there was a bunch of gunshots” is “Ah! Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay” the dog is going to be like, “That is clearly very scary because she just flipped out. And she’s the boss!” Our leadership, our role modeling for our dogs is so important—from breeder babydom all the way through ownerdom. It’s about that piece of the trust you’re talking about, and it’s the part about how they have that experience—all of that goes back to the owner. 

Judi Stella [30:09] And that’s the quality and the strength of that human–animal bond. You want them to look to you when they get nervous or upset about something. They check in, you tell them it’s okay, and they go on with their life. That’s ultimately what you want them to do. 

Gayle Watkins [30:21] I always say we have to be the grown-up in the relationship. Sometimes that can be hard, but we have to be the grown-up! 

Laura Reeves [30:30] Absolutely. Well, ladies, thank you so very much for sharing your information, for sharing your knowledge. I think this is incredibly valuable. Listeners, we will have links to the Savvy Socialization from Avidog and the Good Dog University and lots of other information for you in our show notes. We look forward to talking to you again next week. Bye, everybody!