The importance of socialisation

A dog can have a biological predisposition to fear, it does not need to be conditioned by a traumatic event. Moreover a dogs behaviour can be hugely affected before birth and before reaching you at after 8 weeks, However, during the critical period the greatest amount of re wiring of a puppy’s brain can occur, in fact with environmental enrichment the brain actually gets heavier and bigger and its DNA altered permanently with the ability to pass it on to future generation’s.

Therefore to mitigate predisposed behaviour problems a rich socialisation period is critical. Moreover an enriched environment improves memory and cognitive processes and increases exploratory activity which is a sign of a more secure dog. Dog’s who are more secure and less anxious and have had more experiences have more memories stored in the hippocampus to draw on and thus a better ability to cope with any trauma later in life.  

Therefore by the end of your pup’s first 14-16 weeks, when the major re wiring is complete, you want them to have positively experienced as much of the world they are going to live in with you as possible and the correct way to behave in that world… that being said there is still plenty that can and NEEDS to be done after that too so don’t stop at 16 weeks especially if your dogs experience prior to that was limited.

For a 35 page paper into the the research and clinical trials and thus importance of the perinatal period (Pregnancy) through to the end of the sensitive window at 16 weeks and how it effects behaviour and health in adulthood please click here.