The Developmental Deadlines
From the moment you choose your puppy, there is some
considerable urgency regarding socialization and
training. There is no time to waste. Basically, an adult
dog's temperament and behavior habits (both good and bad)
are shaped during puppyhood—very early puppyhood. In
fact, some puppies are well on their way to ruin by the time
they are just eight weeks old. It is especially easy to make
horrendous mistakes when selecting a pup and during his first
few days at home. Such mistakes usually have an indelible
effect, influencing your pup's behavior and temperament for
the rest of his life. This is not to say that unsocialized and
untrained eight-week-old pups cannot be rehabilitated. They
can, if you work quickly. But while it’s easy to prevent
behavior and temperament problems from the beginning,
rehabilitation can be both difficult and time-consuming, and
it is unlikely that your pup will ever become the adult dog he
or she could have been.
Learn how to make intelligent choices when selecting your
pup. Learn how to implement a course of errorless
housetraining and errorless chewtoy-training the moment your
puppy arrives at her new home. Any housesoiling or chewing
mistake you allow your puppy to make is absolute silliness and
absolute seriousness: silliness because you are creating lots of
future headaches for yourself, and seriousness because millions
of dogs are euthanized each year simply because their owners
did not know how to housetrain or chewtoy-train them.
If your pup is ever left unsupervised indoors he will most
certainly chew household articles and soil your house. Although
these teeny accidents do little damage in themselves, they set
the precedent for your puppy's choice of toys and toilets for
many months to come.
You should treat any puppy housesoiling or housedestruction
mistake as a potential disaster, since it predicts
numerous future mistakes from a dog with larger bladder and
bowels and much more destructive jaws. Many owners begin to
notice their puppy's destructiveness by the time he is four to
five months old, when the pup is characteristically relegated
outdoors. Destruction is the product of a puppy's boredom, lack
of supervision, and a search for entertainment. Natural
inquisitiveness prompts the lonely pup to dig, bark, and escape
in his quest for some form of occupational therapy to pass the
day in solitary confinement. Once the neighbors complain
about the dog's incessant barking and periodic escapes, the dog
is often further confined to a garage or basement. Usually
though, this is only a temporary measure until the dog is
surrendered to a local animal shelter to play the lotto of life.
Fewer than 25 percent of surrendered dogs are adopted, of
which about half are returned as soon as the new owners
discover their adopted adolescent's annoying problems.
The above summarizes the fate of many dogs. This is
especially sad because all these simple problems could be
prevented so easily. Housetraining and chewtoy-training are
hardly rocket science. But you do need to know what to do.
And you need to know what to do before you bring your
puppy home.
As soon as your puppy comes home, the clock is running.
Within just three months, your puppy will need to meet six crucial developmental deadlines. If your puppy fails to meet
any of these deadlines, he is unlikely to achieve his full
potential. In terms of your dog's behavior and temperament,
you will probably be playing catch-up for the rest of your dog's
life. Most important of all, you simply cannot afford to neglect
the socialization and bite inhibition deadlines.