2 weeks, 1 day (April 8)

I woke up with Red snuggled up against me on my mattress. He must have climbed it during the night! Snuggly morning puppies in bed are a lovely surprise! I’m soaking up the snuggly while it lasts before they turn into little land sharks! (The reason they can end up in my bed is that I remove the barrier and push the bed up to the blanket fort entry at night. My bed is a mattress. Mattresses are climbable for at least one 2 week old Malinois!)

Social life

We started the day being snuffled by Chow Otto. Red was the first one and he got up close interest from Otto. Otto was bored after Red, so Blue, Purple and Black only got a more distance whiff of him and vice versa. Mix Chelsey took over after Otto and gave Green an up-close snuffle.

Left: car ride to our favorite park – and the last time in the wooden crate the puppies are outgrowing! Right: green is about to meet Chelsey.

If a helper dog only shows interest in the first puppy, I’ll make a note and pick someone else first the next time. Tomorrow, Black will go first. Who goes first matters because they’ll get the most attention; the order of the others is less important.

Human behavior and puppy dog eyes

Now that their eyes are open wide enough that observers can easily see a slit, the puppies have officially entered “cuteness” and “looks like a dog” mode. Today was the first time a random person in the street asked me to sell them one. They sounded like they would have impulse-bought this 3 weeks old puppy right then and there and looked quite disappointed when I said no, these puppies are too young – I am out here on an early-socialization mission. Funny what a difference tiny shiny eye slits make! I wonder if there will be more random folks like this person going forwards.

The senses

This morning, Purple encountered the cookie sheet with formula on it and started exploring it by the time Game had almost finished her post-breakfast licky snack. Everyone else slept through it. Green purposefully stumbled up to Game’s lunch cookie sheet and licked a little until Game had finished it off.

For dinner, Green walked over the cookie sheet and complained loudly and very vehemently about his wet paws. Out-ra-geous! Who dared put that slippery wet, nasty stuff in HIS blanket fort?! We could say that Green has mastered his first two new-surface challenges: water (well it wasn’t exactly water, but close enough) and metal! He didn’t lick formula today. Black licked drops that had spilled on Purple and then licked the corner of the cookie sheet after Game had finished. Everyone else was asleep when I put down the tray.

I stuck my finger into everyone’s mouth to give them the first of a 3-day round of 50mg/kg fenbendazole – a new flavor as well as a new handling experience. I treated them while they were sleeping and they only woke up halfway. I had suspected the dewormer would taste disgusting, but I tried a tiny little bit – it’s not approved for use in humans, but I figure a tiny amount of most things won’t kill me – and it’s actually flavorless. Since it doesn’t taste like anything to me – I just felt the texture – and dogs have less taste buds than humans, it is probably flavorless to them as well. Human fingers in little mouths are definitely a new tactile experience though.

Now that their eyes are really starting to open, the puppies are clearly showing more interest in the world! I have no idea how much they can actually see – if you’ve got a link to a study about the developmental stages of vision in puppies, I’d love a link! – but I’m guessing that at the very least, they can discern light and shadows and notice motion. They all tumbled over to the low barrier (which has replaced the tall barrier; I’ve taken out the tall one and moved the low one to where the tall one used to be) to look into the living room and sniff Chai through the barrier during the day. There was more walking in the blanket fort and Red and Purple nibbled on their siblings.

I might just take out the barrier altogether tomorrow. I don’t want Chai to go into the blanket fort, but I trust she will respect an invisible barrier by now. I’m curious to see if the puppies will move out of the fort if it’s easy to do so, how far they will go and whether they’ll find their way back without help!

Husbandry and handling

Everybody got the nails on their left front paw clipped with human clippers. They all did better than EVER before. No complaints AT ALL! I’m impressed. I didn’t manage to time the nail clipping right before a milk bar moment, but in any case – VERY happy with how chill they all were today! They definitely prefer clippers over the Dremel. I’m skipping the handling protocol today because they got clippered and dewormed.

I haven’t managed to have anyone sleep on my lap today. Every time I tried, it happened to be open milk bar time and the sleepy puppy I picked up woke up and proceeded to want to head to the bar (and I let them.) It’ll have to be later tonight or we’ll skip today.

Preparations

Chai and I went shopping today and got phone number tags for everyone. They’ll soon be ready to come adventuring, and when they are, I want strangers to be able to get them back to me in case they get lost.

I also got that carrier I’ve been talking about. Starting tomorrow, we’ll be walking rather than driving to the park! I won’t use the wooden crate with the towel anymore – it’s starting to come apart under the weight of the puppies, AND they are able to escape. I got an airline approved bag that should be big enough for an 8 week old puppy to fly, so in case one of the rebels goes abroad and I accompany them or they get picked up, they’ll have a familiar travel bag.¹ For now, all five of them will fit. It’ll be cozy for five Mal puppies, but they’ll fit for the next few days!

2 weeks, 2 days (April 9)

This morning, Purple walked through the wet cookie sheet, but didn’t lick. He didn’t complain either though! 2-surface challenge – check for Purple: metal and “water”! Green found it when Game had already cleared it off and licked – there was probably still some flavor left on it. He then quickly proceeded to fall asleep with his face and front paws on the cookie sheet. Black came over to check it out too before I removed it.

Field trips

We were out for almost an hour – longer than I had planned – at the park with the puppies in their carrier where I stepped by the outdoors gym and on an errand to a papelería. I met an acquaintance at the park and their dog helped with today’s snuffles and then they also held Blue for a bit. Blue and Purple both got their sleep-on-my-lap experience at the park today. Everyone got snuffled up close, but I’ll start with Black again next time – she went first, but got the least amount of snuffling.

Left: Ready to go adventuring! Right: Piña and Vaquita – socializing at Fresa Parque.

None of the puppies peed or pooped in the carrier – but they all went pretty much immediately when we got home. I’m impressed. Is this a coincidence or are 16 day old puppies already able to control their bowel movements such as to not go where they sleep?

Newness at home

I removed the low barrier, and everyone ventured out into the living room. Chai snuffled them all several times, and they explored, found Game out in the living room and nursed there, slept there, walked on the slippery floor as well as the puzzle mats in the living room, some climbed over vacuum tube and some stepped on the metal barrier I had placed on the floor. Red was the most exploratory and ventured the futhest, almost all the way to the couch. I’m proud of how well Chai did with the puppies and how she’s respecting the now invisible barrier to the blanket fort!

Visitors

Pabla and JJ came over at night, and everyone got petted and got to sleep in both their arms for a while.

Getting snuggles from JJ and Pabla!

The senses

Green thoroughly investigated the cookie sheet after Game had almost finished her lunch snack. He walked over it a few times, but didn’t lick. Purple put a paw on it and then off again and fell back asleep.

Blue stepped on the cookie sheet for dinner while Game was finishing up and proceeded to be vocally outraged because she could smell milk but didn’t know how to consume it. She hasn’t yet figured out that her mouth works on the cookie sheet as well. After Game had polished the cookie sheet, everyone else woke up and proceeded to walk across it. Not everyone has licked food, but by now, everyone has mastered the metal surface challenge – some of them even multiple times and on multiple days!

2 weeks, 3 days (April 10)

Becoming social animals

Blue licked Green’s face today and was curious about Chai, approaching her twice – once in the morning and then again in the afternoon. The video is from this morning:

Blue also tried playing (at least it looked like playing; it’s hard to believe; they are still so tiny!) with Black: Blue put her front paws and mouth on Black, and Black reciprocated! That entire interaction lasted maybe 15 seconds before both fell over and forgot what they were doing – but it looked very much like the beginning of play!

While the Rebeldes are becoming more socially interactive, I needed a break: the puppies had two human visitors and met dogs yesterday, and I took today off.

Tomorrow, Alan is coming over – unfortunately without Kiba since she picked up a cough – and I may take the puppies to a no-kennel-cough park again. I’m lucky to know folks in all the parks in my area, so if there’s a brote of something, I’ll hear about it. Later this week, we’ll meet two friends again. The rhythm of socializing every second day feels easier to me than every day. Rather than one dog and one human a day, I’ll try and do two of each every second day – whenever it works out that way anyways.

Once we are out of the city next week or the week after, I’ll probably pick up the pace even more: I’ll come into the city two or three times a week and do a local social outing in town once or twice. This means that our city outings will be big ones: I’ll set up in a different park each time and stay for a while. Once the puppies can eat independently, this is going to be easy and fun. I might do a brief test run at Chapu or Ciudad Universitaria this weekend.

Exploratory behavior

Yesterday, Red was the most exploratory, venturing away from Game and checking out other parts of the living room. Today, it’s Green’s turn to be brave while Red is having a sleepy day!

Handling and husbandry

As of today, I’ve added a brush to the handling protocol. We now do: stroke – stroke – stroke, collar off, brush, paws, tail, ears, lips, collar on, stroke – stroke – stroke.

The puppy also got their third and (for now) last dose of Panacur delivered into their mouths while they were sleeping and the nails of their right front paw Dremeled. Now that I’ve Dremeled an entire loop around the dogs (all 4 paws), I’ll go back to only human clippers, which they all seem to prefer. That said, today was the best Dremeling session yet! I’m fascinated how fast counterconditioning (Dremel followed by milk bar) is working on puppies this young! Green and Purple struggled, but significantly less than in any of our previous session. Black only moved his paw a little bit. Blue and Red were second best – moving their paws a little more than Black, but less than Green and Purple. This counterconditioning speed is truly impressive – there’s no way it would be this fast in an adult dog.

What hasn’t been going as planned is Julie’s “relax to be let down” protocol. I played with it a little yesterday and today, and it became clear that puppies a little over two weeks old are either relaxed – or they are not. When they are not, they aren’t yet able to control their impulses and relax in order to archieve an outcome. I didn’t wait them out very long before ending the experiment. It feels like this is currently out of reach for them. I’ll make another attempt in a week or so!

Thoughts on Early Neurological Stimulation …

If I had been doing ENS, following the protocols floating around the Internet, I’d be stopping around now (at 3 weeks of age.) I was thinking about this today. I mentioned in one of Games post-ultrasound posts that I won’t be doing ENS on the puppies because it is not recommended for puppies who may have been stressed in utero, and I believe Mexico City to be an inherently stressful environment even for dogs like Game who do well in it. I made a mistake in this earlier post: it’s not recommended for young puppies who themselves are stressed (for example by cropping or docking.) In any case, the same conclusion holds: no ENS for my puppies, who I’ve been stressing via my early socialization program.

ENS is a strange idea, in a way. It has been popularized among dog breeders when we heard about the “Biosensor” program, a study or series of studies conducted on working dogs by the US military in the seventies. The US military did not publish their results, so the ENS program used by breeders today is half made up and half based on data derived from studies in other species (mostly rodents.) This article outlines the procedures and is one of the few sources to admit how little we actually know. Only last year (2023), a paper came out that reported a studie that was actually done on dogs – and this study found no benefits between ENS puppies and the control group who only received “general handling.” This study was done in a “commercial breeding kennel.”

In any case, looking at the kinds of things ENS asks you to do (hold puppies upside down; place them on a cool moist towel (temperature change); tickle their paws with a q-tip) … a lot of these things happen naturally. For example, from the very beginning, Game would, when cleaning the puppies butts or stimulating their digestive tracts, often turn them over, and once they could rob a little more, they would topple over and end up upside down themselves on a regular basis. Every time I lift them out of the blanket fort, there is a temperature change. And every time I handle their paws/toes/nails, they receive treatment akin to tickling their paws. Looking at it like this, ENS really is for puppies who grow up in a labratory-like environment without other kinds of stimulation – otherwise, most of this would happen organically.

… and early socialization

The reason I feel so comfortable with our early socialization aventures is that I’ve seen free-roaming dogs reproduce. These puppies are born out in the world and have contact with dirt and the occasional other dog from the very beginning. Disease is NOT their biggest enemy – it’s humans (being taken by humans or run over by cars once they can leave the nest.)

Puppies of free-roaming dogs will also learn to be away from their mother from day 1 because they aren’t necessarily born near the dogs’ homes, so the dogs will have to leave to find food. When we breed dogs in our houses, we serve every meal to the dog right next to the puppies – but that’s not how it works “in the real world.” One element of ENS is brief separation of the puppies from their mother. In a way, ENS artificially recreates what a free-roamer puppy naturally experiences.

I’d argue (and this is an opinion; I’m not a biologist) that a dog’s natural habitat is to be free-roaming. A Kulturfolger like urban pigeons, rats and cats. Their niche – the niche where most dogs worldwide live – is in proximity to humans, but not with them to the extent pet dogs often do in the Global North. While your life span will likely be shorter when roam freely and don’t get veterinary care, it is still your “natural” (rather than artificial pet dog) life span. Personally (again, this is an opinion based on who I am as a person and what I project on the non-human animals around me – we would need to ask the dogs to get closer to the truth, and nobody is able to do that), I would argue that an animal’s life span is not a measure of their life quality. I do not believe that animals are better off in zoos than in the wild, and I believe the average free-roaming dog has a higher life quality than the average pet dog. (If you are reading this, your dog is unlikely to be an average pet and probably has a very high quality of life.) Again – this is me just sharing my opinion. I acknowledge that the opposite is just as likely to be true – there is no factual basis for this opinion.

That said, I love what Shuli Branson said when I talked to her for a podcast interview this week: cats don’t like doors – but they will happily stay inside when the door is open. What a great metaphor for how we treat each other and the animals we share a life with: only when you’re free to leave can you choose to stay. (Someone said that; it’s a quote – but unfortunately, I can’t for the life of me remember who.) Just like I aim to give my dogs the greatest possible freedom while still keeping them relatively safe, I am preparing these puppies for a life that will, I hope, allow them many freedoms.

2 weeks, 4 days (April 11)

Visitors and field trips

Alan came to visit and snuggled and handled the puppies through the protocol (sans brushing and collar off.) After getting individual attention, all five of them got to hang out on the couch between us for a while – their first time on the couch!

Getting our ears massaged by Alan!

One of the puppies will go to Alan’s Dad. So far, Green is the frontrunner. He’s currently the biggest and darkest boy.

Unfortunately, Kiba couldn’t join us today because she’s recovering from a cough that’s going around our favorite park (the one you may know as Kiba’s Park from Chai’s recall posts). After Alan left, I gave the puppies a break and then headed to Toy Play Plaza. I haven’t seen any overlap between the dogs going to Toy Play Plaza and Kiba’s Park, so that’s where our 30-minute field trip led today. To get to Toy Play Plaza, we need to cross a Avenida San Antonio, a big, busy street. The puppies can’t hear yet, but I turned the mesh side of the carrier towards the street to give them a chance to make out the cars whizzing by and smell the traffic smells.

I sat on a bench at Toy Play Plaza and had everyone out for a minute or two. Three pups got snuffled with about an inch or two of distance by mix Valentina and two by her sister Barbacoa.

Everyone also got admired by two strangers, one of whom asked if they could have one! I’m pretty sure this person would have taken home an 18 days old puppy on impulse, just like the stranger the other day. Now that their eyes are open, they really do appeal to people!

Exploratory behavior aka the prison break

In a daring prison break, Green tunneled under the barrier only to fall asleep right before he could enjoy his freedom. He then woke up again, tunneled an inch or two further – and went back to sleep:

Becoming social animals

Once Green had completed the feat of escaping the blanket fort, he approached Chai:

It is fun to watch how different puppies show the most exploratory behavior on different days. Yesterday, it was Red. Today, it’s Green. By the time Alan came over later, Green had exhausted his energy and fell right asleep in Alan’s lap.

Black play-attacked Red and Blue big time tonight, and later play-postured and pawed at Chai on the other side of the barrier! Black’s walking also looks fantastic as of tonight – coordinated, comparatively fast and very little stumbling!

The senses

I’m giving the puppies a head start on their 3 daily opportunities to lick goat milk or formula off the cookie sheet before unleashing Game to quickly lick it clean. They are drawn to it and increasingly annoyed at the fact that eating doesn’t work by osmosis. The audacity! Today, we were complaining particularly angrily. Even the puppies who had figured out that licking is the way to go seem to have forgotten about that part and find it highly frustrating that paw pads don’t absorb milk.

Fun fact: even when everyone is making a complete mess and covered in food, Game cleans them up lickety split after. I haven’t had to clean a single puppy! Once Game is done with the cookie sheet, Chai will come in and pre-clean the floor before I mop it. Teamwork!

In other tactile news, as of today, I’ve added collar on and off and wiping the corners of their eyes to my handling protocol, and for the second day in a row, I use a human hair brush to gently “brush” the puppies. So far, only I have done these new elements; I gave Alan the old protocol today. I just got a soft brush though, so my next visitor will get to do some brushing too! My human hair brush has plastic “spikes” and I prefer handling it myself to ensure the pressure stays soft. Once they are a little bigger, I might introduce Chai’s metal spikey brush and Game’s Furminator as well. And the dog nail clippers instead of the human ones!

2 weeks, 5 days (April 12)

The senses

At noon, the gang (re)-discovered which way the food goes in! This is the most purpose-driven eating I’ve seen so far. They must have read somewhere that taking a bath in goat milk is good for one’s skin.

By the way, the dogs and I concur that goat milk tastes better than formula. I tried both, and while I don’t like the goat milk (it tastes very … goaty), it still beats the flavorless formula.

As of this morning, I also placed a small mirror in the blanket fort (you can see it in the video above; it’s attached to the barrier), and a concrete/rock thing I found. They didn’t show interest in the mirror – their vision may not be strong enough yet – but the rock got explored and climbed over.

The reason there’s a mirror is that I’ve seen older puppies and juvenile dogs show fear and suspicion when encountering their own image in a mirror. My hope is that introducing them to the concept of mirrors as soon as they can see, and then moving that mirror to different spots in their environment over the days and weeks, will set them up for success, or maybe only small moments of surprise, in terms of future mirror encounters. I might ask my future puppy homes to introduce their 4 or 5 months old puppies to a mirror and record their response for me. I’d love to see what it looks like and whether early mirror encounters will have made a difference!

Becoming social animals

Green and Purple played in the afternoon! It was VERY cute!

Field trips and social life

We spent about 30 minutes on a field trip walking to the place I buy Chai’s dehydrated liver trats from. Everyone got loved on by the lovely folks working there who welcomed a puppy break!

We then went to the park across the street to meet today’s canine helpers: Yorkie Peter, Chi Benji and mixy mix Mira. Except for Green, who only got one round, the puppies got snuffled by two of the helpers each. When we got to Green, only Mira was still interested in helping. Those two got their picture taken though:

Husbandry/handling

I clipped everyone’s claws on the left back paw, followed by the milk bar – counterconditioning for the win! They were a little more restless today than last time; I assume because they were hungry.

I also handled and gently held everyone (I define “holding” as purposefully letting them sleep or sit in my arms getting pets or relaxing for 5 minutes or more) at night. Tonight’s handling protocol involved the whole shabang: collar off – squeeze paws/toes – ears – tail – “clean” the corners of the eyes with a piece of paper towel, brush back, sides, head, legs, tail and chest and/or belly with our new soft brush – collar on.

2 weeks, 6 days (April 13)

Field trips and social life

We left for our field trip in the morning, but it was already too late for the heat to be bearable. The rebels were active in the cab, but by the time we got to our destination (after a pharmacy errand they came on), they were panting and then fell asleep: it was too hot to do more than that. I got everyone a little water, put cool water on the soles of their paws and a bottle of cool water in the carrier, but they just slept through the rest of the adventure.

A bottle of cool water and an open carrier – but everyone, including me, was still hot.

I held everyone for several minutes outside at Ciudad Universitaria, which was teeming with dogs and their humans, and placed them down just outside the carrier so they’d have a new surface (what would be grass if there was rain but is dusty dirt in the absence of it.) They slept through it all. Two dogs walked up and sniffed them from a few inches distance over the course of the time we were there, and lots of them were running and playing around us – but I doubt that the puppies had any idea what was going on. They were out!

Sleeping through today’s adventures – partly on a new surface.

I’m not counting today for dog socialization. This will likely be the first week we don’t meet our dog-interaction goal. We may still meet the human interaction goal: two friends are coming over tonight, which will make them humans #5 and 6 for the week. There’s still a seventh new human left on my tracker – we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

The cab ride home from Ciudad Universitaria was better because we weren’t stuck in traffic – we moved pretty fast with all the windows down, which created a nice breeze. By the time we approached my place, the puppies just started to wake up again – that breeze certainly helped. By the time we were up at my apartment – which I had managed to keep several degrees cooler than the outside world – they were ready to rumble. Everyone peed as soon as I took them out of the carrier. Black admired herself in the mirror and then tried walking into the mirror. Some of them played for a few seconds. Then it was time for a meal (aka Game’s bar) followed by a siesta.

I feel like today’s outing probably didn’t benefit them in any way, except for the cab ride We went to a fairly loud place and on the way there, which came with being stuck in traffic, there was a lot of honking and motorcycle engines roaring. I don’t think the puppies can hear quite yet though; at least they didn’t respond to any of the noise or the noise of the construction site we got stuck next to in the cab a little later. There even were helicopter sounds really loud and close!

The puppies will turn 3 weeks tomorrow, which is about the time they start being able to hear. I wonder if hearing comes online all at once or gradually. Is it a singular neurological event, like a sudden on-switch? Or is it a physiological slow unsealing of the ears? I know the latter is part of it – their ears have been slowly unfolding over the last few weeks – but I’m not sure if it is the former as well. If it was only the latter, they must have heard at least muffled sounds today with the level of noise they were exposted to – in that case, they’d just have been too hot to care.²

Now that I’ve seen play behavior start, I’d LOVE to introduce them to a litter of the same age. Maybe I’ll look around on Facebook to see if I can hunt one down!

We were out for almost 1 and 45 minutes today³ – and up until now, the puppies haven’t even once done their business in the crate! Once again, they all went to pee as soon as I took them out at home. I’m impressed!

While two friends dropped by tonight, it ended up being a one-puppy-per-person kind of evening. We also got lazy and didn’t work them through the handling protocol, just hung out and made sure everyone got held by one new person. This may end up being the first week I don’t meet all the goals I set for the rebels … we’ll see what tomorrow brings!

More play behaviors!

Today is the first day I’ve seen object play in the puppies: we pawed and grabbed(ish) at the curtain blowing in the wind, and puppy-postured (“Hello! I’m a big strong powerful Malinois! Who are you?”) at the vacuum.

They are getting faster; they come over when I step into the blanket fort to explore my feet; they are more interested in engaging Chai and climbing over Game’s back … they are like perfect little toy dogs! I’m in love.

The senses

Scorching heat! Water in their mouth and on their toes. Potentially dirt under their paws and bodies (if they noticed.) Potentially lots of noisy stuff: helicopter, honking, motorcycle engines, dogs barking. Breathing in dust kicked up by playing dogs.

Before we headed out today, I spritzed everyone with the Frontline anti-parasite spray that’s safe to use in young puppies: the pet supply store that carries it restocked on it, and since I had more interactions in mind for today than actually happened, they got Frontlined. Just a little spritz because it smells bad – it smells like vet.

Meanderings on early socialization and environmental exposure

Heading out (and not getting the socializing experience I had been aiming for), I remembered a question Trish McMillan and Jessica Hekman posed in an old episode of the Functional Breeding podcast.⁴ They asked where all the nice pet dogs used to come from or will come from in the future. If I remember correctly, the conversation turned to the days in the (US/Canadian) past when people let their dogs roam and breed freely. Trish remembered dogs having less behavioral issues back in the day.

It’s hard to say if this feels as if it was the case simply because it has become fashionable to see a behaviorist while 50 years ago, this wasn’t something people commonly did. It could be like saying there are more gay people today than 50 years ago simply because today, more gay people are out, not because there actually are more – you just happen to know more. In the same way, it is possible that we are only now noticing the behavioral challenges dogs have always faced.

Or – and this is the tentative argument made on the podcast – there just used to be lovely, genetically sound mixes who are getting less and less common nowadays because of the US/Canadian spay-and-neuter movements and because letting dogs take themselves for unsupervised walks has fallen out of fashion.

Another argument that was not made on the podcast – I’m just throwing it out there as a thought; I do not know how much of an impact this difference actually has – is that I’m pretty sure “back in the day,” when the neighbor’s dog had puppies, the neighborhood kids would pick up these puppies, bring their friends over, carry the pups around the neighborhood … pretty much from the day they were born. The reason I suspect this was the case in the US and Canada, which the Functional Breeding podcast focuses on, is that I know this used to be the case in my mother’s hometown when I was growing up as well. It’s less common today, but since it is a tiny rural farming town, it’s probably still happening to some extent.

These puppies were not behütet in the same way today’s Puppy Culture/Avidog-bred dogs are. No one told these puppies that their socialization period only starts at 3 weeks of age. So maybe – just maybe – unstructured early socialization played a part in dogs being more socially savvy as well (if they actually were more socially savvy; I do not know if they were. People were certainly more tolearant of dogs behaving like dogs, and this in and of itself must be causing a bias in terms of what behaviors were versus are considered “normal” or acceptable.)

I don’t know where the “3 weeks” argument comes from. Everybody who is nerdy about dogs “knows” that this is when “the sensitive/critical – depending on who you ask – socialization period” starts … but why do we say that? What study is it based on? Do we assume this because when puppies turn 3 weeks old, they start being able to hear? Do we assume it based on something Scott and Fuller wrote in 1965, doing some study or other no one has ever replicated? Or do we actually KNOW that this IS when socialization becomes important? And if so, how do we know? Does it truly not matter at all whether puppies have contact with dogs and people before that age? (These are not rhethorical questions – I do not have an answer and I am genuinely curious. If you read this and know of a peer-reviewed study, please send it my way!)

The second issue people think about a lot when considering whether to introduce puppies to the world is physical health. Being vaccinated is great – no arguments there. I am all for Western medicine. My dogs have always been vaccinated and de-parasitized and all the shabang. That said, back in the day, in my mother’s hometown, this was not the rule. Most dogs were not vaccinated. Consequently, they didn’t pass maternal antibodies on to their puppies. These puppies didn’t get vaccinated either. Most of them still survived, and if one didn’t, it was more likely due to rough handling by a child or a car accident than due to a preventable viral disease. I’m sure these diseases happened as well – I just suspect outbreaks aren’t as common as people believe. I acknowledge that I may be wrong about this as well – I haven’t seen any numbers/statistics; this is just the subjective impression I have based on my childhood observations of the dogs in my mother’s hometown and my current observations of free-roaming dogs and their puppies in Guatemala and Mexico.

I know that my “early socialization and environmental exposure program” has shocked a few people. I know because they’ve told me, and I assume there are more folks out there who haven’t told me (thank you, since I didn’t ask for your advice.) Just based on having disapproval pointed out to me in my in person life, I assume there may be some folks reading this who also disapprove. I’ve already addressed my reasons, but I’d like to do so again before we enter “the official socialization period” starting tomorrow.

Maternal antibodies

Game is vaccinated, i.e. the puppies are being protected by maternal antibodies for their first few weeks of life. How long these antibodies last varies (based on the sources I’ve found online.) 6 weeks seems to be an estimation many veterinarians share, so that’s when I’ll first vaccinate the puppies. Maybe – probably! – there’ll be a week or two, or at least a day or two, where the puppies won’t be protected by maternal antibodies anymore and won’t be protected by their vaccine yet. I’m okay with this risk. I would do the same socialization program even if I raised puppies from an unvaccinated dog.

My dog trainer bias

As a dog trainer, I see behavioral issues in adult dogs all the time, and a lot of the time, these issues look like they might stem from a lack of socialization. I rarely see medical issues because I’m not a vet. I also see puppies grow up free-roaming and be fine (until they are old enough to get run over or stolen by a human. Litter sizes typically start shrinking once the puppies are between 8 and 12 weeks old. Puzzle is a textbook example of this.)

Due to my background, I’m biased in favor of behavioral soundness over physical health. If there is a window when the puppies are not protected against diseases, I assume it is relatively unlikely that they will pick up anything more serious than a cough they’ll quickly recover from. And even if one of them did pick up something more serious – the behavioral benefits would still outweigh the risk for me. Note what I said here: for me. Opinions vary, and that’s okay. That’s how it is supposed to be! We would never learn anything new as a species if our behavior didn’t vary from one individual to the next.

I work with students with all kinds of different points of view, and I LOVE supporting them in making the choices that are right for them, whatever these choices are. Their socialization choices don’t have to be mine – that’s between them and their veterinarian. I will only weigh in if I am directly asked what I would do, and I will stress that I am not a vet and can therefore only share an opinion, but not an answer based on medical expertise.

Maybe in their new homes, Game’s puppies will be kept out of risky situations until they have completed their puppy vaccination series. That’s just as fine as doing things my way. This is not what makes or breaks a good home for me. I’m just a passionate human with an opinion that is no more or less valid than the opposite opinion of someone else who doesn’t have a medical degree either. What I hope to achieve though is that Game’s puppies will already have SO many neutral and positive social experiences under their collar by the time they go to their new homes that it won’t matter if they don’t meet dogs or strangers for a few weeks.

Opinions …

One more thing on differing opinions (when it comes to dog socialization⁵): we know very little because there aren’t enough studies that have been done on dogs. I don’t feel strongly about my own way of doing things – but I do feel strongly about everyone getting to socialize puppies in whatever way feels right to them. That includes me – and it also includes you, no matter how you want to do things. I would fight for you getting to have your way just as much as I’d fight for having it my way myself.

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Random tangential thought: I wonder if the crazy price tag on dogs is part of the reason puppy buyers are hesitant to socialize early. Are you more likely to take the health risk of early socialization and environmental exposure if you didn’t pay several thousand dollars for your new puppy? I’d be curious to know how this affects decision making in humans!

3 weeks (April 14)

Field trips

Social life

We went to Parque México and on a corner store errand this morning. Everyone got snuffled once. They all also got held and snuggled by Natalia for a few minutes, and Purple even got two turns!

Thank you for your assistance, Natalia and Bruna!

All in all, we were out for about 1 hour 45 minutes again. Leaving at 8AM and being back before 10 really is the latest possible time to avoid the scorching heat of the day!

One of the puppies peed in the carrier for the first time. They all peed as soon as they got out at home as well. This suggests to me that they tried to hold it, but one of them had to pee at some point during the outing and just couldn’t. Still – pretty neat!

First subway ride

We are city puppies, so we also went on our first subway ride tonight!

Two brief subway rides and traffic watching at dusk.

I took an Uber home from the station because the puppies and I were all hot. Our driver wanted to meet one – so Blue got held by an additional person today! I’ll have to start giving them their individual trackers to keep … ahm … track!

As of today, the rebels are rapidly growing their fan club: two strangers asked for my Instagram (which is aptly named “adogisabondbetweenstrangers”) because they want to see puppy photos and the Uber driver, Michel, offered to visit with their kids to help socialize. Many worthwhile things take a village. A village isn’t something you have – it’s something you make. Over and over again.

Life at home …

… is playing, moving, sleeping, eating and lots of being upside down!

As of today, everyone has learned to eat goat milk. I’ve started calling pup-pup-pup before putting down the tray: their first recall cue in the making.

For the most part, they are just being damn cute:

A sleepy puppy pile and perfect little paws!

The senses

I saw Black startle when I clapped my hands this morning! She also tried walking into the mirror again today and got upset when it didn’t work.

Puppy culture suggests introducing a new object to the puppies every day from 3 weeks onwards. I am planning on having them encounter new things out and about every day, but may leisurely introduce objects – mostly surfaces – at home as well. Today, I put a scale on the floor so they could practice walking on a glass surface. Green already walked back and forth over the glass surface and red investigated it by sniffing it without stepping on. Black walked across a little later – no one has been fazed by it so far.

I’ll have to get a dinosaur balloon from the vendors in the park sometime next week – they are pretty odd-looking and should make fun objects.

After seeing Black’s startle response to noise this morning, I just saw Blue have a response to noise this afternoon! (I dropped a book next to all of them to test if they could hear already. What book? The third CU book. We want to get startled by good books only.) Blue and Black were the only ones that startled. Either the others can’t hear yet or they didn’t care. In any case – exciting!! We’re starting to be able to HEAR! All the senses!

The puppies experienced the thick underground air of a city subway station; anyone who can hear heard trains arrive and take off and the sounds of the moving staircase and the crowd. Anyone who can’t hear would still have felt the pressure change/wind/suction feeling of the arriving and leaving train. They were curious, moving around in the carrier and trying to stick out their heads on the train. I’ll take them on at least one more subway ride – we’ll have to see if it happens when they still all fit into the carrier at the same time!

After the subway ride, everyone got about 30 seconds of being held outside the carrier as I sat on a staircase and we watched the cars whizzing by, lights turned on, as dusk turned to night.

We only left around 7PM, but it was still hot. Clearly, mornings are best for field trips these days. We’ll have a visitor tomorrow night and a field trip in the morning – this set-up should work best; we just have to get out the door in time.

Handling and husbandry

Only Red’s nails have grown enough for safe clipping (i.e. clipping a tiny little bit without hitting the quick.) As for everyone else’s claws, I just touched them with the nail clippers and gently pulled on them with the clippers. Purple protested the most (the most still being much less than when I first started clipping); everyone else was pretty chill. We followed it right up with a turn at the milk bar.

Everyone did well going through the handling protocol. Most of them half-dozed through it. Red complained softly for the first 30 seconds. Purple struggled against it. Purple is STRONG! He’s all muscle and is getting really good about trying to push himself out of human arms – it’s impressive! I might give him some extra handling next week – first an extra holding session; then an extra handing one to ease him into it.

Observations like this are most likely momentary: today, Purple is squiggly and fully awake. Tomorrow, someone else will be and Purple may be chill again. In any case, when someone stands out to me in a particular way, I’ll try to give them extra attention in the respective area just in case.

Last but not least: my color tracker obsession …

… which you may not care about if you’re reading this, but I’m keeping it here for my own nerdy records. I love manual notes that are more than just written, involve colors and have a clear purpose.

The only thing missing on the picture is Game’s Sunday dinner – chicken and tortillas deluxe.

The final tally: only Blue reached her new-human goal; the others are one human short – we’ll add that one to week 4! Everyone except for Green reached their new-dog goal. We’ll aim for an additional dog for Green this next week.

I’m impressed; week 3 is the first week I haven’t met all the lofty goals I set – and I almost did!

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1. It is significantly cheaper for a human to fly with a puppy in cabin than to ship the puppy internationally through an agency. I imagine if one of them moves abroad, this would be how they’d get to their new home. ↩︎
2. Edited to add: I have since asked this question in the Functional Breeding Facebook group, and someone pointed me to this article. Quote: “The ears open at around day 12-14, and after that hearing quickly develops to adult levels by day 20 […].” This isn’t a study, but a summary. Two studies are cited at the bottom, but unfortunately, I currently don’t have the time to look at them, their sample sizes and research methods. Check yourself or take this information with a grain of salt! ↩︎
3. I’m taking my pointers from Game when deciding how long an outing seems okay to me, and I make sure my Game-less puppy adventures are shorter than the time she leaves them alone. At night, she typically feeds them once between midnight and 2 in the morning, and then leaves them alone until sometime between 5 and 7AM. She’ll feed them more often during the day, but doesn’t hang out right next to them at all times anymore – she’ll enjoy wandering through the apartment, doing her things, or napping on the couch more and more in between interacting with the pups. They haven’t complained. If they call for her, she’ll be right there to check on them. ↩︎
4. I’ve since found the episode. There is actually less talk about “where the pet dogs come from” than I remember, and the arguments I thought I remembered weren’t made in exactly this way. Here’s the podcast episode. ↩︎
5. There are other things I feel VERY strongly about and where I don’t consider random opinions to be equally valid; mostly issues related to politics and justice. In contrast, nerding out about dogs is one of my sources of joy. How to train or socialize a dog is not a hill I am interested in dying on – in fact, it’s a reprieve from those hills. ↩︎