About Canine Temperament Testing (Puppy Assessment Testing)
Puppy testing does not predict adult personality, but experiences in the first year of life does. So that is where your focus should be.
- Jane Messino Lindquist (founder & owner of Puppy Culture)
When we first began planning our breeding program, the idea of testing for puppy temperaments was an integral concept we expected to use to place our Doodle puppies in the appropriate home and/or service dog positions. After all, the idea that we could match puppies to the right families or for service work, identifying predispositions for behavior problems or aptitudes early on was enticing.
However a very large number of studies have concluded that the predictive validity of early tests for predicting specific behavioral traits in adult pet dogs is limited at best.
An especially interesting outcome in a recent study (see link to The Predictive Value of Early Behavioral Assessments in Pet Dogs below) is in the evaluation of fearfulness, which is the most common behavioral reason for a puppy to be rejected from a guide dog training program. They found that in evaluating fearfulness, "...some major changes were observed over time, with the initially most fearful individuals becoming most friendly to people or vice versa". That statement should give you pause. Could eliminating a puppy from a breeding program because of fearfulness be culling the dogs that will have the best temperaments as adults?
We now have over eight years of experience matching up our Doodle puppies with new homes. Based not only on the research, but our own extensive experience, we believe that while assessments may be useful as a diagnostic tool it has little to no ability to predict any adult personality trait with reliability. This is supported, not just by our experience and research but also by multiple studies and by Jane Messino Lindquist (the author of Puppy Culture).
Experiences in the first year of life appear to be more indicative of future temperament. Rather than trying to predict which puppy will do best in which home based on a test, breeders need to make sure puppy owners are advocating for their puppies, keeping them safe and making sure their first year of life is full of positive experiences and interactions.
WHAT IS A PUPPY ASSESSMENT TEST (PAT)?
There are several standardized tests available, one of the more well known is the Volhard Aptitude Test and a PAT is a tool conducted by a person who is not familiar with the puppies at the time of the test. They work with each puppy individually in an unfamiliar location and “test” social interaction and specific other responses to stimuli. Puppy testing itself can be a traumatic event for the puppy and breeder’s are told to stop any test where a puppy looks scared or unhappy. Conducted in the wrong hands, this may not be in the best interest of the puppy.
THE PROBLEM WITH TESTING
The puppy assessment test is merely a snapshot based on one day, one hour, with one person. That puppy will likely test completely differently in a different location, with a different person on a different day. Puppies develop and go through phases at different intervals so one puppy exhibiting hesitancy in response to a new object this week may feel more confident the following week.
We have regularly seen puppies go through these developmental periods. We as well as fellow breeders have regularly watched PAT’s conducted with the results being completely opposite what we saw in the puppies daily. In one instance, we donated two puppies from the same litter to be trained as service dogs. The puppies were placed with handlers based on results from their PAT. The puppy rating the highest went with a less experienced handler. The puppy with the lower score went with an experienced handler. It turned out that the level of experience of the trainer completely made the difference in how that pup turned out and was actually the opposite of what was predicted by testing at 7 weeks of age.
Puppies are born deaf and this is the last of their sense to fully develop. They can’t fully hear until they’re about three weeks old and by four weeks they should be able to see, hear, walk and urinate/defecate on their own. Their hearing will continue to develop until they are 8 weeks of age. This means between four and eight weeks of age, they are more sensitive to some loud noises which may be frightening or even painful.
Puppies eyes are closed until they are about two weeks of age and they aren’t able to see clearly at first. They continue to develop over the next several weeks, reaching full vision around eight weeks of age. Around seven to eight weeks of age, the first “fear period” begins and most puppies seem to be afraid of new things. So testing at seven to eight weeks of age just isn’t seeing the whole picture.
And any of you who are already parents (of the two footed variety) will understand. If I based my decision to ‘choose’ either of my sons based on their behavior on a certain day, in a certain location, at a certain time…well you get the idea.
THE BREEDER’S ROLE
When it comes to shaping personality in young puppies, the breeder has two responsibilities. The first is to create lots of safe, positive experiences for the puppies and to use our knowledge of where they are in any given week to shape and encourage their development.
Second is to encourage the new family of each puppy to create controlled, positive situations that allow the puppy to accept something with minimal effort and exposure. Quality over quantity is the rule here.
While we don’t “score” our puppies, we are continually evaluating them to determine where they are currently. We want to know who in any given week is less confident and needs a cheer leader and more opportunities for success. Who is having a good startle response? Who is handling the barrier challenge with ease versus who needs it simplified and/or expanded on? We also take breed specific traits into account, something none of the current PAT’s do.
THE PUPPY OWNER’S ROLE
Future puppy families should begin compiling a list of safe people, places and dogs that they can socialize their puppy with. A “Puppy Party” with trusted, informed friends is a great way to expose your puppy to positive interactions. Play dates with appropriate playmates are far superior to flooding puppies in an environment where you have no control over the set up. Positive experiences imprint for life. Unfortunately so do negative ones.
THE TAKEAWAY
We take what we know about each puppy, starting from the moment they started showing me their personalities. We have watched them grow, develop, change, take on challenges and develop into individuals. We base our opinions on everything we know to date about each one. We don’t base this on one test conducted on one day. They may have had a bad day - we all do! We won’t take a single moment in this puppy’s life and base their future on it.
Links to Additional Articles
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DOG TEMPERAMENT TESTING DOESN’T EARN A PASSING GRADE
An article today in The New York Times takes aim at temperament testing in animal shelters hopefully this article will get the attention it deserves from the shelter community. The effectiveness of these kinds of tests, that can result in a dog being swiftly killed if she doesn’t score a passing grade, has long been under examination by humane advocates. Back in 2003, our article, Dog Is In The Details , by Barbara Robertson, looked at this very issue. And more recently Jessica Hekman, DVM, wrote an in depth piece about more recent studies that, “could be interpreted to mean that the two most widely used behavioral assessments in the United States are not doing even a passable job of predicting aggression, and that shelters are not doing much more than flipping a coin when they use an assessment to decide whether a dog will be put on the adoption floor or, potentially, euthanized.”
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THE PREDICTIVE VALUE OF EARLY BEHAVIOURAL ASSESMENT OF PET DOGS.
Studies on behavioural development in domestic dogs are of relevance for matching puppies with the right families, identifying predispositions for behavioural problems at an early stage, and predicting suitability for service dog work, police or military service.
The literature is, however, inconsistent regarding the predictive value of tests performed during the socialisation period.
A neonate test was conducted with 99 Border collie puppies aged 2–10 days to assess activity, vocalisations when isolated and sucking force. At the age of 40–50 days, 134 puppies (including 93 tested as neonates) were tested in a puppy test at their breeders' homes. All dogs were adopted as pet dogs and 50 of them participated in a behavioural test at the age of 1.5 to 2 years with their owners.
Our results suggest that early behavioural tests yield poor predictability regarding future behaviour in pet dogs. -
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY: DO PUPPY PERSONALITY TESTS PREDICT ADULT DOG BEHAVIOURS?
Of much more interest to me was the relationship between the puppy tests at age 6 to 7 weeks and whether they predicted the behavior of the adult dogs. There were a broad range of tests and measures taken. We can roughly group them as tests of sociability (for example whether the dog approaches a stranger and greets them and so forth), exploratory behavior (whether the dog moves around and investigates the new environment), responses to novel situations (such as when presented with a strange mechanical toy and moves erratically around the room), or responses to threats such as being stared at or approached in a threatening crouch, and some other items as well.
Although the statistical analyses of the data from the 50 dogs tested as puppies and adults was quite sophisticated, in the end the results showed that the tests had little predictive ability.
The only thing that comes out of this is the observation that the puppies that engage in a lot of exploratory behavior turned into the adults who explored their environment a lot.
Sociability, fearfulness, irritability and all of the other tests were virtually a washout when it came to predicting adult behavior from tests administered when a puppy is 40 to 50 days of age.
This clearly explains why my dog's retrieving behavior as a puppy was not an accurate forecast that he would avidly retrieve when he was an adult.