Puppy Culture Potluck: Ep30 - Is It A Fear Period? Recognizing and Navigating Fear Periods in Puppies

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I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.,

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and this is a Puppy Culture
Potluck podcast.

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You bring the topics,

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we bring the conversation.

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This week's question is about fear periods
in puppies.

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Specifically later fear periods.

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And here's the question.

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What are the critical fear

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stages in puppies from eight weeks on?

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Is it best to keep up their socialization
during these periods,

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or back off for a few days
and then resume?

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Okay, me again,

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I'm going to get right to the point

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and answer her

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question directly and say that if my puppy

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is truly in a fear imprint period,

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I do back off of socialization.

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I am very cautious with puppies

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that are in a true fear period,

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and I will keep them at home
until they've cleared that fear period.

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Now that having been said,

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I think we need to talk a little bit
about fear periods,

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what they are and are not,

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and how to recognize them,

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because it's a persistent theme
that comes up

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that people confuse

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general, possibly genetic

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or environmentally induced fear

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with fear periods.

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And there can be negative effects
for the puppies

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by this misclassification.

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Before I jump in, I want to say

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this is not going to be a course level
treatment of this topic.

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I do treat this topic
in our breeders course

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which is Newborn to New Home
in Madcap University,

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but I want to give a global

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sort of overview of fear periods

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and their significance
to you as a puppy owner or as a breeder.

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Because, as I said,
there's a lot of misconceptions

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about this,
which I believe leads to taking

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the incorrect actions
under the circumstances.

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I also

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am going to preface this by saying

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that most of what
I'm going to be telling you

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is based on my own observation
and experience.

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There just is not a lot
of scientific study

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specifically on fear periods in puppies.

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Anecdotal evidence is good evidence,
but it is anecdotal evidence.

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So take that for what it's worth.

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So let's talk about

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the developmental aspects

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of the emotion of fear.

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Puppies are born
without a true fear response.

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They have reflexive responses,
but it's doubtful

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that any of that feeds to the brain
in the sense of a fear response.

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Makes sense
if you think about it, because fear

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is a metabolically expensive emotion,

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the cortisol that has to be raised

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when you have fear in order
to allow you to fight or flight,

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it's metabolically expensive,
and nature and evolution are economical,

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and they're not going to instill fear
in an organism that can't act on it.

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So a newborn puppy cannot act on fear.

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Fear would be a useless emotion.

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They don't have fear.

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Now this can vary,

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but somewhere around five weeks old,

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puppies have their initial fear response.

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I've talked about this
a lot in my podcasts,

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but at the risk of being boring,
I'm going to give you two studies on this.

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One, they did a study of Cavalier
King Charles Spaniels,

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German Shepherds and Yorkshire Terriers.

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They found that the average per breed

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onset of initial fear,

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so that fear right around five weeks old,

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varied by 16 days between breeds,
with the German Shepherds having a fear

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response on average 16 days before the

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Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.

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The other study is a study
that was done of German

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Shepherds and Labrador Retrievers.

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They found that 95% of German Shepherd

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puppies had an initial fear response

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by five weeks old,
and only 5% of Labrador Retriever

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puppies had an initial fear
response at five weeks old.

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Now let's talk

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about the second fear imprint period,
which is what people

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refer to often
as the eight week fear period.

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Let's distinguish what a fear period is.

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So a fear imprint period from generalized

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fear.

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A fear period,
you may see generalized fear

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during the fear period, but it has certain
hallmark characteristics.

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And these are just things
that I have observed over the years.

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A fear imprint
period is going to have three things.

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It's going to be acute
meaning to say it comes out of nowhere.

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One day the puppies are happy

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little campers, and the next day
they're afraid of something.

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The something that they're afraid of

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is something familiar.

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So it's not
that you took them to a garden center,

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and they'd never been to a garden center,
and they're crawling on the floor

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because the HVAC is booming
and there are people around and no,

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that's not a fear period.

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Or I mean, it could be a fear period,
but that wouldn't be

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information that tells you
the puppies are in a fear period.

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A fear period is they've walked past

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that sculpture of a pig
every day of their little lives,

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and one day they see it
and freak out and say, what?

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Who let that creature into
what is that thing?

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Is it does. Is it going to kill me?

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Classic fear period.

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Would be noises like an oven fan.

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I had a puppy suddenly
be afraid of an oven fan.

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That that puppy had been out

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every day of its life, and one day
it was afraid of an oven fan coming on.

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That was my tell
that puppy was in the fear period.

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So it's something familiar
that the puppies had experience

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with, never been afraid of,
and suddenly is afraid of.

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And the third
characteristic of a fear period,

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which is functionally
the most important one

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to you as a breeder or puppy owner,

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is that it's transitory.

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That means that

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if you do nothing else except keep things

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calm, quiet, and on the down low

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for your puppies during that fear period,

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and don't push it or ruin it

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by trying to flood your puppy
and wind up sensitizing

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your puppy to the fear
it will pass on its own.

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No further action from you required.

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So now that we've

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defined how we know what a fear period is,

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let's talk about

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the function of fear periods.

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As I mentioned
in the beginning of the podcast.

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Fear is metabolically very expensive.

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It's not something that nature
is going to instill

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in a puppy unless the puppy can act on it.

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So when do we see these early,

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these first two fear periods normally?

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They normally do correspond with a time

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when the puppies
have a big jump in mobility.

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So up until five weeks old,

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what are the puppies ever going to see?

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Their mother, their aunties and uncles.

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They're there.

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They don't have the wherewithal to get out

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and toddle out into the world
and get into trouble.

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Fear is a useless emotion for them.

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They're never going to see anything
they should be afraid of.

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And frankly, if something gets into
their nest that they should be afraid of,

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it's just not going to do them
any good to be afraid

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because they can't defend
themselves or run away.

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But then, at five weeks old,

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again speaking on very broad averages,

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this is when puppies first
get their legs under them.

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They can wander away.

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It is possible for the first time
that they could run

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into some kind of trouble
without a protective adult around.

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So fear becomes a useful emotion for them.

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And not to take too deep dive into it,

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but let's just say at eight weeks old

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on average,
we do see another jump in mobility.

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So once again, the puppy
has new opportunities to get into trouble

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and it is helpful for that puppy to have

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a heightened sense of fear at that time.

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I just want to clarify something.

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This correlation

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between increase

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in mobility
and increase in fear, and spikes

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in increase in mobility,
and spikes in increases of fear

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are on a population level.

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What do I mean by that?

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It means that as a breeder, it's
not diagnostic information for you

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that you have a puppy
that's a little more mobile,

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a little earlier that maybe that puppy's
going to be in in an earlier fear period.

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No, it doesn't track that way,

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at least not that I have ever observed.

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But what I'm trying to do
is give you an idea of what

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these fear periods are,
and why they happen.

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Because

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99% of the times

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when someone's writing in
and saying that their dog

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is in a fear period after those first

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two fear periods,

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they're mislabeling the phenomenon.

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They're not understanding what's going on.

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There are other kinds of fear

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that are genetically mediated
that appear later in life,

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but they are persistent

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and will not pass
without some kind of learning.

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The fact that they appear suddenly

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and later is not a fear period.

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It's the fact that that particular gene

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is now expressing itself,

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or their latent reactions

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to earlier experiences.

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Remember that

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fearful experiences
in the first year of life will almost

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never express themselves
behaviorally in the puppy at the time.

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So the puppy will appear to recover

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from an aversive or scary event,

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but either fear or aggression

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will seemingly spontaneously emerge

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when the dog gets older.

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And even if there were true

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fear periods
when the dog has a heightened sensitivity

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to frightening events,
after that eight week old period.

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They're not predictable in terms of an age

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window,
after that second fear imprint period.

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Let's think about this.

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At birth

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breeds are different behaviorally,
but very,

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very little in the neonatal period
other than puppies of small size

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being more subject to hypoglycemia
and and chilling.

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Behaviorally,
puppies are pretty much identical

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in the neonatal period.

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By the time they reach

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their initial fear period,
there's much more difference.

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Okay, remember 95% of German Shepherds
at five weeks with the fear period,

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only 5% of Labradors
with the fear period at five weeks.

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So you see the trajectories are starting
to go in different directions.

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Now take that and extrapolate

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that out to six months or a year old.

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Plus add in all the environmental input,
all the experiences.

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What's happened to that puppy,
what socialization was or wasn't done,

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whether it was done well,
whether it was desensitization

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or habituation,
or whether the owner flooded the puppy,

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every bit of input or lack of
input that the puppy had.

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And you see those trajectories
spreading further and further.

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And this is why

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when you read the internet stuff on later
fear periods,

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they appear to almost overlap
and form a continuous net

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of possible times that your puppy
could be in a fear year period.

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It's really true.

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You don't know, and you also don't
really know if it's a fear period

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or some other genetic or latent

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environmental response.

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So that's a long way of saying that
in my observation.

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Maybe there could be a fear period
after eight weeks,

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but they're all over the place and
they most often are not true fear periods.

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They're something else.

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The reason why I think

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this is so significant
and important for people to understand,

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is that you have to do work
with these puppies, okay?

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It is true, as I said in the beginning,
when I have a puppy

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that is in a true fear period.

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So either around that five week age
or around that eight week age, for me,

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when I see that acute, transitory

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fear of the familiar,
when it's those three things.

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Yes, I do hold back those puppies.

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Yes, I do keep them from having
any new socialization or new experiences

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until I'm sure that they've cleared
that fear period,

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As they age that strategy's
not going to work for you, okay?

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As they age, even if it comes on
suddenly and seems to you like,

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oh my gosh, it must be a fear period
because it came out of nowhere.

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Chances are it didn't come out of nowhere.

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Chances are that your puppy
or dog is having genetics

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that are coming on online later in life,
which is normal.

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They're black boxes.

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You don't know what you get.

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It's a box of chocolates.

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They're coming online now,
and now you're seeing what you have.

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And what you may have is a fearful dog.

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For sure,

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young animals can be socially uncertain.

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They can have heightened senses of fear.

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They can be more sensitive to fear.

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And just in the the balance of

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treading the line between habituation,

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socialization and sensitization,
where you want to be counter

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conditioning fears
and also creating positive associations.

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But you don't want to be flooding
your puppies where you're

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you're sensitizing them to things.

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When you're treading that line

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If you are seeing increased fear
in your puppy.

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Yeah.

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I mean, you want to err
on the side of caution, but

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that's always true.

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It's not that specific thing

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that is a fear period
where the puppy is going to get over it

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if you just don't mess it up,
you have to work with it.

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So you do have to get those puppies out.

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You do have to softly work
on the edges of desensitizing,

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counter
conditioning, fear in older puppies.

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It's a little bit of a pet peeve for me

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about these so-called later
fear periods, because.

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I have certainly seen things
that look to me

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like fear periods in young adult dogs.

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It's rare,
and there's usually another explanation

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that does require action
on the part of the puppy owner.

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I have a concern that once
something is labeled as a fear period,

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puppy owners will say,
oh, you know, it's a fear period.

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Instead of dealing with whatever
is being expressed

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behaviorally at these later stages

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in in puppy hood and young adulthood,

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because a fear period
will pass with protection.

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But if you're dealing with a genetic
or behavioral issue,

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you need to address it
with training and counter conditioning.

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So to sum it all up,

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fear period is

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acute, transitory
fear of the familiar, will pass

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if you just protect the puppy
during that time.

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Yes, in direct answer to the question,

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I do hold my puppies back
during fear periods,

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but the fear periods,

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so-called fear periods
after that second fear in print period,

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I treat that
as I would treat generalized fear.

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And I do get those puppies out
and I do work with them.

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But again, always being careful

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to be on the positive side of counter
conditioning

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and creating positive associations
and not flooding the puppy.

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So that fear is guiding me
where that line is.

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But it's not changing
my operating procedure with those puppies

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in the way that my operating procedure
is actually different.

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If I think it's a fear period.

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If you liked this podcast,

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00:19:37,840 --> 00:19:40,680
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00:19:40,680 --> 00:19:43,680
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00:19:44,480 --> 00:19:48,760
Breeders, we have courses for you too
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00:19:48,760 --> 00:19:52,800
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321
00:19:52,800 --> 00:19:55,800
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322
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323
00:20:02,640 --> 00:20:05,560
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324
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00:20:10,320 --> 00:20:12,160
Well, that's it for this time.

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Thanks for listening. Bye bye.