Before birth: the prenatal period
The prenatal period corresponds to the in utero life of the puppy. It lasts about 63 days.
The puppy begins to acquire sensory and emotional skills in the mother's womb. To obtain puppies that are more tolerant to contact and less reactive to extreme emotions, the breeder must pet and palpate the womb of the pregnant mother.
Between birth and 2 weeks of age: the neonatal period
The puppy is deaf, blind and unable to move except by crawling. Its behavior consists solely of archaic reflexes to suckle or to find a source of heat.He is totally dependent on his mother who breastfeeds him and licks him to stimulate the elimination of his excrement. The mother, on the other hand, begins to become attached to her young during this period.
At this stage, it is useful to gently handle the puppies every day to weigh them to activate the development and maturation of their brains, but very briefly so as to respect their sleep. It is indeed while the puppy sleeps that he secretes his growth hormone and, during this period, the puppy sleeps a lot: up to 90% of his time! For the remaining 10%, he eats!
From 2 to 3 weeks: the transition period
At 2 weeks old, the puppy's eyes open and at 3 weeks old, he is able to hear. With his new sensory abilities, the puppy is then able to orient himself. It is also during this period that the puppy becomes attached to its mother: this is called primary attachment.
The role of the breeder or owner is then to continue to have regular interactions with the puppy and to check that his new senses are working properly.
From 3 weeks to 3 months: the socialization period
The puppy sees, hears, is able to move without crawling: he plays, runs and jumps. These new physical and sensory abilities lead him to explore his “star-shaped” environment, that is to say, returning after each new discovery to the soothing and reassuring bosom of his mother. It begins with a period of attraction during which the puppy, curious about everything, approaching everything new without fear and is followed by a period of aversion, after the fifth week when he goes through a neophobia phase (fear of novelty).
During this period, the puppy will:
- " learn that he belongs to the dog species. For this, he must rub shoulders with other dogs: his mother, his brothers and his sisters, but ideally dogs that belong to other breeds than his own in order to learn the behavioral codes specific to his species."
- learn what friendly species are. The young animal will learn to live in the presence of humans but also animals of various species and to consider them as familiar. For this learning to be done well, it is useful to put the puppy in contact with people of different types (men, women, children) and with other animals, such as cats. Failing this, the puppy could develop apprehension (even aggression or predation) towards the types of individuals he has never been used to meeting. Indeed, beyond the 12th week of the puppy, any new species encountered will be much longer and more difficult to integrate "into the repertoire" of known and familiar species.
- learn to control your jaws and control yourself physically and emotionally. During fights between brothers and sisters, if a puppy bites one of the siblings too hard, the mother comes to “punish” it by immobilizing it for a few seconds.When the puppy bites her too hard, she does not hesitate to reprimand him by pushing him away. The actions of the mother are the basis for the learning of self-control and control of the jaw of the puppy. If this learning is lacking in the puppy, then there is a risk of “making” an impulsive, brutal and clumsy adult dog, even aggressive in a word: who lacks self-control. The role of the breeder is therefore to check that the mother fulfills her role. If this is not the case, he will have to make sure that another dog can fulfill this role in his place or take his place for these lessons.
- store references to situations, living environments, environments. During his period of socialization, the puppy records everything he lives - good and bad experiences - in his brain which will then act as a "database" for all his future life. The more the puppy has experienced various situations, the more he will be comfortable in an environment rich in stimulation.The owner, whether he is an individual or a breeder, must therefore make his puppies experience as many situations as possible and confront them with varied environments in order to constitute the best “databases” for them for their future life. Otherwise, the dog may develop apprehension for all the situations or all the environments that they have not experienced during this period.
Note carefully!
A large part of the behavioral development of the dog happens before its 2 months, that is to say before the legal age of sale or adoption in France and therefore at the breeder. From then on, we understand much better the importance of choosing a good breeder. The latter must initiate the socialization of the puppy by putting it in contact with different animals and people and by subjecting it to various stimuli.
From 3th month to puberty: the juvenile period
The juvenile period extends from the 3th month until the dog's puberty, which occurs more or less early depending on the dog breeds and sizes.
During this period, the socialization of the puppy must be continued. This is the right time to start having him attend a puppy school in order to refine the acquisition of intraspecific communication rituals.