04/11/2025
Everything is decided during puppyhood. The question is not how much the dog learns, but how much it has learned from you.
🧠 Puppyhood: when everything is decided A dog's nervous system is not "ready" at birth, but develops gradually during the first weeks and months of life. During this period, millions of neural connections are formed in the brain – every new experience, sound, human touch, or learning situation leaves a lasting impression. Puppyhood is therefore not just a "cute period." It is the stage when the future dog is born – in terms of its nervous system, behavior, and bonding.
🔬 Stages of development
0–3 weeks: vegetative stage – the puppy is still dependent on its mother, its nervous system is developing, but it already responds to heat and touch.
3–7 weeks: the early socialization and bonding phase – this is when the world opens up to the puppy. The foundations of trust and communication are formed during this period. The puppy must be handled by humans by the age of 5 weeks at the latest, as this lays the foundation for its future ability to communicate with a foreign species – namely, us.
8–16 weeks: the critical learning period – the brain's plasticity is at its highest at this stage. Correct behavior, adaptation to the environment, and cooperation with humans are permanently established at this stage.
4–6 months: the nervous system stabilizes, and anything that has been missed up to this point will be more difficult to learn or will be learned in a distorted form.
Most owners do not consciously engage with their dogs during this period. They do not teach them, form a bond with them, or build communication. They wait "until they are older" – but in the meantime, the windows of opportunity for development close.
🧩 Communication: two species, one language
Dogs and humans are born with different communication systems. To live together harmoniously, they must learn each other's signals. Puppies do not acquire this "common language" on their own, but through conscious human guidance and daily interactions.
Hand feeding, playing, focus exercises, and shared tasks are not tricks — they are nervous system development. This is when the puppy learns that human facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice have meaning. This learning creates a bond with humans, which later becomes the basis for attention, obedience, and motivation.
If we waste this period, the puppy will start to build a relationship with its environment — it will bond with the world instead of humans.
If attention, play, exercise, and food are all there, but there are no shared experiences, shared learning, shared moments, then the puppy will learn to get by without us.
Alone at home, it chews on toys that have been thrown there and forgotten, digs, runs around, or plays with other dogs— while failing to learn how to cooperate with us, live with us, and pay attention to us.
The dog thus finds ways to entertain itself without humans. And since every experience, every joy, and every excitement happens independently of us, we slowly become unnecessary in its world.
Such a dog does not tire itself out with us in training, play, or learning, but seeks release, excitement, and interaction among other dogs. Thus, even the most unfamiliar dog becomes more interesting, exciting, and important than its own owner—because life happens with it, while with the owner, it only lives together.
The problem is not that it plays, but that it plays without you.
At this age, even inhibitions can be gently taught – the dog does not resist, but wants to learn. If rules are established at this time, they are not seen as prohibitions, but as a way of life. The dog is not afraid, but understands the system, and this gives it security.
💡 Childhood cannot be re-learned
The biggest misconception is that what we miss out on now can be "corrected" in adulthood. The plasticity of the nervous system gradually decreases, and early deficiencies can only be partially compensated for later on.
The real solution is to prevent deficiencies. From day one, build a relationship, communicate, feed by hand, exercise, teach— not (only) for the sake of sports, but for healthy development.
Those who understand this do not teach "obedience," but raise a dog with a stable nervous system that is attached to a person— one for whom you are the most important thing in the world.
🐾 The first year determines what kind of dog you will have for the next ten years. And never forget: a problematic dog is always a reflection of its owner.
