18/12/2021
Yaaaaasss 👏
100% THIS. 🐾
“It’s all in how you raise them”
If I had a penny for every time I heard that phrase, I’d be sending my own shuttles up into space. But since I don’t, I simply have to grit my teeth and roll my eyes.
It’s usually applied when a dog bites a person or other dog, by owners who got lucky with their ‘friendly’ dogs, and therefore believe they champion perfect puppy-raising. It’s also sometimes used as an excuse for people not attempting to manage or counter condition their rescue dogs, because they were raised ‘wrong’ originally, meaning they’re now fixed the way they are.
Saying that everything our dogs feel, how they respond to their environment and behave is down to how they’re raised is a gross oversimplification of how this really works.
When I take my three dogs out for a walk, you can see this in motion. All three dogs were raised in almost the same way, I’ve had all since a young age, and all were brought up in the same household.
My border terrier will be sniffing the ground, looking down rabbit holes, digging and crawling through the brambles to find creatures.
My mountain breed mix will be climbing. She will climb rocks, trees and banks, even when it seems physically impossible to do so.
My sheepdog will be herding the other two. She will get low to the ground, run around then, crawl and pounce.
The terrier has never been taught to hunt, the mountain dog has never been taught to climb and the sheepdog has never been taught to herd. At face value, if all behaviour is down to nurture, each of them should display the same repertoire of behaviour with little divergence, so why are they all so different?
Genetics play a big role in behaviour expression. As do epigenetics- inheritable memories. So does the environment in-utero, the ratio of males to females in a litter, the number of pups in the litter, how easy the birth was and much more.
I could teach my terrier the behaviours required to herd sheep, but it would never be as fluid and natural as it would be to my sheepdog. I could teach my sheepdog to catch rats, but her inherent response would never be as rapid as the terrier.
And I can, and have, taught my terrier to disengage from (and not kill) rabbits, Guinea pigs, chickens, cats and hamsters. But that instinct is still there, and it’s a lot harder to get that disengagement from her than it is from the sheepdog.
Out of my three dogs raised in the same way, one of them is reactive to unknown dogs and people. She was not taught to be that way, she was never handled harshly to get that response, but she was still reactive. With a lot of management and counter conditioning training, her level of reactivity has significantly reduced, however it is still there. She will always be more sensitive and hypervigilant than the other dogs, it’s just the way she is. I didn’t do anything wrong with her, and I didn’t do anything exceptional with the others to make them more social.
That’s not to say that bad experiences can’t make dogs behaviour change. But there are dogs that an owner could beat daily and they will never show aggression, and there are dogs that could be treated perfectly and still be a nervous wreck. It certainly isn’t all down to how they are raised.
When I see an owner with a reactive dog, or a dog displaying undesirable behaviours, I don’t immediately assume that the owner is the problem. In fact, an owner managing a reactive dog is doing a lot better in my books than an owner allowing their ‘friendly’ dog to run out of control.
Similarly, I’ve seen people allowing their rescue dogs to run riot and attack other dogs because ‘they’re a rescue and were abused in their previous home’, which apparently translates to ‘there’s no point trying to help this dog live a more comfortable, less destructive life’. Of course, it’s hard when our dogs have had bad experiences, but behaviour is never fixed and management is crucial.
We don’t get to choose the cards we get dealt when getting our dogs. Yes, knowing the temperament of the parents and family can help us, but that still doesn’t guarantee our own dog will be behaviorally sound. All we can do is work with what we get, and manage in the best way we can.
And remember- it’s NOT all in how you raise them!
