Science Reveals the Key to Training Puppies: The Dog Kindergarten Experience
Ah, puppy training—it’s like herding cats, but fluffier and a bit more enthusiastic about treats. Who knew that the key to raising great dogs lay behind the hallowed gates of a kindergarten specifically for dogs? Well, in North Carolina, this “Dog Kindergarten” at Duke University is experimenting with our four-legged friends in ways that will have you chuckling and questioning your own child-rearing skills.
This adorable little setup resembles a typical kindergarten, filled with rambunctious puppies socializing, napping—and let’s be honest, probably plotting world domination all while learning some basic manners. And I thought my last family gathering was chaotic! Instead of your usual finger-painting and snack time, these pups are being conditioned to sit, stay, and not confuse the carpet with a bathroom. Very noble of them!
The Canine Curriculum: Where Puppies Go to Get Smarter (and Cuter)
Enter scientists Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, who decided that the best way to understand dog development is to treat these sweet pups like human infants—complete with test scores and behavioral assessments! Because who wouldn’t want to crank up the pressure on a puppy? As if choosing which shoe to chew wasn’t a difficult enough life decision!
The study tracked the growth of 101—yes, 101—Labrador Retrievers in a quest for scientific enlightenment. We’re talking about using puppies to uncover deeply buried truths about intelligence, cognition, and even emotional responsiveness. No, not an episode of Judge Judy, but actual science!
Training Timelines: What Can Your Puppy Learn and When?
The findings from this dog-centric education do not just sit on a shelf, waiting to be praised by fellow nerds. No, they come with an oh-so-acceptable timeline of cognitive development! You know, the typical milestones we expect our fur babies to reach.
Memory: The First Step on a Long Journey
By the time puppies are 8 weeks old, they can remember where that tasty treat was hidden. Fascinating, right? Try telling that to your mother-in-law; she still can’t remember what year she bought those awful curtains. But for puppies, this memory skill is just the beginning of their educational journey.
Self-Control: Not Just for Humans Anymore
It turns out that these floppy-eared scholars need self-control when an irresistible squirrel pops up in their field of vision. They learn that treats can be obtained by navigating a treat-filled cylinder. Spoiler alert: most of them will still abandon that cylinder for an unshapely tennis ball. Ah, the joys of being a dog!
Understanding Human Gestures: The Cutest Game of Charades
Who knew that puppies are better at reading our swaying, dramatic gestures than some of my friends at a wedding? At just eight weeks, they start to learn our hand signals, facial expressions, and—dare I say it—our intentions. Lucky for us, they don’t seem to judge our dance moves… yet.
Puppy Problem Solving: The Art of Asking for Help
In a classic example of problem-solving prowess, if a pup can’t get into a treat-filled container, they’ll just stare expectantly at their humans for assistance! I mean, around here, that mystifying technique of eye contact can lead to some rather awkward conversations when I omit that I’m not a professional treat dispensary!
Code Red: Understanding the Physical World and Adapting
By 13 weeks, our clever canines start grasping the nuances of their physical surroundings. Knowing when they’re on a leash and that a towel may hide a bowl is all part of the cognitive dance they undertake. So, when they’re pulling like a tugboat towards a squirrel, supposedly with self-control intact, they’re really just failing at life’s physical mysteries. And yet, they still manage to tug at our heartstrings.
Concluding Remarks: All Puppies Can Grow Up
At the end of this charming tale, the message is clear: All puppies are capable of becoming well-adjusted dogs, even if they’re not cut out for service work. While waiting for your willful ball of fur to blossom into a well-behaved companion, remember—it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon… or a slow trot. As Brian Hare wisely said, “Never give up. The paths may be different, but in the end, you all reach the goal.” And if you’re lucky, the end goal may involve sleeping in… until the morning.
So, to all you pet parents out there—take heart, society’s furry philosophers are on their way to mastering adulthood! And with all this scientific wisdom around, you might just end up with a furry philosopher who puts more effort into picking up the basics than your teenager.
Science reveals the key to training puppies to learn what to do and when
At a special kindergarten in North Carolina, children play, socialize, nap and learn how to sit, stay still and not poop in the classroom. .
This kindergarten is Duke University’s “Dog Kindergarten,” and the children are not humans, but dogs. But the games and tasks the puppies engage in in the classroom aren’t all that different from those used to study human child development.
Learning new skills is an important step toward adulthood for both dogs and their owners. Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods of Duke University created a curriculum for dog puppies based on the way psychologists test children’s intelligence. After countless hours spent with cute but tiring dog puppies, researchers have pinpointed when key cognitive abilities emerge during development. As dogs acquire skills such as memory and self-control, they develop an amazing ability to connect and cooperate with humans.
As any dog lover knows, each puppy has its own unique personality. “Dogs have different types of intelligence, with different cognitive statuses, and they develop at different rates,” explains Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist.
The research, described in a fascinating new book, Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science Of Raising a Great Dog, was published by the largest service dog breeding organization in the United States. It began with a 10-year partnership between Cainine Companions, Mr. Hare and Mr. Woods. Today, most people want to keep a pet as a service dog.
“For 100 years, these service dogs have always been required to integrate into families, be polite to people, sit still in cafes, and walk well on a leash,” says the director of the dog kindergarten. Mr. Woods, who serves as A typical cognitive development roadmap for puppies not only predicts which dogs will make good service dogs, but also helps new owners raise great dogs.
When can puppies learn important skills?
The dog nursery tracked the growth of 101 puppies and tested them every two weeks from 8 weeks to 20 weeks. All 101 are Labrador Retrievers or Labrador Retriever/Golden Retriever mixes. Half of them lived at Duke University, and the other half were raised in volunteer families. The researchers also supplemented their study with a single test of 221 pups and a study of 37 wolf pups for comparison (Dog Kindergarten is currently continuing the study with a new class of pups). is).
It also obtained data from around 50,000 dogs of various breeds tested at home through the Dognition project. Although there are some differences in development between large and small dogs, no differences were observed between breeds in terms of cognitive ability.
As a result, it was found that the cognitive abilities of puppies develop and develop according to the following rough timeline.
Next page: Memory begins to develop, shows self-control, etc.
memory development begins
To become a good dog, a dog must memorize skills, past situations, and different people and places. At about 8 weeks of age, the puppies are able to remember where the treat was hidden, even over time or even if they are distracted by a toy that makes a noise when hiding the treat. (Note: Before your dog’s memory develops, it’s not that he’s doing bad things or not listening. He literally just doesn’t remember what you want him to do.)
show self-control
When a dog wants to play or chase squirrels instead of following you, self-control is required to do the right thing. The puppies first learned that there was a treat in the cylinder, and that they could get the treat by walking around the opening.
Next, I replaced the cylinder with a transparent one. The treats were visible, but they weren’t available everywhere, so the puppies had to remember to sneak around to the opening.
Knowing when to do this will help you deal with training dilemmas, such as whether or not to respond when your puppy barks at night. “The data suggest that there is probably some kind of transition period,” Hare said. “If your puppy is under 13 weeks old and is barking, please come to the rescue. She is not trying to manipulate you or pick up a bad habit; she may just need to go to the bathroom. yeah”
Around 13 to 14 weeks of age, once your puppy has developed self-control, you may want to make some changes in how you react to interruptions during the night.
understand people’s gestures
Around eight weeks old, puppies learn to read our hand gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, and intentions better than their ape cousins. “They’re still puppies who fall asleep on the way across the room,” adds Woods. When people pointed to hidden treats, the puppies were usually able to find them. Even when the puppies used gestures they had never seen before, such as placing a marker near the hidden spot, the results were the same.
By 10 weeks old, the puppies were able to understand basic human gestures and had developed their first cognitive skills.
Good dogs may be better equipped to learn social and cooperative communication skills through evolution rather than through experience. “The fact that such a young puppy has this ability suggests that it was acquired during domestication,” says the researcher at Boston College’s Center for Canine Cognition and Society. Angie Johnston, Director of the Institute for Learning.
Although dog puppies and human babies do not have the same cognitive levels, dogs and humans begin developing some of the same skills at a very young age. There is a revolutionary period in human cognitive development between nine and 12 months of age, when babies begin to follow gaze, gestures, and peer into the minds of others. “Dogs are so similar to humans, not only because they understand gestures, but also because their cognitive abilities emerge very quickly,” Hare said.
ask someone for help
When faced with an unsolvable problem, dogs use social problem solving. In other words, ask people for help.
Eye contact between humans and dogs is a crucial element in their relationship. When we stare at each other with a human baby, oxytocin, known as the “love hormone” or “happiness hormone,” is released and our bond becomes stronger, and the same thing happens with dogs.
At a dog nursery, puppies who were given treats in containers they couldn’t open for just five minutes every two weeks made twice as much eye contact with humans (don’t worry: After that 90 seconds, the dogs get a treat no matter what.)
Next page: All puppies eventually become good dogs
understand the physical world
By 13 weeks of age, the puppies were able to distinguish between towels with a hidden bowl underneath and towels with nothing hidden underneath. The puppies also understood that when they are on a leash, they cannot move freely and are connected to people.
This understanding is key to training. Knowing the dog’s cognitive abilities at the time allows you to know what it can and cannot do with training.
Adapt to changes in learned rules
The puppies learned to solve more complex, multi-step problems by changing direction when the learned solution no longer worked. In another experiment in which the opening of the cylinder was swapped, the puppies had to stop doing what had worked well and do the opposite to get the treat.
This reverse learning skill underlies some of dogs’ most amazing abilities, such as guiding blind people. In most tasks, the person asks something and the dog uses its skills to respond. “However, when guiding a blind person, you have to realize that sometimes the person asks something and the dog knows how to do it, but the request is still wrong.” explains Hare.
“For example, you may be asked to cross the street, but there may actually be cars and it could be dangerous. This is very difficult for dogs.”
In the end, all puppies become good dogs.
Not all dogs have the cognitive abilities needed to be a service dog. But by understanding what puppies are thinking and when to start training specific intelligences, you can help all dogs reach their best potential.
Laurie Santos, director of the Comparative Cognition Institute and the Center for Canine Cognition at Yale University, says that while a lot of research has begun on what dogs know, it’s not clear that dogs know what they know. Little research has been done on when people come to understand this. “We have long felt the need to know what is developmentally appropriate at each stage of a puppy’s development, but until Hare’s excellent research was published, we had no answer.”
Johnston points out that dogs are emotionally close to us, and that we sometimes view puppies as if they were infants. “I think if owners become more aware, they will be able to consider that their dogs are still at a stage where they don’t have the ability, and they will be able to have different expectations than before.”
Hare and Woods emphasize that it takes time for puppies to develop and master these skills. Owners should not be discouraged if they see other puppies growing faster than their own. “It’s a hopeful message,” Hare said. “Never give up. The paths you take may be different, everything may be moving at a different speed, but in the end you will reach the goal.”
This should give some relief to exhausted pet owners. That’s because the students at Dog Kindergarten embody Mr. Hare’s message. Although not all of the puppies may qualify as service dogs, by the time they graduated, all of the puppies were sleeping until the morning.
