The Socialization Window — The Only Chapter With a Deadline

1 Three to fourteen weeks

The position statement of the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior calls the first three months of life the most important time for puppy socialization.

What is happening in those weeks:

• Early on, puppies approach new things with curiosity rather than fear.
• Wariness of the new increases as the period goes on.
• After roughly 14 to 16 weeks the window narrows sharply: new experiences become progressively alarming, and what was not introduced early is much harder to make ordinary later.
• What happens in this period has a lasting influence on temperament and behavior.

One line to keep: for about eleven weeks the world is interesting. After that, it is suspicious.

One study of a structured socialization program during this period found short-term benefits — bolder puppies that startled less — but at six months the owners reported no difference in personality between the two groups. The study is worth knowing for one reason: this is not a matter of taking a puppy everywhere. It is a matter of arranging experiences he can handle, at a pace he can handle them.

2 The vaccination conflict, and the official answer

There is an obvious problem with all of the above: the window closes before the vaccination course finishes.

AVSAB is explicit about it. Socialization should begin before the vaccination series is complete, because, in its words, with good care the risk of infection is relatively small compared to the chance of death from a behavior problem.

And here is our caveat, which matters more than the statement itself. Disease pressure is not the same in every country, city or street. Our readers are in several countries at once. So: take this to your own vet and ask what it means where you live. We are not telling anyone to go around their vet.

Between those two things there is a large amount of room, and it does not require a public dog park:

• carrying the puppy outdoors, so he sees and hears the street without walking on it
• visits to clean homes with known, vaccinated dogs
• car trips, different surfaces underfoot, household sounds
• people of different ages and appearances, quietly, a few at a time
• controlled puppy classes that require vaccination

3 What only the litter can teach

A study published in the Veterinary Record (Pierantoni et al., 2011) compared 140 adult dogs: 70 had been separated from the litter and adopted at 30 to 40 days, 70 at two months. Owners filled in a questionnaire about how the dog behaved at home.

The dogs separated early were significantly more likely to show problem behaviors as adults: destructiveness, excessive barking, fearfulness on walks, reactivity to noises, toy and food possessiveness and attention-seeking. Dogs bought from a pet shop at 30 to 40 days showed some of these more often than dogs bought there at two months; with dogs from other sources the study found no significant difference. The authors’ conclusion: dogs separated earlier were more likely to show potentially problematic behaviors, especially if they came from a pet shop.

Three things are learned there and almost nowhere else:

• Bite inhibition — how hard is too hard, learned from siblings who complain.
• Play rules — how to start, pause and end a game.
• Dog-to-dog communication — the signals, and what they mean coming back.

The practical rule that follows: never before 8 weeks, and some breeders now keep litters to 10 or 12 weeks for the extra dog-to-dog time. The first of those three is the one that shows up in your living room, and it has a chapter of its own in this section.

4 Why a Frenchie pays twice

This part is specific to flat-faced dogs.

A French Bulldog already carries a signalling handicap built into his face and his tail. People misread flat faces, other dogs respond to them differently, and a short tail carries less information than a long one — the studies are in why other dogs react to a Frenchie.

Now put the two together:

He can be short twice over: neither able to send the signals well, nor taught to read them. That combination is worth knowing about in advance, because it decides how much of his adult life is managed rather than trained.

5 The decision that is made before you meet him

The French Bulldog became a very popular breed in a short time; the VetCompass work in the UK describes that rise. Our opinion: high demand at a high price is exactly the market that produces volume breeding, early separation, and sales through shops.

The demand side is documented too: a Danish survey (Sandøe et al., 2017; 846 owners of four small breeds, the French Bulldog the only flat-faced one) found that French Bulldog owners especially valued the dog’s distinctive appearance and personality.

The conclusion is uncomfortable and worth saying anyway:

Our opinion: the single most consequential thing that happens to your dog’s behavior happens before you meet him. By the time a puppy is in your hands at 8 or 10 weeks, the first half of the window has already been spent somewhere, by someone. Choosing where he comes from is a behavioral decision, not only a health one: how old he is when he leaves, how many dogs he grew up around, what he had already seen and heard.

6 If the window has already closed

Most people reading this already have the dog, and the answer has two halves.

What we do not have: good evidence on how much can be recovered later. We looked for it. The research on the window is much stronger than the research on catching up, and we are not going to fill that gap with encouragement.

What the shape of the problem tells you: what a home can replace, it replaces well — being comfortable with people, with noise, with being alone, with the ordinary business of a household. What a home cannot teach is how to talk to other dogs, because only dogs teach that.

So if your dog came home early, or spent the window with nothing much happening, expect the gap to be specific rather than general. He is not going to be “a bad dog”. He is likely to be a dog who is fine with your visitors and awkward with strange dogs.

And that tells you where to put the effort: not more obedience, but supervised time with dogs who communicate well, in situations you control, plus the management in avoiding a dog fight. Training does not reach this. Distance, choice of company and planning do.

7 Spike: our experience

Our stories and opinions on this page are our personal experience with one dog, Spike. One dog is not the measure for every dog — for your dog, your vet decides.

Spike’s reality  ·  Dominican Republic

“Comfortable with people. Awkward with dogs. That split is the whole lesson.”

Spike is easy with people. Visitors, noise, the street, being left alone for a while — none of it is a problem, and we have written about each of those elsewhere on this site.

The one area where he is not fluent is other dogs. He announces himself rather than negotiating: he climbs on, he scratches the ground, his body goes forward, and he has no tail to add only kidding afterwards.

We are not going to claim we know why, because we cannot separate the possible explanations with one dog: a face and tail that cannot signal well is enough on its own to produce exactly this.

What his case does illustrate is the split in the section above. The parts a household can cover came out fine. The part only dogs teach is the one that did not.

What we do about it is management rather than training, and it is the same advice we would give anyone in the same position: choose his company, keep the distance from strangers, and step in early at the announcement instead of waiting for trouble.

About the Author

Spike’s Dad

Not a veterinarian — the human behind Spike, a dark brindle Frenchie, for 7+ years. What is written here is checked as carefully as we can against the sources listed above. When real life with Spike differs from the studies, we say so.

How this site is researched →