29/07/2026
I wonder if people will ever understand the importance of early socialisation?
I've been running my own puppy classes for 16 years and was a puppy class instructor for 10 years prior to that.
Puppy classes used to be the "fun" part of being a behaviourist. We'd get to work with puppies in the socialisation period, where introducing them to new things would be pretty easy. Puppy classes were fun for the puppies and their families. Lots of smiles, lots of laughter, lots of cute moments and the joy of watching pups happily interacting and playing with their own kind.
I'm not saying that every puppy was easy, that there weren't some pups who were shyer and took a while to feel comfortable with new things and others who needed careful management to prevent them being too much for other pups and learning bad habits.
We have always carefully managed interactions and carefully matched puppies for the best outcome. We have always ensured that play was only one aspect of class and plenty of time was spent on building a strong bond between pups and their human parents and developing other skills for healthy emotional and social development. But we have nearly always been able to integrate puppies into some enjoyable play time to develop their canine social skills and meet the very real need for conspecific play which most young dogs have.
Yet this is sadly changing. This year for the first time, I can count on one hand the number of lessons where we have been able to let puppies interact at all off lead. It's not because we don't want to or because the puppies' guardians don't want this - it is because a very large proportion of the puppies we are getting in our classes are unable to interact with their own kind even remotely competently. Instead of outgoing puppies with a natural affinity for their own species, we see:
❗️Fearfulness
❗️Reactivity
❗️Over-arousal
❗️Complete lack of communication skills
❗️Approach-avoidance conflict
❗️Confused body language
❗️Inappropriate behaviours
The average age of puppies when they began classes used to be 9-12 weeks. Sadly, we are now lucky if we get them by the age of 16 weeks. And even then the socialisation period is largely OVER. If these puppies have been out and about with their families, then they are still okay. Unfortunately many have not been anywhere.
Do you know what the most common answer to the question on our enrolment form "how often do you walk your puppy" is?
Sadly, it's "We don't yet - too young" or "Not fully vaccinated". Literally people are still being told by certain vets, breeders and even some rescue organisations that their puppies cannot leave home until they have had not 1, 2 or even 3 vaccinations, but 4 or 5 of them🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ This means that most puppies will not leave home before they are 5 months of age.
I saw an old clip of Dr Ian Dunbar earlier today where he spoke of the leading cause of death in dogs. It's not Parvo. As he said, viruses like parvo kill a fraction of the amount of dogs that die as a result of behaviour issues.
Why have we gone backwards in this regard? Why are we sabotaging a puppy's only chance at an emotionally and socially healthy life for unrealistic safetyist nonsense? It's not scientific. It's not logical. It's not reasonable.
While we do have a cut-off age for puppy class, I'm getting to a point where I want to insist that all pups begin before 12 weeks . And if you wake up too late, tough. It's not our problem. Because for the one or two pups whose guardians did start early enough, it's not fair for them to be subjected to what ends up being a socially frought environment with the best we can hope for being desensitisation and counter conditioning, as opposed to genuine socialisation.
Puppy classes should not need to be remedial classes. Puppy classes should not be stressful for puppies or people.
I get that many people are adopting puppies these days and they can't help the age the puppy was upon adoption. But in most cases, people have puppies for a month or more before they bother to do anything. And if puppies do end up not being homed timeously, then the rescue organisations need to be actively providing for their socialisation in the meantime. Homing an unsocialised puppy is as bad as homing a puppy they didn't bother to vaccinate. Socialisation is emotional vaccination. And it's even more important for a healthy long life.
This post may seem blunt, but I won't apologise for that. What is happening right now is absolutely catastrophic for so many dogs and their human families. Things need to change.
