Puppy Examination Day!
- bramblymountainfarm
- 15 minutes ago
- 4 min read
I have been so grateful for the new puppy barn my husband and boys built! It has changed things a bit - mostly for the better. I’m no longer scrubbing puppy poo off of the floor my children will also be walking on (a LOT of poo).
We don’t have to listen to puppy howls all night long by some of the more insistently free spirits. And the atmosphere in my home is significantly less chaotic. At least as about as “less chaotic” as a 1600 square foot house can be with 9 people living in it. We do still have the puppies come visit the house for desensitization purposes but it's more like 2-3 at a time rather than all 8. But there have been a few times when they are all in the house (vaccination night, for example) and we have 11 dogs and 9 people under our little roof.
It’s as insane as it sounds. It was, of course, on one of these nights that my daughter’s new boyfriend and his mother stopped in for a visit. A family with 2 grown children. And one dog. I can only imagine what our tornado of a house looked like to these sweet people. And sounded like. The mother cuddled a puppy or two while the new boyfriend kindly tried to help me clean up the most recent mess. But even he had to give up as one puppy ran by with a roll of shredded paper towel in his mouth, a child walked by brushing her teeth for bed,
two other puppies played a vicious game of tug of war while two boys juggled a soccer ball off to the side, knocking over a glass of water while three puppies scuffled through it, treading wet paws all over the living room floor. The noise made conversation impossible and as we gradually trucked each little vaccinated puppy outside for the night, we reclaimed the house and began the process of putting it all back together, ready for the next onslaught. They're still dating so I guess it wasn’t too traumatic, but I often wonder if we look as crazy as I feel.
Anyway, the other change has been that I haven’t had the puppies under my nose every second of their lives so I felt a little less certain of how puppy testing was going to go this time around. I had some idea of each one’s personality but not as much of a grasp as I usually felt. So testing would be an interesting surprise perhaps!
This time we asked Christy-Lynn, Hamish’s mama, to perform as the tester. It was perfect as she had never met the pups and they had a nice barn space for us to utilize. We got everything set up with a space for me to watch unobserved (so the puppies can’t look to me for comfort). But the idea is to see how puppies will handle a completely new environment with a complete stranger encountering a variety of “tests”. Things like opening an umbrella to see how much and if they startle and how they recover. Do they cower? Startle and recover to investigate? Cautiously or with confidence? Pounce fearlessly?
Such little tests reveal a lot of little clues to a personality that would be difficult to pinpoint simply watching the day-to-day whirlwind of the litter.
And this is the Volhardt Puppy Testing method. It was developed back in the 1930’s and revamped in the 60’s for the purpose of placing guide dogs and eventually personal homes. These are the testing elements:
1. Social Attraction - degree of social attraction to people, confidence or dependence.
2. Following - willingness to follow a person.
3. Restraint - degree of dominant or submissive tendency, and ease of handling in difficult situations.
4. Social Dominance - degree of acceptance of social dominance by a person.
5. Elevation - degree of accepting dominance while in a position of no control, such as at the veterinarian or groomer.
6. Retrieving - degree of willingness to do something for you. Together with Social Attraction and Following a key indicator for ease or difficulty in training.
7. Touch Sensitivity - degree of sensitivity to touch and a key indicator to the type of training equipment required.
8. Sound Sensitivity - degree of sensitivity to sound, such as loud noises or thunderstorms.
9. Sight Sensitivity - degree of response to a moving object, such as chasing bicycles, children or squirrels.
10. Stability - degree of startle response to a strange object.
11. Forgiveness (One I add after touch sensitivity - see how quickly the pup “forgives”, licks face, etc.)
Christy-Lynn was a focused tester and we got them done in record time with the help of her sweet twins getting the pups in and out of the pen for us. And then they all got to meet Papa Hamish as the grand finale.
I was very happy with the results. Though some were a bit more reserved than others, maybe some more exuberant than others, overall, they all exhibited a sense of stability and calm that I was pleased to see. These are all going to be wonderful dogs for a variety of homes.
Here are a few of the testing videos for you to check out!
This little snapshot is just the baseline for your puppy. What you’ll have to work with from the beginning. I always remind everyone this snapshot isn’t set in stone. Puppies change a lot over the next year and what we see now could change a lot! We do the best we can to predict how they’ll respond in particular homes and hope for the best!
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