Socializing or traumatizing?

In 2016 published research suggested a correlation between social exposure at an early age and fear and (most likely) fear driven aggression in dogs later in life. People who had been very actively ‘socializing’ their pups ran into more trouble than people who had not done so. 

How could this be? This contradicts other research that proved the importance of exposure and socialization at an early age to prevent fear driven behaviour.

Most likely, the underlying cause for those contradicting results was that the dog owners had unintentionally exposed their pups to new stimuli in a negative setting.

“Have your puppy see and meet as many different types of dogs, people, traffic, etc. as possible!”

This is something I read very often. People are advised to take their puppy out into busy cities, into public transport, to dog parks, to children’s playgrounds, etc. 

The amount of different stimuli that a puppy needs to experience is emphasized.

Though the intentions are good, this type of advice can backfire and turn into a disaster for puppies and their owners.

The emphasis should not be on how much the puppy needs to be exposed to, but on how to best expose a puppy to their living environment and the outside world.

Exposing is not the same as socializing

Socializing is about developing socially acceptable behavioural responses towards the environment. Socializing is not about learning to expect severe social interaction with every new thing the dog encounters. You don't want your puppy to learn that active interaction is to be expected with every new thing or creature that pops up (or when visitors enter the house, in example). Apart from experiencing some comfortable interactions, they also need to experience that not everything will interact with them so they can learn to stay calm and be able to ignore things too. Ideally, we like to see dogs who behave relaxed, tolerant, social, etc. This is not something that automatically develops during exposure. Socialized behaviour can only develop when the puppy has neutral or positive experiences around those stimuli.

When socializing becomes traumatizing

If a puppy is introduced to new stimuli in a severe negative way, resulting in a severe negative experience for the puppy, then socializing could unintentionally become traumatizing. This can occur when a puppy is not able to increase distance or escape from whatever it finds threatening, or when a puppy is not given time and space to recover from challenging experiences. Negative, stressful and fear evoking experiences can have a deep impact in the dog brain. Especially if there are no healthy recovery options. Dogs will want to avoid or (in some cases) actively scare away (with fear driven aggression) whatever they find threatening.

In example, a puppy owner takes their puppy to a busy dog park and the puppy is repeatedly trampled on and/or chased by large dogs. The puppy is not given any options to avoid or escape these dogs. As a result, this puppy may, in the future, try to flee when it sees other dogs, or this puppy may respond by barking aggressively and trying to intimidate and chase away other dogs.

Another example, a puppy owner takes his dog to a class in which the puppy is exposed to loud noises. The puppy is not given any chance to escape, to seek comfort or to recover. Though the intention was to get the dog to tolerate loud noises, the severe negative experience at an early age has made this dog become extremely stressed whenever loud noises occur. 

Socialization is not just about exposure, it is about guiding a puppy through an experience in such a way that they can develop neutral or social responses and neutral or positive expectations.