Socializing Sled Dogs to be Canine Good Citizens

Socializing Sled Dogs To Be Canine Good Citizens

Socialization is the key to making sled dogs safe for people and other dogs. This begins at puppyhood during a critical period of development between three and sixteen weeks. The sport of dog sledding is unique in the world of working dogs. These canine athletes are exposed to a plethora of experiences on the trail – other dogs, sights, sounds, environmental factors, and other circumstances. They encounter people at the start and the finish and along the trail. This could pose for a potential problem if these dogs are not properly socialized.

Sled dogs are raised in a group and are naturally socialized with each other and learn through interaction and what is considered acceptable socialization among dogs. Sled dogs will be expected to interact successfully with many other dogs during their lives, so it is imperative that they learn to behave in a group.

Sled dogs need to learn manners around people as well. Ideally this is done during the critical period of development, when all experiences are new to the puppy and a trainer can have maximum affect of a dog’s personality and temperament.

Dr. Robert Forto (2005) encourages trainers and sled dog enthusiasts to socialize their dogs. At a minimum these dogs should be socialized at least to the point of accepting handling from strangers and at a maximum, training the dogs to pass the Canine Good Citizen Test offered by the American Kennel Club. The purpose of the Canine Good Citizen testing program is to ensure that our favorite companion, the dog, can be a respectable member of the community on and off the trail. A Canine Good Citizen (CGC) dog has been trained to be well behaved in the home, in public places, and in the presence of other dogs.

Can sled dogs be over socialized? You will often hear that many mushers prefer their dogs slightly “wild” fearing that too much socialization could make the dogs “soft” or less willing to work in harness. But taken to that extreme, these dogs can be unruly and downright dangerous to other teams, mushers, and the public.

By contrast, four-time Iditarod Champion Martin Buser often lets his dogs run loose as they come out of the dog truck and they stay right with him until they are hooked up to the sled. Forto explored this in is doctoral dissertation: Chasing the Dream: A Study of Human-Canine Communication in the Sport of Dog Sledding (2005). He arrived at some interesting findings.

To some extent, the amount of socialization is a personal preference, but it is certainly time that sled dogs can be treated as companions and still be hard workers. As all mushers know, a dog’s life on the trail is relatively short. If these dogs could be socialized starting at puppy hood and carry on becoming CGC dogs’ it would be of tremendous benefit to both dogs and people.

Further research could be conducted on the feasibility for sled dogs to become CGC dogs’ and well-trained companions. This would save thousands of dogs from euthanasia, culling by the musher or worse.

Forto laments, “If I were buying a puppy for a pet, I would check its early environment and make sure it was not raised in a kennel with little to no human interaction, with only its mother and littermates for immediate company the first eight weeks of life.”

During this time of critical brain development, it implies so much more than simply animal-to-animal or animal-to-human socialization. What this means is that many an imperfect dog makes a very good sled dog if the owner/trainer has paid strict attention to the socialization during this period of the puppy’s life.

A musher needs to expose his young sled dog puppies to countless situations – crowds, flashbulbs, race chutes, loose dogs, other teams, wild animals, deep snow, running water, ice, streets, ramps, vehicles, small places, strange places – the list is obviously endless. Mushers should get their puppies used to their dog trucks. They should take them to town, and let strangers handle them. While it is true that puppies have a window of say three to sixteen weeks where the capacity to learn can occur, socialization can occur at any time as long as you are careful. The old cliché goes; You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you can socialize them to new situations as long as the dog does not perceive it as a fearful situation.

Raising puppies and especially raising them for special jobs as adult dogs requires attention to detail. When people raise puppies as companions they often get them at about eight weeks old, take them home, feed and cuddle them, housebreak them, take them for walks, and play with them. What they are doing (and they are not usually aware of) is providing specialized socialization activities that shape the dog’s future behavior.

The layering and interacting of development and socialization events that produce an adult working dog are precisely unfathomable. This complexity of the developing dog’s behavior should remind the reader how passé the nature versus nurture controversy really is. Although, it was once a compelling question for behaviorists; scientists now understand why nature can not be separated from nurture. When we look at the critical period for social development, we realize that the genetic nature of the dog is shaped by the environment in which the dog is growing up.

To some people this critical socialization period and nature versus nurture and vise-versa sounds like magic. But actually, something permanent is in the dog’s brain that causes it to become genetically unalterable after the critical period is over. For some reason, what is learned is limited to this period. Once “learned” the behavior cannot easily or completely be unlearned. Given how much we as dog trainers, and mushers, know about teaching and learning, it would seem that we could teach the sled dog, and our companions, to behave differently, but the dog does not appear to learn it after the critical period of socialization is over. People do know this: You can’t teach a dog new tricks. But now do they know why?

Resources:

Forto, R. and Bowersox, R., Canine Sciences Level I, course material. ed. 2004.
Forto, R., CHASING THE DREAM: A Study of Human-Canine Communication in the
Sport of Dog Sledding. Doctorate, Human-Canine Communication,
Madison University.

Volhard, J., and W., The Canine Good Citizen: Every Dog Can Be One. New York, NY:
Howell Book House, 1994.

Forsberg, W., “Training Good Citizens,” Mushing Magazine. March/April 1996.
pp. 12-13, & 18.

Coppinger, R., and L., DOGS: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and
Evolution. University of Chicago Press, 2001.
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Robert Forto, Ph.D. (Human-Canine Communication) is a graduate of Canine Communication Studies and is a musher. His research interests include: canine evolution, sled dog history, the Siberian Evaluation for Performance Program and Mushing in the Olympic Games. He can be contacted through his website at http://www.denverdogworks.com