How to decode the puppy mindset to better understand behavior

On this week's regularly scheduled episode of The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360, host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, welcomed Brian Hare, MA, PhD, to the show to talk about Hare's work with puppies. Hare and Christman chat about the Duke Puppy Kindergarten, socialization and why it is so important to these young pets, and more about Hare and his research in general, including a program on Netflix.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity:

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Have you ever seen the movie Encanto from Disney? Everyone has a gift, a door to open. And I say this to puppy owners, there's multiple doors and gifts that they have. It may not be the same gift that the next puppy has. Some are just incredibly well at socialization. Maybe some are great at crate training, whatever that is, and that's okay. Sometimes we're comparing apples to oranges. I feel like with different dog breeds. Would you say?

Brian Hare, MA, PhD: Well, that is the that's the big learning in the puppy kindergarten, the new book, is that it really is, as you say, each dog is an individual, and part of what you know, creates individuality that we fall in love with, because they all have these idiosyncratic things. If they were all the same, you know, you wouldn't have these remarkable relationships. They're not the same. They're individuals. They're beings.

Part of what creates that are these different cognitive abilities, and we've been able to measure when they come online and when they first develop some of the abilities. So for instance, when a puppy is born, they don't have very much self control, and so it's not really until 14 weeks that most puppies develop self control, but different puppies develop self control at different times, and that shapes who they end up becoming as an adult. And so we have all sorts of leads on some of the things that end up creating the individuals that we fall in love with.

Christman: What about those, you know, dogs that we see on social media that use those buttons, you know, that have that ability to communicate with different buttons and are like 'Mommy, out the door or have to pee or shut up. What are your thoughts when you see some of these dogs that use those kinds of like communication, like tools or buttons or whatever, is there something to be said about that?

Hare: Well, one of the things that we've discovered, one of our big discoveries, is that dogs are geniuses for their comprehension of our gestures. So relative to other species, whether it's other chimpanzees or bonobos or wolves, dogs really are special. At a very early age, and in fact, it was one of the things we further studied in the puppy kindergarten, is that at an early age, puppies are amazing and understanding our gestures.

But what the buttons are, what makes the buttons potentially remarkable? And I'll come back to why I say potentially, is that it's about production. It's about producing requests. It's about actually producing communication, not just understanding. And so that's something that very few animals have been basically demonstrated to have flexible abilities to communicate. And so the buttons have, I think, caught everybody's attention, because dogs using these buttons are seem to be communicating to us in a way that really resonates as a human being.

Now, whether the science is actually going to bear out that dogs are doing something that you know a young infant as they begin to learn language, are they creating words? Are they creating grammatical structures that a young infant begins to make as they begin to show linguistic abilities? The jury's out on that. But should people use the buttons if they want? Absolutely. Are they fun? Are they adorable? If your dog enjoys it, go for it. It's awesome.