Do you think puppies establish their personality based on who they're raised by?
 

Do you think puppies establish their personality based on who they're raised by? Zeeva came to us as a puppy. She was a good puppy. But she got a bit anxious, shy and somewhat neurotic as she grew older. My husband jokes with me and says she is exactly like me (pretty true actually) because she watched me behave that way. At first I'd laugh but it got me thinking...Smokey came to us very stable in terms of befriending people but somewhat dog aggressive/reactive. I've no clue who raised him as a puppy but IMO he's a solid guy...I often wonder how Zeeva would be had she been raised by someone more stable than I. Is it silly to think this way? I don't really want to go into the nature vs. nurture debate because that really isn't the question...I'm simply asking if our personalities make an impression and rub off on our puppies???

Yes, personally, I believe that our personalities rub off on the puppies/dogs that we raise. I don't believe that they rub off enough to completely change their personalities but I do think we influence the dog that they will become.

Yes. Dogs read you like a book. This is getting into dog whisperer territory, hes not a dog trainer by any means, but he does have some insight into how they think.

Re: Do you think puppies establish their personality based on who they're raised by?
 

I've been wondering that too, Eko acts a lot like me. I am a pretty nervous person and Eko tends to be nervous in a lot of the same situations that make me nervous.

I'll go a bit further out on a limb and say that both cats and dogs take on some of the personality of their owners. They still have their own personality to be sure, but they pick up some of our habits and the way we see the world.

We have four dogs and three cats, and all of them have distinctive personalities and are different from one another, BUT all of them are kind-hearted and sensitive and all of them have their own way of joking or tricking or being funny. Also all of them are homebodies. They each have these qualities because they were raised in a pack where these qualities are highly valued.

I also think that our pets are very good at seeing the space in our lives that needs filling. I think they are better than that than we are. When my partner and I got together, her daughter was 13 and struggling with ADHD, a touch of autism, and the horrors of being that age. My crabby old female cat took one look at that kid and moved into her room. I honestly wonder if our daughter would have made it without old Tubby cat there for her. She cried on that cat, talked to her, fed her pieces of bagel. And that cat doted on her girl and stayed with her all the time. Oh, once in awhile Tubby would come upstairs and remind me that she had been my cat for 12 years before this teenager took over the basement. She'd come find me and let me pet her, but she and I both understood: Tubby was NEEDED downstairs by a teenager who'd never had a pet and needed a non-judgemental friend very badly. And Tubby, who had used up several of her nine lives by falling out a window, swallowing a sewing needle, having her kidneys inexplicably fail briefly, and so on . . .that cat lived to be sixteen years old. She lived long enough to see that girl of her's off to college. She was a remarkable cat.

The point of my lengthy story is to say that I think our pets both take on some of our personality and also become what we need them to be.

Sometimes I think that each one of them are little miracles.

I think their owner's personality contributes partially to forming their personality because your personality is injected into your training and raising methods, but that doesn't mean they adopt their owner's personality.

My dog is my complete opposite. I'm an extreme introvert and he's an extreme extrovert. I'm easily stressed out and frustrated and he can handle anything and everything. I'm distrustful of everyone and he'd jump into a car with a stranger if they asked him to. I think the only thing we have in common is we both like food a lot.

Even the very fearful nervy senior husky I'm taking care of for my SIL has become much, much friendlier and outgoing in my care. I always expected my animals to turn into these unfriendly one-person animals but they always turn into outgoing, friendly, well-adjusted extroverts. What I liked most about my SIL's husky was that she was exactly like me, but now she's become so friendly and, well, 'normal', that I feel like our special bond that we had because we were the same and understood each other is lost because she's changed.

I always say that my oldest dog is just like me. I got her when she was 10 months old, but she was returned a few times during her first year, so I was really her first real owner. I'm a very confident person, pretty easy going until someone gets me going, I don't have a problem making friends, or telling it like it is......all of my dogs are like this:)

I think sometimes some of our dogs complement our personality, not mirror it. Maybe because we see one of our negative (to us) traits like shyness, but because we are focusing on what's best for our dogs, we push ourselves outside our comfort zones for their sake, ending up with a confident stable dog that actually helps US.

I'm a homebody when I'm not working, but because of my GSDs in the past, I took them to classes, I took them to the public walking paths, I took them to stores - things I don't normally do when I could have the opportunity to hang around the house. I can be intense and emotional, and my dogs seem to also help me to chill out sometimes and not take things quite so seriously.

genetics + environment = end product.

The genetic base for Zeeva's temperament was already there when you got her - she would not be miraculously stable if she were raised with a different handler. She is who she is, and her environment shaped her.

And if you start thinking like that, you'll also have to consider the fact that perhaps you HELPED Zeeva greatly into becoming as capable as she is today - in a more passive or neglectful home, she could have become a real problem.

If we take my current pup as an example: she is who she is, and nothing I do will change her base temperament. However, depending on how I raise, socialize, train, and develop her, she will grow and stabilize within the confines of what her genetics allow her. I can see this in training clubs - pups can exceed or fall short of their genetic expectations because of their environment and handler. However in the end, they can only have leeway within the range that their genetic capability allows.

It is interesting because raising a dog for the Seeing Eye is almost an experiment for nature vs. nurture. The breeding is very controlled and based largely on personality. The puppy raising is also very controlled. All puppy raisers are given specific instructions on how to handle almost every situation.

Watching the puppies in our puppy club for the first year I found it really interesting how similar and yet different all the puppies are. For instance, they breed for quiet dogs. As a result we can have a meeting with 25 dogs and no dogs will bark at all. They breed for sociability so we never had any growling or fighting no matter how many dogs were together.

Still there were differences. Some were more social. Some were more confident. After that experience I really got the impression that genetics controlled a lot more than we think. It just seems to me, after watching all these dogs, that a dogs personality is mostly predetermined by genetics.