Why Puppies Do What They Do

Puppies and People: It would be almost impossible for us to imagine what our lives would be like without our dogs and puppies these days. However, it's strange when you think about it that dogs were to begin with wolf predators and all of a sudden they are now sharing their lives with humans? How did they make the big switch to wanting to be around us and obey us, and be so impeccably loyal?

It's pretty obvious that we have gained a lot through domesticating our dogs. Dogs have for a long time been helping humans as guardians, herders, hunters, worked for us, as well as love us unconditionally. During the whole domestication process we have managed to deliberately genetically choose and increase responsiveness in our dogs. We no longer see dogs the way dogs were originally which was as wolves. We have created a new species that allows people to bond with the dogs of nowadays.

Despite this factor, there is still no guarantee even now, that all small puppies will like all humans. But keep in mind that fear of humans is caused by a lack of socialization. If a puppy has not had enough good and positive experiences with enough humans or enough people in its very sensitive period of socialization, it will not like being around people. Dogs are very sensitive and they can easily tell the difference in people. They do notice things, like the smells your body lets off, the type of clothes you are wearing, if you are fearful or angry etc. Many times dogs don't like socializing with certain types of people because they have not been around them enough when they were puppies. An example of this is children; there are dogs that simply cannot be around kids and this is probably because the dog didn't have any interaction with children when he was going through his socialization process.

You as an owner can make all the difference in how your dog interacts with other people if you are determined to enforce positive and active socialization, besides this, socialization will give a dog the ability to enjoy the various types of humans being there are in the world. Keep in mind though that the way a dog acts and its behavior also depends on the genetics and environment it is around, meaning that in some cases even when a dog has had the adequate type of socialization at a young age, it may still not guarantee that it will not have any behavior problems throughout its life.