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. They also discuss 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, [that] there [are] 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 [it] is—and that's OK. Sometimes we're comparing apples to oranges...with different dog breeds. Would you say?

Brian Hare, MA, PhD: Well...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 wouldn't have these remarkable relationships. They're not the same. They're individuals. They're beings.

Part of what creates that [is] these different cognitive abilities, and we've been able to measure when they come online and when they first develop some of the abilities. For instance, when a puppy is born, they don't have very much self-control, 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. So we have all sorts of leads on some of the things that end up creating the individuals we fall in love with.

Christman: What about those dogs we see on social media that...have that ability to communicate with different buttons? [They're] like, "Mommy, out the door," or "[I] have to pee," or "Shut up." What are your thoughts when you see some of these dogs that use those kinds of communication tools...? Is there something to be said about that?

Hare: 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.... In fact, one of the things we further studied in the puppy kindergarten [is] that at an early age, puppies are amazing [at] understanding our gestures.

But 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.... Very few animals have demonstrated to have flexible abilities to communicate, so the buttons have caught everybody's attention because dogs using these buttons 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...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.