By Dr. Ed Bailey edbailey@uoguelph.ca 

Printed in Gun Dog Magazine First Printing April/ May,
1994 Second Printing, April/May, 1998 

Why reprint an article that appeared in the April/May 
1994 issue of Gun Dog? Wasn't the point made? Or do 
people still believe they should take their brand new pup
home on the "magical" 49th day? 

The reasons to reprint are several: 1) Breed clubs and 
dog clubs from across the United States and Canada 
as well as from far-off places like Australia and Hawaii 
in one direction and England and Germany in the other 
have asked permission to reprint it in their journals, 
newsletters and magazines. 2) There are many new readers 
of Gun Dog who did not have a chance to read the original 
although many heard about it through their clubs. 3) 
Breeders have repeatedly asked permission to copy the 
article to use as a handout to prospective buyers. 
4) Prospective buyers have asked for copy privileges to 
give to breeders from whom they thought they would buy 
a pup. 5) The message either didn't get through, wasn't 
accepted (or believed) by a lot of people with a solid mindset.
Breeder trying to convince buyer, buyer trying to convince 
breeder, clubs giving their membership something to think 
about, or a totally missed message-all might sound a bit 
farfetched,but hey, they're not at all. For example, an 
acquaintance of mine decided he wanted to become a breeder
so I lent him the original research literature on the socialization
processes in dogs, about 600 pages of reported research. 
Some months later when I went to retrieve this chunk of my
library and I asked him what he thought, his comment was, 
"That was a lot of heavy reading".  Soon after he produced 
his first litter and moved the pups as  close to the 49th day 
as he could. Obviously he had a "Gotta let 'em go at seven 
weeks" mindset. 

Here's another example, this from a breeder who had been 
trying  unsuccessfully for years to convince prospective buyers 
to wait until pups were 10 to 12 weeks old. The copies were to 
be handouts to backup what had been argued for years. This 
person breeds a good number of top dogs yet has had 
prospective buyers say, "If you won't let me have the  pup 
at exactly seven weeks, I'll go to a breeder who will." And 
they do. 

These are just two examples among the many that have come 
in. One is of a breeder who should know better fighting buyers
who do know better; the other is of a breeder who does know 
better fighting buyers who should know better. I gather from 
the requests to reprint that have come in that there are more 
buyers who need convincing than breeders. Generally, breeders
who have been out of their backyard and around the block 
are pretty knowledgeable. But first-time buyers, especially, seem 
to have this problem of being over-marinated in mythology. 
Or maybe it's just a matter of good old B.S. baffling brains. 

Whatever the reasons were behind the requests for reproducing 
the article, they were strong enough for Gun Dog to feel the 
article should appear again, and I agree. So here it is with some 
minor editorial changes but no changes in the factual data. 
There has been no new research on dog socialization; the work 
has been so thoroughly done that further work would only be 
whistling in the wind. 

So where did this magical "49 days and not a minute later"
idea that permeates so much of puppy peddling come from? 
The first mention of it that I remember in popular literature 
appeared in 1961. The last sentence in Chapter 3 of a book 
by Richard Wolters said, "...get and  start your dog at the 
right time-seven weeks- that's 49 days old." And  in another
place in the same chapter, in bold italics for emphasis, no 
less, Wolters stated, "Buy your puppy and take him home
at the exact age of 49 days!" Coincidentally, the book was 
called Gun Dog and also featured the wing-on-a-string thing. 
It's a toss-up whether over-doing the wing or the 49 days 
has had the most negative impact on hunting dogs. 

But Wolters didn't just dream up the magical seven weeks. 
Possibly what triggered his imagination and induced his 
cosmic leap to "the exact age of 49 days" was a paper by 
Pfaffenberger and Scott that appeared in 1959 in the Journal 
of Genetic Psychology entitled, "The Relationship between 
Delayed Socialization and Trainability in Guide Dogs." This 
paper suggested that guide dogs had the correct amount of 
attachment to people to become guide dogs if the average
age at Separation from litter mates was not less than seven 
weeks. Or maybe it was a paper by Freidman, King and 
Elliot published in 1961 in Science entitled, "Critical Periods
in the Social Development of Dogs." Or it could have been 
any of a long list of papers by Scott and his co-workers 
beginning about 1944 and culminating in the book published 
in 1965 by John Paul Scott and John Fuller, "Genetics and 
the Social Behavior of the Dog." This book, later published 
under a slightly different title, brought together more than 
20 years of study of dog socialization processes done at the 
Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory at Bar Harbor, 
Maine. The study was massive, utilizing hundreds of 
dogs-wirehaired fox terriers, cocker spaniels, African basenjis, 
Shetland sheepdogs and beagles. Scott was a leading animal 
behaviorist, one of only a handful in North America at the 
time; Fuller was a geneticist, more interested in the genetic 
potential for the occurrence of a behavior than in its 
development. 

Additionally there were many students working toward 
advanced degrees, post-doctoral students and student 
volunteers, all interested in animal behavior, most 
specifically in domestic dogs. This was an early think-tank 
directed at studying dog behavior. Wolters refers to the 
work of Scott and Fuller in his book, so he evidently got 
the 49-day idea from their work somehow. But nowhere in 
all their published work do they say to get a puppy at the 
"exact age of 49 days. " Wolters apparently added 2 and 2 
and came up with 49. So what did they really find? 

One finding extremely important to the 49-day time frame 
was that pups  in a single litter can vary in developmental 
age by a week in each direction, though all are born within 
a few hours. This developmental variation arises from 
several sources-conception can vary two to three days due 
to superfetation, and implantation of fertilized ova in the 
uterus may he delayed another two to three days. In 
addition, location in the uterine horn, blood supply to the
various embryos, developmental arrests or speedups, 
differential delay in parrition all contribute to 
developmental variability. 

There is also differential post partum development, 
especially during the first few weeks. This means that 
by the time the pup reaches 49 days since birth, it can 
be anywhere between 42 and 56 days old  developmentally, 
relative to all other pups in the total population of pups 
whelped on the same day, even to pups in the same litter. 
And it is the neural, physiological and physical development, 
not the exact chronological age not minutes elapsed since 
popping into the cold, cruel world-that is important in the 
behavioral stability or lack of it in pups, and later, in adult
dogs. 

I put this finding first because I consider it the most 
important for putting the 49-day thing into perspective. 
Seven weeks is only a chronological age, only the number 
of days since parturition. Developmentally, it is an 
average of a large sample size with statistical limits of 
plus or minus a week. it says that predictably, 95 percent 
of any population of domestic dogs at seven weeks after 
parturition will be between six and eight weeks old 
developmentally. 

Look at any litter closely and objectively each week for 
behavioral differences and you will see surprising variability. 
You will see some pups that are precocial, some delayed. 
What one pup does at a given age, some did three days 
ago and others won't do until next week. Another major 
finding of the Scott and Fuller studies was the delimitation 
of hypothetical periods in social development alluded to 
earlier, with specific time marks of the period. Days of age 
are averages with plus and minus limits used to make the 
periods somewhat translatable to real time. 

For example, one marker signifying the beginning of the 
socialization period is ear movement in response to sound. 
The average age for this time marker is 19.5 days, with 
95 percent of the pups showing this characteristic between 
14.9 and 24.1 days. Another marker is first teeth eruption 
at 20.8 days with 95 percent limits from 15.0 to 26.6 days. 
So according to these time markers, the average age for 
the start of the socialization period is about 21 days, but 
it can actually vary from 15 to 27 days in terms of 
developmental criteria. 

Scott and co-workers delimited four critical periods of 
social development: 1-neonatal, birth to two weeks; 
2-transition, two to three weeks; 3-socialization, from 
three to 12 weeks; 4-juvenile, 12 to 32 weeks. Beyond 
32 weeks dogs were considered sexually mature. 

We might add to the front end of the prenatal period 
which the research group did not consider, but which 
includes from implantation to parturition. Also, we 
could add a period at the tail end which would include 
the time from one to two years and call it a period of 
emotional maturation similar to a post-teenage child. 

During the prenatal period the developing embryonic 
pup is influenced by visceral stimuli and hormones 
from the dam. Drugs, x-rays, chemicals, diseases, 
parasites or malnutrition happening to the mother-to-be
can be dangerous to the pups, especially in the first 
trimester. Severe stress to the pups in the final trimester 
from temperature, lack of nutrition and other 
physiological and physical conditions impinging on 
the bitch can result in later pup problems, such as 
increased emotional state, extremes in behavior 
and reduced learning ability. 

The neonatal period is characterized by nursing and 
sleeping. At this time pups develop an olfactory imprint 
of the mother, her breasts, the nest, and each other. 
The senses of smell and touch (olfactory and tactile 
senses) are better developed during this period and 
are the only ones usable by the pups to get information 
from the outside world. Humans handling pups at this 
time provide a mild stress which acts to improve pups 
physically and emotionally. Pups handled during the 
first two weeks grow faster, mature faster and are more 
resistant to diseases. They are more stable, handle 
emotional stress better, are more exploratory and 
learn faster than pups not handled during this period. 

The transition period from two to three weeks old is 
when pups gain the use of the remaining modalities 
of sight, hearing and proprioception.  Eyes open at 
around three weeks; hearing begins about 10 days 
later at about the same time as walking and this coincides 
with one-spot defecation outside the nest. The onset of 
social interactions with mother and siblings begins at the 
end of the transitional period. The pup goes from the 
little fat blob that grunts to an animated live little guy in 
these two weeks. Pups have no fear at this time so any 
large objects like a person hovering over them or a loud 
noise as in any typical home-machinery, appliances, 
dropped pans, stumbled-over buckets or voices, all 
perceived for the first time-do not evoke fear responses. 
Rather, they are associated with low anxiety and get
little notice except a mild startle response and a glance 
in the noise direction. Fear is still three or more weeks 
in coming. 

The socialization period begins at three weeks and 
extends to week 14.  During this period pups learn 
to be dogs. Through play fight, play sex, play hunting, 
catching and guarding prey, they develop skills needed 
later in life. They learn the "language" of dominance 
and submission such as soft bite, head turn, and threat
intensity. They also learn to associate with and bond 
with people. Generally most students of dog behavior 
consider socialization of dogs with dogs coming first, 
from three to six weeks, and dogs with people following, 
from six to 14 weeks. 

In reality the two types of socialization overlap just 
about totally. Dog-on-dog, or primary socialization, 
begins during the late gestation stages and continues 
through juvenile into sub-adult stage. People 
socialization, or what I have called secondary 
socialization in a previous Gun Dog article, starts 
with the basic associations formed from handling 
shortly after birth until six or seven weeks, before 
the fear response escalates. Unless socialization on 
dogs and people is well underway by then, it has 
only a small chance of happening at all. 

The last half of the socialization period is marked 
by the development of fear responses starting in 
the fifth week, escalating rapidly through the seventh
week to a peak at nine weeks, then leveling off in 
the tenth week where it remains for the dog's life. 
In general, anything associated with fear during 
weeks seven through nine in the non-socialized dog 
remains a fearful stimulus for life unless changed 
by systematic desensitizing. Fear of aversive stimuli 
occurring for the first time during this period, such 
as harsh punishment, isolation, or any strong 
fear-inducing stimulus, can result in extremes in 
behavior, abnormal fearfulness, difficulty in training 
or anti-social behavior as an adult. This part of this 
period is much like the seven or eight-month-old 
child who begins to cry when approached by a 
stranger, though he would have giggled at every 
stranger just a month earlier. 

The juvenile phase is from three to eight months of 
age and is a sort of post-graduate period when what 
occurred in the socialization period must be reinforced 
of corrected if there is a problem brought on by 
something improperly done in the preceding periods. 
Beyond eight months the dog is considered an adult 
and begins doing adult behaviors, such as leg-lifting 
in territorial marking, gradually increasing in 
dominance and general aggression in males; 
experiencing the first estrus period in females-all 
behavior patterns related to reproduction in general.
This is the period when the dog will attempt to take 
over if he is genetically a dominant dog, or be super 
submissive if genetically shy or submissive. From the 
start of this period to 18 months to two years the dog
is comparable to a teenager and facing about the same 
types of identity crises. But again, these ages are 
averages of large sample sizes with standard deviations. 
I want to emphasize they are not to be taken literally; 
they are not carved in stone. 

The period of most interest to a prospective puppy 
buyer is period 3, the socialization period. This was 
also the period concentrated on most by the Bar 
Harbor group. Their findings demonstrated that 
socialization with dogs, mother and litter mates begins
at three weeks, peaks at seven weeks but continues 
for up to several months longer. The events that mark 
the beginning of this period are eyes opening and 
exhibiting definite startle responses to sudden sounds. 
Adult heart rate and brain wave patterns coincide with 
peak dog-on-dog socialization at seven weeks. 

The period of human acceptance begins at five weeks 
with the improvement in pup mobility and peaks at 
eight and nine weeks, but will continue on for another 
five to six weeks. The criteria used to determine the 
limits of human acceptance were: lowest fear and 
highest approach scores at five weeks implied the start,
and high fear with low approach that became no 
approach at 14 weeks was considered to be the end. 
They suggested the dog-on-people socialization could 
start before five weeks, but prior to then the low 
mobility hinders approach responses. So attraction to 
and acceptance of people actually occurs at least two 
to three weeks earlier. 

The startle response to sound apparent at three weeks 
accelerates and appears as the earliest indication of a 
fear response at five weeks. To establish these limits, 
pups were left with the mother with no human contact 
until the age of testing. That means the high fear response
to humans at 14 weeks was the age at which pups 
encountered humans for the first time. Similarly, the 
low fear, high approach scores at five weeks was the 
first exposure to humans for this age group.  Exposure 
to humans in various amounts in other groups of pups 
showed that even as little as two 20-minute periods a
week from four weeks onward was adequate for 
developing social attachments to people. So why 
"exactly 49 days"? There is no mention of the 49th 
day being anything special by any of the collaborators 
in all this dog behavior research. 

Where could the "magic" of seven weeks come from? 
One indication that seven weeks might be a reasonable 
average for socialization processes to occur, but not 
necessarily the only or even the optimum age, was 
summarized in a graphic plot of the approach/avoidance 
scores on age in weeks presented in the paper on critical 
periods in social development of dogs by Freidman, 
King and Elliot, three members of the research group. 
The graph shows the approach scores were low at two 
and three weeks, jumped dramatically at five weeks, 
then gradually declined to almost no approach at 14 
weeks. Avoidance scores, equated to the development 
of a fear response, were none at three to five weeks, 
then jumped abruptly at seven weeks to a maximum 
by 10 weeks. The lines representing decreasing approach 
and increasing avoidance cross in the seventh week. 

From this the authors concluded the period for most 
rapid socialization was optimum at six to eight weeks. 
However, pups in this study had no exposure to people 
until the day of testing and each week's cohort of dogs 
was tested only once. It measured only the accumulative
effect of deprivation of human contact such as would 
occur in wild canids like wolf, coyote, wild dogs of any 
sort. But somehow Wolters honed this six to eight weeks 
old to "exactly 49 days" and not a minute later. Based 
on the results of Freidman, King and Elliot with pups 
whose initial exposure to humans was when they were 
tested, Scott suggested two rules for producing 
well-balanced, well-adjusted dogs. The first of these is
that the ideal time to produce a close social relationship
between puppy and master occur between six and eight
weeks of age This is the optimal time to remove it from 
the litter and make it into a house pet. Done earlier, 
the pup hasn't enough opportunity to form social 
relationships with other dogs, but would be very 
attached to people. At the other extreme, if exposure 
to people is delayed to 12 or more weeks of age, the
pup will have a good relationship with dogs but will 
be timid and have no confidence with people. A strong 
relationship with people is important for pet dogs and 
for working dogs such as guide dogs, and for some 
hunting dogs where they work under close direction. 
This might apply to, say, field trial retrievers. For those
dogs that do not require such a strong dog-human 
relationship, such as hounds and field trial pointing 
breeds, exposure at the six to eight week period is 
not so essential. 

The second general rule is that puppies should be 
exposed, at least in a preliminary way, to the 
circumstances in which they will live as an adult, 
and this should be done before three or four months 
old. The young puppy at eight to twelve weeks is 
highly malleable and adaptable, and this is the time 
to lay the foundation for its future life work. If puppies 
have very little or no previous human contact, seven 
weeks is conservative-six weeks would be a better age 
to get the pup. Waiting to 12 weeks would produce
the so-called kennel-shy dog. The only case I can
imagine with no people exposure today is a multi-breed 
puppy mill run on a shoestring. Anyone who buys a
hunting dog pup from such a breeder is not popping
on all cylinders. 

But assuming all is normal and the breeder is 
knowledgeable enough about his breed and cares 
enough about his pups to talk to, pet and handle them; 
expose them to noises, strange situations and, strange 
textures underfoot; and allows them to interact fully 
with mother and siblings, then Scott's rule one doesn't 
apply. The pups will have contact with humans, probably
on a daily basis from birth onward, so seven weeks 
(6 to 8) will not necessarily be the best time for puppy 
to be taken from litter mates. Like everything else in
life, the period from six to eight weeks has some down 
sides. 

One down side is the rapid increase in fear responses, 
things like avoidance of strangers and fearfulness of 
new or strange situations.  Barely noticeable at five 
weeks, fear escalates most in the seventh week. Abrupt 
separation from mom and litter mates, the only 
rock-solid security the pup knows, is the most traumatic 
experience of its life so far. Transplanting at seven 
weeks to a totally new environment is magnified because
the developing fear is rapidly escalating. Keeping the
pup in the same situation it has previously associated 
with low fear during the three to six week-old 
period-same location, same mom, same litter mates 
and same breeder with same enriched environment 
routine-will smooth out the rough road that begins 
with the rapid development of the fear reflex late in 
week six and through week seven before it levels of 
in the tenth week. 

Another down side that is related, temporally, at least, 
to the rapid increase in fear, is weaning. Among the time 
marker events included in the Scott and Fuller study is
the normal beginning of weaning at seven weeks. 
Weaning is right up there with total separation from 
everything familiar for being super traumatic to a pup. 

Another down side less well documented but alluded to 
in some of the work of the Bar Harbor group is that the
socialization process of dogs on dogs is not yet 
completed at seven weeks. Establishment of these social
connections and honing them will go on for some weeks
and even months in the case of some behaviors. Sure, 
a dog can survive without it and millions do but the dog 
will be more complete socially if it could have another 
three weeks with mom and all the kids at home. 

Adult sexual behavior of both males and females is 
affected, as is social ordering in sexual encounters here
males must be dominant and females must not be. The
cooperative or competitive individual personality of a 
puppy develops during the ninth and tenth week so 
selections of the type of pup you want is a lot less iffy at 
10 than at seven weeks. There are other behavioral 
modifications as a result of leaving the litter early 
but well-tested documentation is scarce. 

An almost totally undocumented but long-time rule of 
thumb in part of Europe is that at 10 weeks the pup is a 
scale model of what it will be as an adult. Anyone ever
watching pups grow knows that one day the feet are too 
large for the ears, the next day the ears are outsized in 
relation to leg length. But at 10 weeks, for a few days, 
all parts are in the approximate proportions they will 
be when the pup is all grown up. There is no other time 
in the growth curve when you have such a preview of 
coming attractions, of just how the pup will look as an 
adult. I know of no hard evidence or research 
documenting this phenomenon, only anecdotal 
information. It would require a systematic set of 
measurements done at 10 weeks and again at a year 
and at two, as a minimum, on a whole series of 
individual dogs representing many different breeds 
and balanced for gender, and that's hundreds of dogs. 
I've looked at only a few and the phenomenon held for
those but it could have been chance, or applied only to 
the breeds, or primarily in males or other confounding
variables. 

So when should you go knock on the breeder's door to 
pick up your puppy? First, the answer depends on the
breeder and on how he/she treats the bitch and the 
pups. If it's the puppy factory alluded to earlier, where
pups got little or no human contact from birth until 
you arrived to pick out your pup, seven weeks is 
already too late. If you must deal with such a breeder,
and I can think of no reason why you would, six 
weeks is the oldest if you hope to save the pup. 
With the rapid onset of the fear response at seven 
weeks, every day after six weeks old increases the 
probability of the pup suffering because there is a 
lack of human contact. The dog, depending on 
inherited temperament and breed, will be impossible 
or at best extremely difficult to train, may be a fear-biter,
surely will be people-shy, and will act like a wild canid 
generally if left in the litter with no human contact for 
its first 12 weeks. 

But if the breeder is reputable and knows a modicum 
of dog behavior and has the whelping and growing 
pen in the middle of where everyone passes (who can 
resist getting their hands into a group of chubby 
little pups clamoring for attention?) seven weeks is 
too young to leave home. Older is better. The 
optimum time to leave the litter would be 10 weeks
when the pup is most adaptable. Picking a pup is a 
crap shoot at best, but you can get a better glimpse 
of your pup-in-a-poke at 10 weeks because that is 
when what you see is what you get in both the physical 
and psychological attributes. 

Will breeders agree if you insist on waiting until 10 
weeks? Some will; in fact, some already insist on it 
even though they might lose sales. Others will want 
to sell pups as early as possible. The cost to a breeder 
in food, care, wear and tear on facilities, not to 
mention nerves, rises exponentially as pups age. The 
profit that might accrue by seven weeks dwindles 
rapidly in that intervening three weeks from seven to 
ten. 

However, the breeders who agree to let you wait will
be more confident in any guarantees they give and 
will have more satisfied customers. The dogs they send 
out will be much better prepared for life ahead. They 
won't cry throughout their first night away from litter 
mates and mom. No hot water bottles or ticking clocks
for these fearless little guys. They will have the social,
physical and psychological equipment needed to take 
the upheaval, the move, the new people in their life, 
and to take on whatever life and the world have to offer. 
We should all be so lucky. 

More Articles by Ed Bailey: 
Giving Pups a Head Start
Sound Pups
..