Puppy Personalities

If you’ve been around dogs, you probably know that each dog has a distinct personality. A dog’s personality plays a large role in their success in our service dog program. Yesterday and today, the Country Capitals puppies and the Down Under puppies went through temperament testing.

In the temperament test, we look at the characteristics of each puppy, based on the characteristics identified by Suzanne Clothier, a wonderful relationships-based dog trainer. This temperament test, plus our other observations of the puppies, helps us get a clear picture of each puppy’s personality. We’re able to identify whether a puppy will be successful in our program, and determine what type of puppy raiser home would be best for each puppy.

For example, when Nancy, our director, was choosing a puppy to raise, she knew that she needed puppy who was extremely polite and understood dog behavior because that pup would be living at the kennel and growing up with lots of dogs with different personalities. When she saw these traits in SSD Meade, she knew that he would be the right puppy for her to raise. And now, almost two years later, we can see that Meade’s temperament test was extremely accurate. He’s a great dog that understands how to get along with other dogs.

The puppy temperament test also helps us identify areas of training that our puppy raisers will need to work on right away.

We’re very excited about these two litters of puppies!

The Country Capitals and Down Under puppies will be joining their puppy raiser families on Friday evening, and then their real training begins!