Does a stressful and often challenging environment throughout the pregnancy impact how puppies grow out? Imagine that a young pet wanders around on the streets of cities for two months with constant anxiety. The kids chase her around the street, throwing rocks at her. A dog threatens her, and she fights daily to gather satisfaction and feed herself. Finally, she’s captured by a police officer responsible for animal control and escorted to a shelter. There, she is finally able to get suitable food. However, she’s unable to unwind; the facility is filled with strange sounds and smells. Her run isn’t big, and the flooring is challenging to do. After being there for several weeks, a shelter staff member discovers she’s pregnant and due in the near future. The shelter places her on the waiting list to be placed in the foster home. The shelter is aware that puppies do not fare well as they mature in shelters.
In the days leading up to the birth of her pup, she moves into one of the foster homes with a dog with experience. Her life gets much better. The puppies she has are small but healthy. Her foster mom is doing all the right things for them, providing them with many positive things. At least two months old, they’re placed up for adoption and quickly accepted to new homes.
A few months later, the reports returned to the shelter stating that the pups were all agitated and prone to being scared by the new environment. The staff at the shelter thinks this is due to their genetic makeup, as their initial environment was awe-inspiring. However, the puppy’s tiny brains were developing before birth, and their hormone system was being tuned to prepare them for the challenges the mother was experiencing.
This hormonal adjustment could be a crucial survival strategy. In animals raised in dangerous environments where fear is the norm, the compassionate stress response can be vital and can mean the difference between living and death. However, a high-reactive stress response can also be costly. When animals are born into gentler environments with less concern about it, it is more beneficial to focus energy elsewhere, such as development or reproduction. When living in such environments, extreme worry could cause harm, leading to being unable to hunt for food or companions. Mothers of mammals pass on information to their kids about what kind of environment to anticipate. They pass it on at the earliest opportunity to add an accurate chance for proper growth.
If our dog from the shelter was snatched and starving in the streets and was stressed, her stress mechanism would have been activated strongly and raised her cortisol levels. This hormone alerts different body tissues to be prepared for a potential threat and stifles the digestive systems that are luxuries like reproduction. It also draws additional energy out of reserves.
Typically, a protein inactivates cortisol in the placenta, protecting fetuses from the cortisol levels the mother experiences. However, when cortisol levels are excessively high, some of it passes through the placenta, transferring to developing pups. The puppies receive this cortisol in the form of information. The World can be scary. It is essential to be ready. This is supposed to acquaint pups’ bodies with what’s to expect in life and allow them to build a well-tuned stress response and metabolic system.
Dog Studies Lacking
The effect of this on children who were born to mothers with emotional stress has been researched in rodents in the laboratory. If pregnant rats are exposed to extreme stressors (such as being restrained within a clear plastic tube for up to an hour per day), our children develop less resistance to being stressed.
Rats generally avoid spaces where predators could locate them. This preferential behaviour is especially evident for rats already stressed at birth.
Additionally, the animals born to stressed mothers have stress mechanisms with higher reactivity than usual. Their cortisol levels rise significantly in response to tension. They can slow down to diminish compared to cortisol levels in rats born into mothers who are not explicitly stress-induced. In essence, the afraid rats are afflicted with a stress response that is tuned up, and it appears they’re ready for events of stress that never happen.
This phenomenon has also been witnessed in humans, particularly in the Netherlands, following a winter of hunger at the close of World War II.
The impact of the intra-uterine environmental conditions has not been investigated in dogs. However, no evidence suggests that it functions differently in rodents or humans. Likely, dogs’ mothers also pass on information about their environment to their babies in their uterus. Sometimes, that information cannot be accurate, leading to a life filled with stress and suffering, but the child gets embraced and loved instead. A puppy like this would be sensitive to a strong reaction to stressful situations. The program could help save a pet’s life if she is on the street. However, it’s not the perfect choice for a pet. Moreover, it can result in panicked or anxious dogs.
What is the frequency of this happening? We aren’t able to comprehend everything that influences the behaviour of a dog’s adult, and the research studies needed to work together on the many mechanisms involved are challenging without exposing canines to challenging circumstances. Therefore, it’s hard to determine if it’s not a problem, but I’m not sure this is atypical.
Preventing Stress When Possible
We could adopt preventive measures, but we must take our time to ensure that the mom’s lifestyle during pregnancy determines the kind of environment in which her pups will grow up. Therefore, staying away from stressors that cause extreme anxiety during the pregnancy of a dog is an excellent idea.
The everyday stresses of life, such as having to visit the vet for a check-up, are likely acceptable because that’s precisely what the pups have to deal with in their daily life. However, a situation in a shelter will likely be something to stay clear of for any pregnant dog. Many shelters do a great job of bringing mothers and newborn pups into foster homes, and they can extend this practice to dogs who are pregnant before they have babies. It could also be unwise to ship pregnant animals for long distances, like shipping pregnant females to another country.
We need to find out what the influence of intra-uterine environmental conditions is. However, if we’re trying tirelessly to introduce puppies to the World at birth effectively, why don’t we do it before birth?
Too Late to Avoid Stressors?
Do you know any information about the surroundings encountered by the puppy’s mom you think of thinking about? Do you have to give up that puppy? No! It would stifle more (if not the majority) adoptions. You can adapt. However, it would help if you served your growing child with as many interactions with others and as stress-free, secure exposure to the World around him as possible. Remember that your dog could possess this unnoticed obstacle towards gaining average confidence, and you should take the initiative to “super-socialize” him, just in the event.
When many people get puppies, only a few weeks remain the optimal time to get them socialized with your puppy, which means you can only partially fill the gaps. However, you can be aware of the signs that your puppy is in a “fear period” (which can be experienced numerous times throughout his life). Take extra precautions to shield yourself from terrifying events and tackle his fear through behaviour modifications during these moments. Also, seek out the help of a trained positive behaviour well-qualified earlier rather than later when you observe unusual fears or an aversion to your adopted child.
Remember that shelters are constantly looking for reputable foster homes. Being a foster dog for a pregnant animal can help build the strong temperaments of her pups!