Choosing a Puppy – Part 1 Performing the Volhard Aptitude Test
Now that a breeder has been chosen, the puppies have been born, it’s time to choose a puppy. Often times the breeder has an order in which they let families choose puppies. In our case it’s the date of deposit that chooses who gets to choose a puppy first.
For me, the color wasn’t important, the sex wasn’t important (although a few things swayed me towards male). What was important is finding the right puppy. But how?
This question of how to choose a puppy is an important one, and there are a few things to consider when choosing a puppy. The most important of this is temperament of the puppy. Are they suited to the job that is going to be put ahead of them? Service dogs have such big and important jobs, it’s very important to test their temperament to ensure they are suited for their work. It’s amazing the range of temperaments found inside a single litter!
Second, the job they will do! While 2 puppies may both be suited temperament wise for service dog work, a hearing dog, a diabetes alert dog, and a seeing eye dog have different requirements. Hearing dogs for example, must be sensitive to sound, but not scared of it. Stability support dogs must be on the large side, and diabetes alert or food allergy alert dogs must be very sensitive to smell.
The gold standard for temperament testing is Volhard temperament test. This test involves 10 separate tests. Each one gets a score of 1 to 6. I will go over each individual test below. Essentially these different tests look at the puppies first reactions to help determine their temperament, trainability and motivation to work with humans.
Test 1 – social attraction
Essentially test 1 is to see if the puppy will come to you, and to watch their body language while they di come to you. This helps gage how confident the puppy is and how social the puppy is. The lower the score (1) the more confident and social the puppy is. The lower the score (6) the less confident and more independent the puppy is. The ideal score we discussed here was between a 2,3, or 4. It was important to us the puppy was happy to come, and wasn’t nervous about it.
Test 2 – following
This test relies on first having the puppy’s attention. Once you have the puppy’s attention, move away from the puppy and ask the puppy to follow you. You can sweetly call the puppy, and the lower the number, the more the puppy wants to follow, the lower the score, the more independent the puppy is. Again, a 2,3 or 4 was ideal for us.
Test 3 – restraint
During this test you pick the puppy up or roll the puppy onto their back. Ideally this is held for a full 30 seconds and you just use a light hand for keeping the puppy there. This test helps determine how dominant the puppy is. Lower scores indicate higher dominance, and a higher score indicates a more submissive puppy. Our ideal score for this test was a 3. We wanted eye contact in situations that may make the puppy nervous so we knew they were looking to us for guidance
Test 4 – social dominance
In this test, you are supposed to sit, and pet the puppy from head to tail to see how the puppy reacts. This tests how social, dominant, or independent a puppy is. After doing some research, I decided to lay on the floor to see how the puppy would react. This is more at the puppies level, so it takes relative size out of the equation. We wanted a score of 2,3,4, or 5. We didn’t want the puppy to run away, and we didn’t want growling or biting.
Test 5 – elevation dominance
During test 5, elevation dominance you hold the puppy with laced hands under their belly, then lift them fir about 30 seconds. You then measure their response. This tests to see how they react when they have little to no control over the situation. The responses we did not want were a 1 or a 2. We wanted the puppy to be able to trust a human when they did not have control. All of the puppies scored a 3.
Test 6 – Retrieving
During test 6, Retrieving, you get the puppies attention on a ball or crumpled piece of paper, then toss it 1 to 2 meters (3-6 feet) from the puppy. Then you observe. This sees how much the puppy is willing to work with humans, and do a job with humans. This was very important to us, as my dog will be a hearing dog. Our ideal score for this is a 3, although we would accept a 2 or 4.
Test 7 – touch sensitivity
Traditionally in test 7, touch sensitivity, a puppy’s foot is pinched. I felt uncomfortable causing the puppy pain, even for such a short period if time. After looking at other people’s temperament testing, I decided to modify the test. Instead of hurting the puppy, we touched all the areas of the puppies and monitored their responses. We touched, moved, looked in, and manipulated their ears, eyes, mouth, feet, tail, toe nails, legs, stomach, and nose. The goal was for the puppies to just let us do it. Service animals need to be able to handled, and thankfully none of the puppies seemed to care we were touching them. Many just wanted to give us kisses.
Test 8 – Sound Sensitivity
Test 8 is one if the most important tests to me, because of what puppies job will be. This was the only test we would accept a 1 as the response for. This test guages how interested in sound a puppy is, as well as how scared they are of it. During this test we had keys and a metal food bowl. While the puppy was distracted I dropped the keys into the bowl. The 2 scores we would nit accept were 5 or 6, as this showed the puppy had little to no interest in sounds. Our ideal score was a 3.
Test 9 – Stability
Test 9, stability, gages how the puppy reacts to strange or unusual sights that may startle the puppy. The idea behind this test is an umbrella is opened where the puppy can see it. This tests how strong the puppies fight or flight response is. For this test, we wanted anything except the 1 or 6 score. A score of 1 would be too aggressive for our wants, and since puppy is a service dog in training, we wanted less of a flight drive.
Test 10 – Structure
The final test is structure. This is less of a test than an observation. This helps ensure that the puppy is developing correctly and will limit future issues when it comes to physical development. For this, only a Good score was acceptable to us. All of the puppies scored good.
The video we watched to help us understand how to do the tests and score them was below! I’ll go into interpreting the scores, and the scores our chosen puppy received in the next post.
Also, you can learn more about the Volhard aptitude test here https://www.volharddognutrition.com/choosing-your-puppy-pat/
Recent Comments