The rehabilitation of genetically nervous dogs

Aware that intensive efforts to rehabilitate half of split litters from a nervous strain of Pointers through daily human contact have been unsuccessful, the authors designed this study to determine if a radically different approach utilizing the natural interest for birds and hunting which most Pointers possess would be a bridge to normalcy so that dogs genetically prone to nervous behavior could be rehabilitated. Five nervous and three normal dogs approaching young adulthood were gradually desensitized to open areas, live quail, gun reports and humans—all of which usually produce catatonic freezing, hyper-startle and strong avoidance behavior in the nervous animals. Through a “naturalistic” approach in the framework of the Pointers’ non-laboratory ecological niche using graduated techniques, reciprocally competitive responses and social facilitation, which are described, all the nervous dogs that showed an original “interest” for the qua.l were trained as successful hunted dogs, not obviously different in final performance from their normal kennel mates. Although the nervous dogs overcame their freezing, hyper-startle and human aversion while hunting, generalization did not extend sufficiently to normalize standard behavior test scores obtained under laboratory conditions. These remained at their prerehabilitation level, raising the question of the adequacy of the behavioi tests conducted in a laboratory environment. This appears to be related to the limitations often seen in psychotherapeutic efforts.