Duke’s Puppy Kindergarten deepens understanding of man’s best friend, human-dog bond
For Suki, her favorite part of every morning is getting to play with her friends once she’s dropped off at kindergarten. There, between play times, she’ll learn, walk outside and nap before it’s time to go home.
Suki works hard. And even if she doesn’t pass all her tests, she’ll still be able to bring joy to others’ lives.
If you find yourself near the camel statue by Gross Hall on the Duke University campus, walk right up to 4-month-old Suki and her classmates scampering across the grass.
Even if it overwhelms them at times, the Duke Puppy Kindergarten puppies love to say hello.
Puppy Kindergarten
Over 100 Duke undergraduates volunteer to help raise Labrador retriever puppies, like Suki, who are between 8 and 20 weeks old.
Beyond enjoying their cuteness, the students get to be a part of something bigger: a project that runs the puppies through cognitive games to help determine which can graduate as service dogs.
The Duke Puppy Kindergarten, a longitudinal study founded in 2019 and funded by the National Institute of Health, partners with Canine Companions and EENP (Eyes, Ears, Nose and Paws), two nonprofit service-dog organizations.
The ultimate goal is to increase the number of assistance dogs so more dogs can serve more people, says Vanessa Woods, director for the Duke Puppy Kindergarten. She and her husband Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropology professor at Duke, have written a new book, “Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog,” sharing what they’ve learned about canine cognitive development.
Cognitive games
In a room near the kindergarten, a puppy waits patiently for a treat in a plastic container, glancing between the human researcher and the container.
Just playing the game for five minutes a day, most puppies will increase their eye contact with the researcher in an attempt to get the treat.
“Dogs who make a lot of eye contact tend to get adopted out of shelters faster,” Woods said. “Owners who have dogs that make a lot of eye contact report being happier with their dog and having a better relationship with their dog.”
Eye contact is important for bonding, according to Hare. It’s also a big predictor of dog trainability, he said.
Woods and Hare have also found that, like adult dogs, puppies have multiple intelligences, each contributing to their behavior, development and performance skills.
“[Their intelligence]” emerges at different times,” Hare said. “It helps explain why dogs, especially puppies, have some of the struggles they have as they grow up.”
Analyzing puppies’ multiple intelligences helps the researchers predict their success at becoming service dogs.
“We’re trying to see if we can help graduate more service dogs by predicting really early who is most likely to make it,” Woods said. “Service dogs are so important because we’re in this real cultural shift. It’s different [from] where we were even a generation ago, the way our parents were raising dogs.”
A common frustration of new puppy owners is yowling in the middle of the night for seemingly no reason. But, Woods and Hare emphasize, their findings suggest if your puppy is making noise at night it probably has to relieve itself.
“They’re not trying to trick you, or get out and play,” Hare said. “You’re not [accidentally] teaching them [bad behavior]. They have tiny little bladders.”
The book covers topics such as:
How to improve bonding between you and your puppy.
How the puppy mind develops and when different cognitive skills begin to develop.
What to know about puppy sleep.
How puppies use their eye contact.
Why your puppy cries at night
“It’s the book we wish we had when we started out,” Woods said.
Canine Companions
Canine Companions provides the dogs to Duke Puppy Kindergarten and takes them back after they graduate to continue their journey.
“From helping people with PTSD, working with veterans, people with physical disabilities, children, other adults in facilities, we’re lucky that our dogs can do a lot of things,” said Brenda S. Kennedy, the vice president of Canine Health and Research at Canine Companions.
Kennedy said cognitive games that focus on eye contact have been telling in predicting future service dogs.
“What we love about our research is that these puppies — they love these games,” Kennedy said. “They’re games for them. It’s a really fun kind of joyous thing to see.”
Want to volunteer?
Katelyn Sheets, 21, a rising senior at Duke, has been involved with The Puppy Kindergarten since freshman year.
She supervises and takes care of puppies overnight and enjoys walking them, even if some have never been on leashes before.
“It’s really fun, [especially] when they’re in a situation where socializing is fine and manageable,” Sheets said. “People just love saying hi to them.”
Jacqueline Wright, 22, has been involved with the research side of volunteering, which includes performing tests that help humans understand when puppies begin to learn certain skills. Most of the puppies at the kindergarten are Labrador retrievers because many have a gene that makes it difficult for them to regulate their hunger, making them easier to train with treats, she said.
Even if puppies don’t qualify for service dogs, they can become military dogs, therapy dogs, hearing dogs or simply household pets.
Though Wright is moving across the country soon, she said she’ll stay connected to the puppy program and Canine Companions.
“I want to encourage other people to do it,” she said. “I think it’ll be a part of my life forever.”
To learn more about volunteering go to Canine Companions website, or fill out an interest form during the school year at duke.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bwvFC2bhSRB556S
