# Nature vs. Nurture



## martemchik (Nov 23, 2010)

A couple of recent threads, PMs, and actual in person discussions have gotten me to realize that there are so many people that still lean towards nurture when it comes to dogs. I have to admit, I was one of those people, but the more I read and the more experience I got, the more I lean towards nature.

Anyways...I think that someone's basic ideas about this subject really leads them in one way or another when picking a breeder or a dog. There's a lot of people out there that don't believe a lot in the nature part and think that they have a much larger affect on a dog's temperament than genetics do and therefore they don't care where the dog comes from as long as its raised in the right family.

So where does everyone stand on this subject? How much can nurture overcome nature? And how much of nature just can't be changed?

Also...my opinion is that there is some nature that just can't be nurtured out...how would someone go about explaining that to another person without getting really confrontational or being rude about it?


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## Merciel (Apr 25, 2013)

I like Patricia McConnell's analogy that the dog's genetics are a "blueprint written in pencil." A really determined owner can override them to a certain point. But only to a certain point.

I think that for the great majority of dogs (and here I don't mean GSDs specifically, but _all_ dogs), their genetic natures are not strongly determined and so it's easy to believe that nurture is the only determining factor. If the dog's inherent nature is extremely pliable and plastic -- and in many cases it is -- then in effect, how it's raised and socialized _does_ determine what that dog becomes.

But if you have lived or worked with a dog who had very strong genetic predispositions, then I think you come to a different view.


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## MichaelE (Dec 15, 2012)

Every GSD I've owned had a different personality, temperament, drives, and thresholds. Each had to be handled according to what they were capable of and what I could make them understand.

I never really thought much about the nature vs. nurture argument.

They are what they are and you get to know each one and deal with each accordingly. It's not rocket science. More like dog psychology. It almost has to be that way since they can't talk.


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## crackem (Mar 29, 2006)

I think the majority of dogs have a genetic potential that is similar. They all fall within that certain range that how you raise them can make a observable differences, at least enough to fuel the debate among dog owners. But I think their highest potential is limited by genetics. It makes sense to me, that most everything else in this world follows that "bell curve" type distribution, why not doggie genetic potential?

So, among most dog owners, nurture is going to have the broadest impact on dog behavior, though I think it's mostly because they have similar genetic potential, not because nurture is stronger than nature. crystal clear right?


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## JakodaCD OA (May 14, 2000)

here's an example.

Years ago
I had a gsd that I raised from 8 wks old, wonderful dog, sound in temperament/good health. Easy trainer.

He was 4 years old when I got another (different lines not related)
I did the same things with him that I did with the 1st, he was a fear biter or should I say "nipper"..because he never bit and did damage..I managed it, 24/7, for 9 years. Some scenerios he was fine, others not so good. (shoulda known better, I was young and still pretty dumb, his 'mother' was a nipper to)

So above, to me, is, you can't change genetics, you can raise two dogs the same way, but you can't change their "core"..You may be able to 'manage' it, but it's always there right under the skin..

To many people look at price and cuteness factor/impulse buy.


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## JakodaCD OA (May 14, 2000)

this is a double post..


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## MichaelE (Dec 15, 2012)

Yes, it is and now we have two threads running. Will you merge these for us please?


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## JakodaCD OA (May 14, 2000)

I can't, but I did notify the moderator of this topic


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## Castlemaid (Jun 29, 2006)

Threads are merged now.


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## JakodaCD OA (May 14, 2000)

thanks Lucia


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## MichaelE (Dec 15, 2012)

:thumbup: Thanks.


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## Liesje (Mar 4, 2007)

I agree with crackem. I always believe that nature rules, but I think in most cases, the nature "spectrum" is very large, there is a lot of room for nurture influence. This is how I visualize the relationship between the two. I might be the blue line and you might be the green line.


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## martemchik (Nov 23, 2010)

I had alerted a moderator as soon as I realized it posted twice lol. Looks like we've merged!

I dunno...I still see too many people thinking that it doesn't matter where they get a dog from because they can fix/train anything out of it. People that think fear comes from experiences instead of genetics. Sure...some dogs will be fearful because of an experience when younger, but at the same time, if that dog had stronger temperament it probably would just bounce right back up and not be fearful after a bad experience. I'll use my dog as an example...as a small pup, he was attacked by our neighbor's dog. Bit him on the nose to the point of bleeding. The very next day, all he wanted to do was play with that dog again! Today...not fearful of dogs or anything. We also took him to the dog park where he would get rolled and pinned on a regular basis...no signs of any issues from that today...he's an extremely confident and almost too dominant personality.

I think this is why so many people go to BYB or lesser breeders...they don't think that titles or championships prove anything. They don't care about temperament, they care about the look of the dog (and not even perfect conformation). They care that they have a dog that looks like a police dog...and the cheaper the better. If it does become a bag of nerves...its because of something that happened and has nothing to do with its genetics. Anyone else get that feeling?


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## Merciel (Apr 25, 2013)

I was trying to find that graphic! My Google-fu is weak, I couldn't get it on GIS for anything.

In any case, I think the upshot of the combination is twofold:

(1) Genetics may not matter tremendously in the middle of the bell curve, but they matter a _lot_ at the extremes, therefore just about everybody is best served by trying to pick a dog with a stable inborn temperament or at least not an outright lousy one;

but

(2) If you _do_ end up with a dog who has a lousy inborn temperament, it may be possible to do more with that dog than might initially have seemed possible, if you are sufficiently determined (and knowledgeable and skilled, but getting the knowledge and skill more or less goes back to being sufficiently determined). Nurture still is a part of the equation. Nature is not everything.

I feel like this is pretty non-controversial but whatever, here's a pile of words about it anyway.


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## martemchik (Nov 23, 2010)

crackem...I'm with you on the bell curve...most dogs will fall within an acceptable range. But what about the outliers? Are they caused by nature or nurture? And aren't there people out there that think that nurture can overcome those natural outliers?


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## Merciel (Apr 25, 2013)

martemchik said:


> But what about the outliers? Are they caused by nature or nurture? And aren't there people out there that think that nurture can overcome those natural outliers?


Both. Most dogs aren't taken to the utmost of their potential, because there just aren't that many people who can do it. And some potentially good dogs unarguably get ruined by crappy, abusive handling; I see them more often than I'd like. You can get outliers from nurture, for good or ill, just as you can from what's born in the blood.

I don't think you can draw a clear line either way.

And like I said earlier (and in other threads), I do believe that you can overcome crappy genetics to some limited degree. I'm certainly never going to argue that Pongu's ever going to be a courageous or even normal dog, but he's come a lot farther than I imagined he would.


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## mycobraracr (Dec 4, 2011)

I think that genetics plays the largest role but the training socialization and environment can have an effect on what aspects of the genes come forth. 

My example: My little BYB girl Mina, she was very well socialized, in formal training her whole life, she had some food allergies as a puppy so I put her on a raw diet, was in protection training and is a fairly confident (not enough for protection IMO) very stable pet dog. I get emails here and there from people who have her siblings and they are riddled with problems. Bad hips, elbows, allergies, fear issues. Mina has none of those issues. So this is one example I have, that environment can have some effect on a dogs outcome.


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## Liesje (Mar 4, 2007)

My old TD used to say that dogs (this is in the context of IPO/SchH and similar) will fall back on their genetics, their foundation, and their training, in that order. I agree with that and it was proven time and time again!


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## WateryTart (Sep 25, 2013)

Not a dog expert but based on what I know of psychology and nature/nurture, I would say that the potential (in any direction, good/bad/neutral) is innate. I think nature is a very strong force, and in the case of animals and intelligence or temperament, more powerful than nurture.

That's not to say that nurture doesn't matter, because it DOES. Experiences and handling and environment all matter. But they're operating on what was already there, and you can't add to that or change it once it's created. You can only change how the innate is expressed.


Sent from Petguide.com Free App


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## Mr. D (Oct 4, 2013)

Elements of Temperament: Drives, Thresholds and Nerves*

Someone posted this in another thread. I don't remember who, or I'd credit them. But it is an excellent read. I think that it applies to the debate at hand. 

I believe at the core, a dog can't be changed no matter how much time and money is surrendered. A weak nerved dog will always be a weak nerved dog. Regardless of time and training. Does that mean we shouldn't try? No.


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## selzer (May 7, 2005)

mycobraracr said:


> I think that genetics plays the largest role but the training socialization and environment can have an effect on what aspects of the genes come forth.
> 
> My example: My little BYB girl Mina, she was very well socialized, in formal training her whole life, she had some food allergies as a puppy so I put her on a raw diet, was in protection training and is a fairly confident (not enough for protection IMO) very stable pet dog. I get emails here and there from people who have her siblings and they are riddled with problems. Bad hips, elbows, allergies, fear issues. Mina has none of those issues. So this is one example I have, that environment can have some effect on a dogs outcome.


I am not sure what this proves though. The genes are a mixup from the sire and the dam. It is possible that mix that your dog got landed with just happened to be all gold bars to the level of the potential available, while some other owners' mixtures had a lot less overall potential. Or it can mean that dogs born and raised out of the same sire and dam raised by different people will exhibit problems dependent on the owners handling.

This site pushes socialization like crazy, and if it is all nature, then there really isn't much point to socialization. I know a lady who had a pup from birth to four months, did not train or socialize the pup, took it out of the kennel to a show, and passed the CGC test with it. It had good temperament. 

Is it possible that good socialization during critical development will be super good. Bad socialization during critical development will be super bad. No socialization might be better for a dog that bad socialization. And perhaps for some dogs' makeups, or during some periods, forced socialization or bad socialization will be worse for those puppies, while for a dog of a different make up, a lack of experiences/socialization will be detrimental. 

So taking Dog B out and doing all the things that worked with Dog A, might give less stellar results or even negative results because Dog B has a different make up than Dog A. That may be genetics, pack order, whatever. Is Dog B incorrect if Dog B thrives is a different system, less socialization, different training, etc? 

I think a single litter has a variety of personalities and some might work better with one management style, and others with another management style. It stands to figure that different socialization styles might work better with each dog too. Perhaps this is just a way of saying that if the dog does not flourish in my care, then he is defective, or the opposite, if the dog does not flourish than the care was not suited to the dog.

But maybe it is a little of both. Though some are clearly genetic messes, and those dogs, the ones that are so fearful that they are seriously dangerous, and neither aging nor carefuls socialization, nor training/bonding is making them less so, they are definitely sad cases. I suppose when you are very competitive, you might reach the dog's potential, and that could be frustrating. The vast majority of people would not have trouble with the high end of the genetic potential. Only those who purchased the dog for serious sport or working. But the low end of the genetic potential would be terrible for any owner.


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## Liesje (Mar 4, 2007)

I've owned, trained, and titled a dog that was, for lack of a better term, batpoop crazy! Yes they exist. "Nurture" went a long way making the dog a fantastic pet and great for training and even competing with in *certain* venues, but the dog was cray cray.


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## Doc (Jan 13, 2009)

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken I don't care how good you are.


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## boomer11 (Jun 9, 2013)

Doc said:


> You can't make chicken salad out of chicken I don't care how good you are.


hahahah nice. i use to be naive and think nurture. i thought i could get a dog from anywhere and train it how i wanted. i scoffed at people who said go to a good breeder. after owning a psycho dog from a byb i am now firmly 110% in the nature camp. anyone who says otherwise just hasnt met a dog that is truly mentally messed up.


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## martemchik (Nov 23, 2010)

So the discussion is basically...if a dog's temperament tends to slightly lean in the wrong direction, nurture can help either push it over or bring it back to where its manageable. But if a dog is solid, no amount of messed up nurture can really mess with it?

Sure...with enough time and effort we as humans can change a lot of things...but at the end of the day you're still not going to completely change what nature has given. So...a fear biter will always be a fear biter and will never be trusted no matter how much training has been put into it.


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## Uniballer (Mar 12, 2002)

martemchik said:


> So the discussion is basically...if a dog's temperament tends to slightly lean in the wrong direction, nurture can help either push it over or bring it back to where its manageable. But if a dog is solid, no amount of messed up nurture can really mess with it?


No. I think plenty of people have ruined some pretty good dogs through abuse or inappropriate training or lack of socialization.

I read some study years ago that indicated that working ability correlates approximately to genetics at about the 70th percentile. So I shorthand that by saying about 70% of dog behavior is genetic. The rest is raising, socialization, and training.

Another way to think about it is that the dogs at the bottom of the bell curve cannot be helped through socialization and training. The dogs at the top of the bell curve need very little socialization (but still benefit from good training). And the dogs in the middle both need and deserve our best efforts.


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## crackem (Mar 29, 2006)

The bell goes from right to left or left to right. The top of that curve simply signifies the highest number of dogs with outliers on the right and left.

Let's say unstable fear biter is on the left and rock solid, bomb proof is on the right. There are going to be lower numbers of these outliers and increasingly higher numbers as you move towards the center of the bell, hence the bell shape. 

now within this "bell" you can take a rock solid bomb proof dog and affect it only so much. I don't think you can ever take it, and make it a fear biting spook. You could tie it up behind a fence and have every tom **** and harry and a few janes in the neighborhood come by and throw rocks at it, and whack it with sticks and when he barks and tries to bite, run away. You can create a picture of something, but he's still not a fear biting spook. The dog will never go all the way down the bell. He might not trust strangers after a while in that scenario, but I bet removing that rock solid dog from that situation and take him for a walk down a busy street, that dog isn't going to react to anything really or even people probably, unless of course you have every single person they meet, whack them with a stick and run away. But barring anything totally ridiculous like that, the dog is going to be comfortable with most any situation. Even if you had every 3 rd person out of ten act calmly and nice to that tied out dog, he's probably going to learn to size people up and still act appropriately. 

By the same token You can take that dog on the far left, the fear biting spook and socialize the heck out of it, work thru tons of issues and make him appear calm and relaxed in a lot of situations, but as soon as something changes, they will appear anything but. You can move that dog to the right towards the "bomb proof and rock solid" in appearance, but it will never move all the way to the right and can only go so far with tons of work and when the situations change, they are what they are.

Then you have the majority of dogs that fall somewhere in between being completely rock solid and fear biting spook. These dogs have a lot of room for variability in society depending on how they are raised. You can certainly take a decent dog in terms of potential and move it up or down the scale. The more towards the "middle" of the bell the dog is, the more room for variability you have. Get closer to the edges and you probably have less room to play with. 

Since most dogs fall in that middle part, again giving the "bell" shape, I think most dogs can be greatly affected by "nurture", it's how nature works 

I think some of us have a skewed perception, mostly because the overwhelming number of dogs in this world breed simply because they have parts and access to each other and produce many other dogs that have parts and access and you end up with what nature gives us. 

A lot of us on the other hand don't have much close to a "naturally" breeding dog. They're very carefully selected, and even then they reproduce it is most likely a bell shaped graph, with the criteria being shifted a little to the right compared to the overall graph.


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## Blanketback (Apr 27, 2012)

I think you might be jumping to conclusions with your theory that people don't care about genetics because they believe nuture to be more important. I fall into the nuture camp, but I'm not disregarding genetics. And this is only from my own experience, so it's really very limited. Working with a few GSDs sure doesn't make me an expert, lol. But from what I've seen, it's pretty easy to mess up a dog, and it's also pretty easy to throw in the towel. So I've come to the conclusion that some people really shouldn't own this breed. Not because of the demands per se, but because some people are lacking in a basic spirit that GSDs need. If that makes sense. I've seen the aggressive GSDs dumped, and I question (*very* much) whether that same dog would have had the opportunity to show that aggression had it been owned by someone else. And I've never had any problems with mine, even my byb whose sire I couldn't meet because he'd been rehomed due to his aggressive displays to the child in the home. This dog of mine was a therapy dog, but I can't conclude that all his temperament came from his dam. I do assume that how I raised him influenced him quite a bit.


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## Chris Wild (Dec 14, 2001)

Blanketback said:


> I think you might be jumping to conclusions with your theory that people don't care about genetics because they believe nuture to be more important.


It's an accurate conclusion to jump to quite often. Especially amongst the general dog owning population, as opposed to those here on the board who are for the most part more educated in dogs than the average person. Whenever a dog is skittish, timid, fearful, Joe Public is just sure that it "must have been abused". Nine times out of ten the dog was born that way, not abused. It may not have had the benefit of the best raising and training in the world, but it wasn't beaten on a daily basis as people seem to assume. 

We even have a member here on the board (I won't name names) who is prone to answering puppy purchasing/bloodline/breeder inquiries with something along the lines of "just get any ol' GSD and so long as you raise it right it'll be perfect". Completely ignoring any aspect of genetics.

Lies' diagram pretty much sums it up perfectly. The only thing I would add to that is that different traits are going to have different sizes of spectrum along which the final product may fall. For some traits, it will be a very narrow spectrum, for some traits much wider, for some there may be very little variance between "blue" and "green" and for others a much larger variance between where those may fall. And the size of that spectrum is definitely determined by genetics.


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## Wolfgeist (Dec 4, 2010)

I too believe in the strength of the dog at its core, a product of genetics, either helped or hindered by training and socialization (or the lack there of). I am still impressed by how many times my dog has been aggressively attacked in my neighbourhood (the most recent serious one last weekend) and he still doesn't show any reactivity or aggression as a result of it - I firmly believe that is genetics at work.

I believe nature dominates and sets the foundation, while nurture shapes (to a degree).


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## Lilie (Feb 3, 2010)

If I wanted a dog who'll work within a specific venue, I'd purchase one from a breeder whose lines have been proven. 

If I wanted simply a pet, I'd purchase one from a breeder who I would trust to find me a more laid back pup. 

If I was concerned about having a GSD with any drive at all, I'd go to a different breed. 

I think there are many GSDs who are ruined due to inexperianced handlers. Those who think their young playful pups are being aggressive because they are nipping at their heels. Those who think their dogs should go into the dog park carrying cupcakes for other dogs. Those who think their GSDs should cuddle on the couch, serve cocktails at parties and then take the face off of the delivery man. 

I do think nature plays a part of a dog's foundation. But I think there is only a very small amount of truly unstable dogs due to nature. 

I personally know a Lacy who is so fearful it makes my heart hurt. She was raised to bay feral hogs. That is all her trainer used her for. If you sneeze she cowers. I was getting her a drink and air spewed from the tap while I was filling her bowl and she nearly strangled herself trying to get away. But put her in a hog pen and she is a crazy monster. No fear. No stop. A bomb can go off and she is totally 100% focused on the hog. She never touches the hog and she is quick as a whip, the hog never touches her. She doesn't just bay it - she works it. It is ubelievable to watch this fearful dog work. I can't help to think if she was raised (nurtured) differently what an incredible dog she could have been (tracking/agility/SAR). But her fearfulness is blamed on nature. My opinion it was the training..or lack thereof.


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## Blanketback (Apr 27, 2012)

I guess I'm just very fortunate because I've only ever met one really crazy-spooky GSD, but I have no idea about the background so can't say why the dog was like that. What a sad case though! But I think Joe Public isn't concerned about either nature or nuture, just the coloring, lol.


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## Lilie (Feb 3, 2010)

Blanketback said:


> I guess I'm just very fortunate because I've only ever met one really crazy-spooky GSD, but I have no idea about the background so can't say why the dog was like that. What a sad case though! *But I think Joe Public isn't concerned about either nature or* *nuture, just the coloring, lol.*




That's the sad part. They want color and they want a dog that comes out of the womb trained. With all the tools available through the web and all the trainers out there - they want instant results. And can't figure out why it just doesn't happen that way.


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