Ahead of the Class w/ Vanessa Woods

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Through Research, Puppy Kindergarten Teaches Humans How to Build Better Connections

About The Episode

In 2018, Vanessa Woods became Director of a new Duke Puppy Kindergarten program. The university initiative involves student volunteers to help as they bring in puppies from 8-20 weeks old to study during their initial period of rapid brain development. Each semester, it’s a new group of dogs.

The puppies are from Canine Companions, the largest U.S. service dog organization, and the project receives funding from the National Institute of Health. Their focus is on how this can help improve signs of what will make a good service dog. In the program, they try out different games, activities, or test scenarios to measure the impact of elements on the cognitive development of puppies. 

In the process of these games and studies, Vanessa and her team have also discovered other more general observations about dogs at that age. For example, they tried looking at how extreme socialization might have an impact on having a dog interact with hundreds of students and people around campus. They discovered that once a certain threshold of people is met, like with a normal routine of getting outside and meeting new people and dogs, it is sufficient and all that the dog needs. So dog parents do not need to feel like they are missing out.

Over time, Vanessa and her husband Brian Hare – have become leading experts on early dog development and understanding how, or why, they act in certain ways. Brian started the Duke Canine Cognition Center in 2009, the first academic program dedicated the study of dog intelligence. Since then, university programs that study dogs’ behavior and thinking have sprouted up at more than a dozen schools. 

Together they new co-authored book, Puppy Kindergarten, informed by their years of academic research studies and evolutionary science into a comprehensive resource for pet parents who are looking for proven research about raising pups to reach their full potential

About The Guest - Vanessa Woods

Vanessa Woods is the Director of Duke University’s Puppy Kindergarten program. She also serves as a research scientist in the evolutionary anthropology department. She has written several books including Bonobo Handshake, Survival of the Friendliest, and The Genius of Dogs. Her latest, Puppy Kindergarten – named after her program – is co-written with husband and colleague Brian Hare. They live together in North Carolina with their dog, Congo, a retired service dog.

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