A puppy aptitude test is a decent instrument aimed at the wrong question — it records, quite usefully, what one puppy did in one room on one morning, and breeders routinely read the result as a statement about the dog that puppy will become.
The most important first
- The two tests most breeders mean are old ones: Campbell’s 1972 puppy behavior test, which scored social attraction, following, restraint, social dominance and the reaction to being lifted, and the Volhard Puppy Aptitude Test, ten scored categories run at 49 days.
- The real value of a test is comparability — the same stimuli in the same order for every puppy in the litter, which makes differences visible that casual watching hides.
- The predictive evidence is weak: in 134 Border collie puppies tested at 40 to 50 days and 50 of the same dogs retested at 18 to 24 months, only exploratory activity corresponded between the two.
- Most of what goes wrong is procedural rather than conceptual — one session, run by the person the puppies know best, at the wrong point in the day, then compressed into a label.
- Treat a test as one entry in the record you are already keeping in observing and documenting individual puppies, never as the decision itself.
What the standard tests consist of
Formal puppy testing in its familiar form dates to the 1970s. Campbell’s test, published in 1972, drew on items from the classic behavioral genetics work of Scott and Fuller and produced scores for social attraction, following, restraint, social dominance and elevation — the puppy held off the ground with no support. The Volhard Puppy Aptitude Test, from the same decade, runs ten categories including social attraction, social dominance, touch sensitivity and sound and sight sensitivity, each scored one to six, at 49 days of age. Working and service organizations have developed their own versions, and most breed clubs have a local variant.
Structurally they all do the same thing. A stranger takes one puppy at a time into an unfamiliar room, presents a fixed sequence of situations, and scores the response on a scale. The sequence is the point: because each puppy meets the same things in the same order, the scores can be laid side by side. What differs between tests is the item list and the scoring language, and neither difference matters as much as breeders think.
Two of the classic items, restraint (holding the puppy gently on its back) and elevation (lifting it just off the ground), are mild stressors by design. Keep them to a few seconds, support the puppy’s body fully, and stop at once if it panics. A puppy that struggles hard or freezes is giving you information, not failing. How quickly a puppy settles afterward is often more useful than how it reacted in the moment.
Researchers who reviewed the Campbell test also found that its fixed categories were too rigid. Most puppies of every breed landed in the same middle category, and scores rose slightly with age even within the six-to-eight-week window.
What a test is genuinely good for
A structured test does three things well. It gives you a comparable snapshot — nine puppies measured against the same stimulus rather than against your impression of the last litter. It forces individual attention: for twenty minutes each puppy is looked at alone, away from the pen, which is where the quiet one stops being invisible. And it surfaces outliers. A puppy that will not approach a stranger in a bare room, or that startles at a dropped bunch of keys and has not recovered two minutes later, has told you something worth following up in the weeks you still have — that is the territory of fear, recovery and building resilience, not a verdict on the dog.
That last use is the strongest argument for testing at all. Used as a screen that raises questions, a test earns its place. Used as an oracle that answers them, it does not.
How breeders misuse them
The first misuse is the single session. One twenty-minute observation is a sample of one, taken on a day when the puppy may be hungry, tired, cold, teething or two hours past a vaccination. Nothing in the test design corrects for that.
The second is the label. A chart that produces “dominant”, “submissive” or “independent” is seductive because it converts messy behavior into a word, and once the word exists it starts doing work it was never entitled to do: the puppy is described that way to the buyer, handled that way by you, and matched to a home on that basis. This is how a test becomes self-fulfilling — a puppy scored as bold gets the busy household and the confident handling; a puppy scored as soft gets carried, protected and offered less. Six months later the prediction looks impressive.
The third is testing the puppies yourself. The novelty of the situation is much of what the test measures, and there is no novelty in the person who has fed and handled them every day since birth. A familiar tester makes every puppy look more confident and compresses the differences between them.
The fourth is timing. Puppies tested immediately after a meal, in the middle of a play bout, or at the end of a day of visitors are being measured at their least representative. So is a litter tested during two weeks of upheaval.
In practice
A breeder tests a litter of eight at seven weeks, alone, in the kitchen, and writes down a grade for each puppy. Uneasy about two of the results, the breeder repeats the whole sequence four days later with a neighbor as tester in a room the puppies have never entered, and records what each puppy actually did rather than a score. Five puppies come out much as before. Two swap places entirely, and the puppy graded as the softest in the litter is the first to investigate the umbrella. The grades go in the bin; the behavioral notes go into the record.
(Illustrative, composite scenario.)
Veterinary behaviorists no longer treat “dominance” as a personality trait. It describes a relationship between two animals over a resource, not a quality a puppy carries into every home. A puppy labeled dominant at seven weeks is at risk of being handled confrontationally later, which tends to increase fear and defensive behavior. Describe what the puppy did instead.
Running one so the result means something
If you are going to test, make the result worth having. Use a tester the puppies do not know, in a room they have not been in, and have someone else write down behavior rather than scores — what the puppy did, how long it took, whether it came back. Run the sequence at least twice on different days, several days apart, at a comparable point in the daily routine: awake, not just fed, not just woken. Do not tell the tester what you expect, and do not read the results out to the family before the second session.
Then record the raw observations, not a category. “Approached the stranger in four seconds, followed for two meters, left to investigate the bin” survives being reread in a year. “Score 3 — mildly dominant” does not.
Test all puppies at the same age, as close to the same day as you can, and note each puppy’s exact age in days. Even a week’s difference can shift scores, and in one study males and females also scored differently. Some items are much harder to score consistently than others. In one study, independent scorers agreed well on most items but poorly on the sudden-appearance item. Film those items, or have two people score them independently.
Where a test belongs in your evaluation
Set against the cumulative record, a test is a small addition. You have watched these puppies for eight weeks in a setting that matters — how each one eats, sleeps, plays, recovers from surprises and copes with being alone — and that body of observation is broader, longer and less artificial than any twenty-minute protocol. The tests that have shown the most usable predictive value are run much later, on adolescent or adult dogs, in the organizations that follow outcomes; the evidence is set out in what puppy tests can and can’t predict.
Use the test as a cross-check on your own conclusions from temperament and individual differences. Where it agrees, you are more confident. Where it disagrees, you have a question to answer in the days you have left — not a decision that has been made for you.
A markedly fearful or aggressive response is a reason to talk to your vet or a veterinary behaviorist, not just a low score on the sheet.
Work on it
A few minutes here will teach you more than re-reading the article.
Ask yourself
- If I test, who does the testing — and have those puppies met that person before?
- Do I record what each puppy did, or only the score it was given?
- Has a test result ever changed a decision I had already made, or does it mostly confirm what I thought?
Find out & check
- Look up the test your breed club or national registry actually uses, and read its published protocol rather than a summary of it, so you know what its items are meant to measure.
Do one thing
- Take one puppy into a room it has never entered, on its own, for three minutes, and write down what it did — no scoring, no chart.
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Sources & further reading
- Pérez-Guisado, J., Muñoz-Serrano, A. & López-Rodríguez, R., Canadian Journal of Veterinary Research 2008;72:269–277 — Evaluation of the Campbell test and the influence of age, sex, breed, and coat color on puppy behavioral responses. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Alberghina, D. et al., PLOS ONE 2020;15(7):e0236271 — Behavior test for seven-week old puppies. journals.plos.org
- American Kennel Club — Can Puppy Temperament Tests Help Predict Adult Behavior? akc.org
- Riemer, S. et al., PLOS ONE 2014;9(7):e101237 — The Predictive Value of Early Behavioural Assessments in Pet Dogs – A Longitudinal Study from Neonates to Adults. journals.plos.org
- Fratkin, J. L. et al., PLOS ONE 2013;8(1):e54907 — Personality Consistency in Dogs: A Meta-Analysis. journals.plos.org
- Brady, K., Cracknell, N., Zulch, H. & Mills, D. S., Frontiers in Veterinary Science 2018;5:103 — A Systematic Review of the Reliability and Validity of Behavioural Tests Used to Assess Behavioural Characteristics Important in Working Dogs. frontiersin.org
- American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior — Position Statement on the Use of Dominance Theory in Behavior Modification of Animals. avsab.org
- Burch, M. R., International Journal of Comparative Psychology 2020;33 — Assessment of Canine Temperament: Predictive or Prescriptive? escholarship.org
Where evidence is limited, recommendations rest on established practice and expert judgment, and may be updated as knowledge develops.
Next steps
- Read next: What puppy tests can and can’t predict.
- Related: Temperament and individual differences.
- Return to the area hub: Understanding and placing each puppy.