It has been discussed in many "puppy papers" that puppies who are right up in the Horns of the uterus are often more shy......Some people say that they are not as climatized to people, around the bitch as the others.....Somewhere in all my junk I have two papers on a study of lots of beagle puppy litters where this was noted. The puppies were all bred and born at a lab...the bitches were handled a lot and so were the litters and they were recorded as to birth order. I have never been too sure of all of it. But there have been studies. Those would be the last pups born.
I have spent a lot of time with my Breeders litters and I find that their are a lot of different personalities in the litter. I picked my Katy with the Volhard system, same as I picked Abbey that way.
I love sitting in litters of any breed and watching the personalities. I never go for the most forward pup or the most timid, or even laid-back puppy. I like the puppy that is not the bully of the litter.......I have found that the pups I picked as per volhard, have been very easy dogs ( I have picked a lot of pups for other people and for work dogs), and very social. But is that because of all the work we do with them ?, once they are home and maybe not even related to how they were in the litter? It would be very difficult to Test this. Could only be done in a Lab type environment and that would be dreadful for the puppies (the ones that were not socialised)
I think what you do with the puppy from 4weeks (even before) on is very important for the rest of their lives. But many puppies have had lousy Breeders and have still turned out OK, because of lots of effort being put in socialization when they got to their owners, like our Tessa.......Lousy Breeders, to us at 5 weeks. Lots of socialization and training. great socially adept dog.
The same goes the opposite.......Dog well socialized by Breeder, well handled from day one, kept till ten weeks.....treated badly when they went to new owners, badly socialized and not trained. And you get a Annabelle. She has come back to being pretty good, but will never be 100% reliable.
I think we can change dogs in their early 8-16 weeks. Be it good or bad......
I have found that newfies know newfies too. Katy goes almost silly when she sees a newfie, even one she has never met before. Annabelle also accepts newfies easily, I have always found it so amazing, how easy newfie days are, so very social, love it.
We also had our first other newfie arrive at our kennel Club. And mine were almost out of control, trying to greet her. And she was like she had seen old friends. We had never met before and everyone was amazed. Ofcourse we are all good friends now