Socialization

Temperament, Character, Personality & Behavior

Sensitive & Critical Social Period
Expose Without Over-Whelming
Socialization Precautions
Vaccination Protocals
Puppy Socialization & Training Classes 9-12 weeks
Cleaning & Disinfecting

“The important fact is that behavior is never wholly inherited or wholly acquired but always developed under the combined influences of hereditary and environmental factors.”

— John Paul Scott - Genetics and the Social Behaviour of the Dog

Socialization helps develop a puppy into a confident and well-mannered member of the community that behaves in an acceptable manner with people and animals. Socialization or socializing a dog is a carefully structured process to develop their temperament, character and personality, and to prevent them from developing unreasonable fears.

If the breeder did a good job the first 8-weeks of the puppy’s life the puppy should be easy to housetrain, and be confident around people, things, and differing locations. Well socialized puppies do not lack confidence or exhibit fearfulness. A good breeder has already taught the puppy to sit, down, wait, and to accept restraint for body handling e.g. nail clipping, brush/comb, etc.. in addition to letting the puppy explore the world and learn about most anything it may encounter in life without being overwhelmed. If this does not describe your puppy/dog, contact us to schedule an appointment today. If you just brought your new puppy home watch for early warning signs. If a puppy acts shy, fearful, ducks its head or backs away when reached for, or struggling when held — seek the help a good trainer immediately. Don’t have any expectations that your puppy will grow out of this.

An Open Letter to My Colleagues in Veterinary Medicine

“the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior believes that it should be the standard of care for puppies to receive such socialization before they are fully vaccinated.”

— American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior [3]

Green Classroom Blackboard socialization hs.png

A dog’s personality is mostly shaped in the first four-months of the puppy’s life, so we have no time to waste before you start to socialize your puppy. (Properly) The first 12 weeks will either help prepare a puppy for the life ahead, or set us up to repair them to manage the life ahead. But repairing will never be 100%. At about 12-weeks this window of opportunity is starting to close and new learning and experiences are ingrained less easily. [1] The first four-months of the puppy’s life will have a pronounced impact on the puppy that will last a lifetime. It’s important to realize dogs develop very quickly and you only have a short time to positively affect a dog’s temperament, and character for life. A lack of proper socialization in the first 16-weeks of life can create a disability or a character flaw. This is the period of time when exposure to people, places and things can have long lasting effects on the puppy’s development and behavior, both positive and negative. This is important to understand because behavior problems often take root in the first four-months of the puppy’s life, but may not show up with a strong intensity for months. After the first 16-weeks it not realistic to think we will change the dog’s personality. Although temperament is consistent and changes very little during the dog’s life if any, behavior can be modified to varying degrees and this is what a trainer helps accomplish.

A dog’s Personality is a combination of Temperament, Character and inherited traits.

Temperament = pre-disposition (heritable propensities)
Character = disposition, (learned style of coping or navigating the world)
- Character develops through the interaction of temperament and environment
- Character emerges as one matures and has more life experience
- Patterns form habits

Disability -
- Fear (people, places, or things, etc.), Reactivity, Sound Sensitivity, Body Sensitivity
- a dog whose emotional reactions and social behavior is impaired and it interferes with normal functioning. This can be caused by the lack of proper socialization by 12-weeks of age, or a traumatic event thereby leaving a mental/emotional scar.
Character flaw - Frustration intolerance / sense of entitlement, never taught to share, lack of age-appropriate self-control

Puppy Training Guide

The first four-months of the puppy’s life will have a pronounced impact on the puppy that will last a lifetime. This is important to understand because behavior problems often take root in the first four-months of the puppy’s life, but may not show up for months. (Reactivity, food guarding, possessiveness, separation anxiety, fear of people, unfamiliar things, places, etc…) We want our dogs to be well-rounded to differing things, people, and experiences so that they recognize normal and novel things they may be exposed to so they don’t view these things as aliens or strange things they should fear later in life.

If a puppy did not start life in a knowledgeable home the first 8-weeks of life expect to spend time overcoming negative events, or lack of experiences your puppy missed during this sensitive development period. So if you bring your puppy home at 8-weeks, you have no time to waste before you start to socialize your puppy and teach them about the world they will inhabit. This will require a great amount of positive experiences in addition to retraining to overcome previous learned behavior. Every dog is different and depending on the puppy’s genetic makeup it will need more or less socialization than another dog. We cannot change the puppy’s genetics or inherited traits, but we can influence its early life experiences which will have a lifelong effect on the dog’s behavior.

There is genetically driven behavior and learned behavior. Predatory chasing is not a character flaw, but it is breed propensity trait. Acting on instincts is not a flaw. It can be a disability if we don’t learn to control the inherited instincts. Our goal is to lay the foundation before 16-weeks to put those instincts under our control through training.

Many owners often believe that socialization or socializing a dog is as simple as giving a puppy the opportunity to play with other puppies or dogs, and meeting numerous people. This is not a socialization program for your puppy. Owners of a juvenile or adult dog often have the misguided belief that letting their dog run free at a dog park, placing them in doggie daycare, or taking them on leash to a big chain pet store where the dog ends up straining at the end of the leash to either get to other dogs, or to avoid other dogs, is a way to socialize the dog. These unstructured experiences are not a socialization program; they may do more harm than good. The second socialization period begins at about 4-5 months and will last until the dog is 18 months or older. It is during this time that social behaviors continue to develop and change.

Puppy Training & Quick Start Guide

Expose Without Overwhelming

**MINDFUL SOCIALIZATION VIDEO IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED**

The puppies should be exposed to household noises and things they may encounter in life such as, toasters, pots and pans, oven timers, steam irons, vacuums, washer and dryers, hair dryers, electric razors, power tools, fans, radio, televisions, and telephones, clocks, paper shredders, computers, printers, smoke detectors, ceiling fans, roller skates, skateboards, bicycles, baby strollers, wheel chairs, canes, crutches, umbrellas, trash cans, shopping carts, shopping bags, and children’s toys, cars, trucks, bicycles, scooters, traffic. etc...

Puppies should be exposed to differing surfaces such as concrete, wood, vinyl, tile, carpet, artificial turf, gravel, grass, sand, and dirt. The should also have the opportunity to explore and climb on safe unstable surfaces like a wobble board, balance disc, balance pads made from foam, or something as simple as a cushion.

It is important to remember that mildly stressful exposure is vastly different than a traumatic experience. What does the difference look like? For starters, a puppy exposed to a new thing or sound may react with curiosity, or mild stress. How do you know it is mild? The puppy recovers its curiosity in a reasonable amount of time; say less than a minute to cautiously explore the item again.

“Believing that what the young dog needs is more social contact with lots of unknown dogs is the first mistake. What the dog actually needs is some good multiple exposures to nice dogs one at a time. Until your dog has learned to be less afraid and trust one other dog, it is pointless to expose it to lots of them. ”

— John Rogerson, The Dog Vinci Code

Fearful Behavior

Starting about 4 weeks of age puppies become cautious about new things, people, experiences, and situations. This fear period peaks about 9 weeks and lasts until about 10-weeks. Precautions must be taken to not overwhelm puppies with things or events during this time. Since puppies will react with uncertainty to new or novel its important that things, experiences, and situations they may encounter in life are neither new nor unknown by the time the puppy reaches 8-weeks of age. We want dogs to be confident and knowledgeable about differing things, people, and experiences so they don’t view these things as strange or people as aliens later in life.

Good puppy raisers are careful to expose puppies to all types of sounds, things, and surfaces starting at 4-weeks of age so puppies have a large experience library by 8-weeks. Since puppies will react to new or novel they make sure normal things that could be encountered in life are neither new or novel by the time the puppies reach 8-weeks of age. At about 6-weeks of age this becomes more pronounced and it is at its strongest around 9-weeks and this lasts until about 10-weeks. Precautions must be taken to not overwhelm the puppies with events that they now might consider traumatic during this time. Care must be taken not to increase the puppy’s reactivity or fear responses by overwhelming them. With positive early exposure to people and things you can prevent unreasonable fears from developing before, during, and after this phase.

Correcting Fearful Behavior?

Unfortunately some believe you can “correct” fearful behavior. It is not appropriate to correct or punish a fearful dog for reacting e.g. growling, etc. Trying to “correct” (punish) fear based behavior is like saying “the beating will continue until you learn to trust” and stop reacting. Punishing fear does not remove the fear; it will likely make the dog more anxious. It may even inhibit the dog from giving future warnings (growl, bark, etc.) since they were “corrected” for such behavior previously. This could result in only the subtlest signs of discomfort which is easily missed by the untrained eye. It’s wise to have a signal that changes from green to yellow (caution) so there is a caution signal before red. I much prefer a clear caution signal from a dog rather than a fleeting flash of yellow (caution) before being confronted with a red light. Car accidents don’t happen in miles-per-hour (MPH) they happen in feet-per-seconds (fps) and it’s the same for dogs.

How we work with dogs that have fear/insecurity issues depends completely on the individual dog’s level of fear and the context. I highly recommend you find a knowledgeable and experienced trainer to assist in in evaluating and working with your dog. Avoid any trainer who advises the use of choke, prong, e-collars, or other aversive tools or methods.

Dogs need to see and believe that we will take care of them and protect them so they do not feel the need to become reactive.

Over threshold

Most fearful dogs default to being reactive in order to accomplish what they need; time and distance. If we overwhelm a dog by limiting their options or overwhelming them with a situation/circumstance they may react to that pressure and act out of self-defense.

When dogs are beyond their current abilities to maintain control and don’t have a feeling of safety they will often become reactive and choose fight or flight. Remember all reactive/aggressive behavior is caused by the need to establish control.

A dog that is sitting on its own or having been asked to sit in the presence of a people, place or thing they do not trust is not necessarily calm, comfortable, or feeling secure. And asking a fearful dog to focus on the owner with or without a food treat to distract them or interrupt their behavior will not make the dog any more comfortable if they don’t feel safe if the thing of concern is still present, or at least potentially close. Your dog’s reaction and level of comfort will likely be affected by the distance. Having a dog sit in some circumstances may be appropriate, but for a fearful dog having them sit in close proximity (from the dog’s perspective) to the person, place or thing they are unsure of can add to the insecurity.

Comforting a dog

I’m all for comforting and doing what’s necessary and beneficial for the dog. That being said it comes down to how we attempt to comfort a dog. If you act or look; frantic, like you are apologizing, or mourning the loss of a love one when attempting to comfort your dog, you most likely are not helping your dog in that situation. We won’t make them more fearful, but when done incorrectly we can actually validate anxious, nervous, and fearful behavior. And we certainly won’t lead them to believe we are not concerned with the event if we are acting in a concerned manner. We need to act calm, under control, understanding and like we are capable of handling the situation. You can sit with your dog and place your arm around them, or stroke them calmly (not frantically or fast) while calmly explaining to them what the noises are and how long you estimate they will continue. They won’t understand all your words but they can recognize you are not acting concerned nor appear to not be shaken by the experience. This is what a role model does. Our behavior can add to the experience or reflect an alternative interpretation of of the event for the dog. It’s similar to a small child falling down when it’s clear they are not seriously hurt. If we show contextual concern the child will be up and going in a short time after shaking off the experience. But if we over-react that same child will often continue to cry and take a much longer time to recover from the experience. Our actions can help build resilience or weaken it. Suzanne Clothier explains what “calming contact” should look like in the video “Calming the Fearful Dog”.

If a dog only has a mild concern ignoring the behavior has its place. If we do not overreact to the person/sound/thing/event and treat it as no consequence we can often be a good role model for our dog’s behavior. If we overreact we can reinforce their behavior by validating their interpretation of the events leading this to be a learned response.

Bonding with Humans

Puppies should be interacting and have quality experiences with gentle people starting at 3-weeks. Starting at 5-weeks of age the puppies should be separated from the littermates and mother for short periods of time each day and should spend that time with human’s playing with toys and having a pleasant experience. Play should not be aggressive, and no play fighting especially with potentially aggressive dogs or you may create problems for the future.

This is also a good time to start to lengthen the amount of time handling the puppy, opening its mouth, checking the ears, handling its feet, and grooming it all over for extended periods up to about 10-minutes. By the time puppy is 8-weeks it should accept someone opening its mouth and checking its teeth, and should permit handling and grooming for 10-15 minutes without struggling. A dog that accepts handling over its complete body will be less stressed at the vet or groomers. It is very important that the puppy learn to deal with frustration since it is a part of life, and another important reason is that frustration is one of the components that can lead to aggression.

By 8-weeks a lot of the puppy’s personality has already started to form. [1] Since puppies benefit greatly from the social interaction with the mother and litter mates and develop important social behaviors, they should stay with their litter mates and mother until they are 8-weeks. This means the breeder has a responsibility to begin the socialization process by exposing and familiarizing the puppies with a variety of positive experiences with people and things they are likely to encounter during their life. The breeder or the humans who are responsible for the puppies should have a planned and structured socialization program that begins from the very first week starting with gentle daily handing.

If the puppies are going to be pets or companion dogs, their first 8-weeks of life should be in the breeder’s home not in a cage in the backyard, barn, or warehouse, so that the puppies will become familiar with the smells, sights, and sounds of the type of environment in which they will be living. If the location where the puppies are being raised for the first weeks of their life is not providing a proper socialization plan, I recommend rescuing the puppy as early as 6-weeks to bring them to their new home, or get a puppy from another source. Every week can be critical at this early stage in life to develop a confident and well-behaved dog.

Socialization Precautions

Puppies are born without a developed immune system. Immunity to an infectious disease results form an adequate level of antibodies circulating in the dog which provides protection from the disease. Newborn puppies can obtain the antibodies they need to resist infection from their mother’s colostrum which is a form of milk the mother produces the first few days after birth. The newborn puppies may be able to absorb the antibodies up to 48-72 hours after birth. If the mother has an adequate level of antibodies the puppies can be protected up to 14-16 weeks. (Maternal immunity) It is important for a puppy to get these antibodies from its mother’s colostrum because a puppy cannot develop its own immunity until its immune system is fully functional at about 6 weeks of age. The reason puppies are recommended to get a series of vaccines starting between 6 and 10 weeks of age and then every 2-4 weeks after the first set of shots is to insure the puppy gets one dose of vaccine soon after the maternal immunity diminishes. If the maternal immunity is still present it will block the puppy from developing its immunity from the vaccination. There is a critical period of time during which the maternal immunity the puppy received from its mother is not high enough to prevent infection from a disease, but is still strong enough to block the puppy from developing its immunity to a vaccination. The puppy may be susceptible to the disease during this short time referred to as an “immunity gap”. A single vaccine (Canine Distemper Virus (CDV), Canine Parvovirus (CPV-2), Canine Adenovirus (CAV-2) is expected to provide protective immunity but only if the maternal immunity is absent. Puppies 14-16 weeks old are not likely to have interfering levels of maternal immunity that would interfere with the vaccination thus blocking the puppy from developing a natural immunity. If we wait until the puppy is 16-weeks of age to vaccinate, it would leave the puppy unprotected and vulnerable to viral diseases which is what we want to avoid. This presents a challenge because 3-12 weeks (up to 16-weeks) is a critical period of time when proper socialization should take place, and it is a critical period of time when the puppy may be susceptible to disease. Puppies are especially susceptible to parvovirus (Parvo) which is a life threatening disease that is potentially everywhere in the environment.

This presents a challenge since this is a critical period of time when proper socialization should take place, and it is it is a critical period of time when the puppy may be susceptible to disease. The importance of early socialization has been widely known since the publication of Scott & Fuller’s research on the social behavior of dogs in the 1960’s. The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association in England was greatly influenced by Scott and Fuller’s work and understood the temperamental damage done to puppies that did not get early socialization. The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association pioneered the idea of early vaccination and early socialization in the 1960’s with great success even in the face of a great amount of criticism from the veterinarian profession. The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB) position is: “that it should be the standard of care for puppies to receive such socialization before they are fully vaccinated.” https://avsab.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Puppy_Socialization_Position_Statement_Download_-_10-3-14.pdf More veterinarians today are now recommending early socialization for puppies as long as appropriate precautions are taken. Dr. R. K. Anderson, DVM, wrote “An Open Letter to My Colleagues in Veterinary Medicine” in 2006 encouraging early socialization after receiving at least the first set of vaccinations and as long as other precautions are followed. Dr. Anderson goes on to state “that the risk of a dog dying (euthanasia) because of behavior problems is more than 1,000 times the risk of dying of distemper or Parvo virus”.

Socialization and Social Distancing

There are still veterinarians today advising owners basically to quarantine their puppy until it completes its full set of vaccinations. The problem with this advice is that of the millions of homes that adopt a puppy each year in the USA, almost half of those dogs will never live to see their second birthday because their owners are unhappy with how they turned out and surrender them to shelters… two out of three will be euthanized. In the book “Puppy’s First Steps” it states that “puppies that had dysfunctional backgrounds with inadequate socialization were 580 times more likely to end up with fear aggression toward strangers.”

The puppy should receive its first set of vaccinations against high risk infectious diseases before starting any socialization procedure. For guidance on vaccinations start here. Puppies are especially susceptible to parvovirus (Parvo) which is a life threatening disease that is potentially everywhere in the environment. Infected dogs can pass the parvovirus in their feces, vomit, and saliva. The virus can be found on grass, concrete, soil or anywhere the infected dog has defecated. It can be spread on clothing, shoes, or on any surface that has been contaminated, even hands. It is passed to another dog through the nasal or oral tissues.

Owners should take their puppy out but avoid any exposure to potential sites of infection. This means not letting your puppy sniff at any place another animal has urinated or defecated. Avoid even your own front yard or the area in front of your home where you cannot be sure of what animals have been there. If you need to take your puppy to the veterinary office, carry them in and do not permit them around potential sites of contamination outside or near the veterinarian’s office. Keep away from dog parks, dog shows, pet stores where people can bring their dogs, parks, and anywhere where dogs are walked regularly. In high risk areas, carry your dog so they will not have contact with potential sites of contamination.

What if you follow the socialization guidelines and end up with a sick puppy? What if you don’t and end up with a fearful dog or insecure dog? As with anything in life there are risks associated with every decision and choosing to take your puppy out into the community and/or participate in puppy socialization classes are no exception. Always consult with your veterinary professional to discuss ways to minimize risk of exposure to infectious diseases.

RESCUE (Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide), and SANIPAW & Sniper (Chlorine Dioxide) products are pet friendly disinfectants.

After cleaning (wiping and removing all substances) Both accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide & chlorine dioxide will kill Canine Parvovirus.

RESCUE kills Canine Parvovirus – in 5 mins at a 1:16 dilution. (Fastest contact time – kills COVID-19 and Parvovirus in 1 minute)
Sniper: “Lab tests indicate that surfaces being treated need to stay wet for 10 minutes to ensure inactivation of the virus.”

RESCUE is my top choose due to effectiveness, safety and the amount of contact time needed to be highly effective against a wide variety of pathogenic microorganisms including bacteria, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, *viruses, fungi, mold and mildew. RESCUE kills Canine Parvovirus – in 5 mins at a 1:16 dilution.

RESCUE wipes kills Canine Parvovirus – in 5 mins, and COVID-19 [SARS-CoV-2] expected effectiveness at 1 minute.

https://learnaboutrescue.com/rescue-wipes/

“Rescue™ is non-toxic and is not harmful to inhale.”

Use RESCUE Concentrate to make you own spray. 1oz Rescue to 15oz distilled water.

Use 8 oz per gallon to kill Parvovirus in only 5 minutes

https://rescuedisinfectants.com/covid-19/

https://www.viroxanimalhealth.com/hubfs/VAH_PDFS/Virox_AH_REScue_CON_RefSheet_14.pdf

Starting Your Puppy’s Socialization Program

Socialization and Social Distancing

If you just brought your new puppy home, talk to your veterinarian about ways to minimize the risk of exposure to infectious diseases before embarking on a socialization program. If you have not done so, go back now and read the chapter on vaccinations.

Goals

The three goals of a socialization program are:

Preventing Unreasonable Fears
Building Confidence
Developing a Well-Mannered and Social Dog

Preventing Unreasonable Fears

If the puppy started life in a good home, by 8-weeks of age the puppy should have an understanding of the world and knowledge and experience with those things they will encounter in life. You need to continue to safely expose your puppy to unfamiliar people, places, and things daily. Safely expose and let your puppy experience all kinds of different people in the community both individually and in groups. And include both dog owners and non-dog owners because to your puppy these two groups of people will represent differing types of people in the community just based on scent.

If the puppy had a limited life experience up to this point you will need start to safely introduce new people, things, and sounds to your puppy right away. The socialization process must be planned and structured so you control the process. Not everyone should be welcome to participate. This may mean that you don’t invite those loud or obnoxious relatives or friends over right away until the puppy has learned to trust, and is very social with all types of people. First impressions can make a lifelong impact, so don’t overwhelm, let the puppy build up its social tolerance first. Much like a vaccination, just a little to build up immunity first so they can handle what life brings them later.

Building Confidence

These first 16-weeks are a short period of time when exposure to people, places and things can have long lasting effects on the puppy’s behavior. It is during this time that the dog’s reactivity or fear responses will increase or decrease depending on the environment and its life experiences or lack thereof. If your puppy or dog is showing any sign of fear or discomfort; e.g. cowering, stopped breathing momentarily, ears back, tail tucked under their body, hyper-vigilant, etc… you need to change what you are doing. First and foremost move away from whatever is causing your dog distress, and create more distance for the dog.

Take your puppy everywhere you can, when you can do so safely and let it continue to experience life. Take your puppy on car rides through differing neighborhoods, communities, and new places where he will experience a variety of sights, smells, and sounds. Before you walk your dog on any sidewalk, first check the area to see if others who may have walked their dog picked up after them. If not, find a community where people take responsibility for their dogs and pick up after them. I would anticipate in the more responsible communities the dogs would be current on their vaccinations. Even so keep your dog off the grass near the sidewalks where other dogs may have eliminated. You can walk near schoolyards while children are playing on the other side of the fence and unable to overwhelm the dog, so the dog could safely experience the sounds of children at play.

Avoid dog parks even after your dog has had all of his vaccinations. Taking your dog to the dog park for socialization can result in unintended consequences; if your dog is confident you can produce a dog that is overly aroused and out of control around other dogs. If you have a shy dog, they are more likely to be bullied, and you have possibly laid the foundation for fear aggression to develop.

Puppies that have been socialized properly and understand their world feel safe and are more confident with things, people, and places.

Puppy Socialization Classes

This is a class for puppies between 8-12 weeks of age. Often times a puppy socialization class is marketed as off-leash puppy play groups. The reasoning given for such classes is that “off-leash play and play-fighting helps socialize puppies with each other, teaches them to be gentle with their mouthing and biting”. A play group class should not be considered a puppy socialization class. Puppies will do what puppies do, wrestle, bite, jump on others, chase, etc… even if no other dogs in class take offense to that behavior it is teaching the puppies the wrong thing. This should not be a class where puppies are allowed to play rough with one another and bite. What about bite inhibition? The puppy had several weeks to learn this with their littermates before going to their new home.

Now that the puppy is in his or her new home we want to move from bite inhibition (soft bite) to teaching no bite at all. What your puppy needs to learn now is how to interact with, and around other dogs and people in an appropriate social manner. We don’t want the puppies practicing anything during play in class that would be inappropriate if they did it to an unfamiliar dog.

Dog trainer and behaviorist John Rogerson recommends you socialize your puppy with a friends “mature, sensible” adult dog a couple times each week under supervision with the caveat that your puppy not be permitted to do anything to the adult dog that will get him into trouble if he does it to other dogs when he is older. Non-aggressive play between two dogs that involve gentle games not involving physical strength can benefit your puppy. But you should never allow your puppy to pester an older dog to play. Some dogs may not have as much tolerance for nonsense or rude behavior from another dog regardless of its age.

When dogs are under full control of their owners they can be together in large areas playing with people and engaged in directed activities. These dogs have more freedoms and are permitted access to public places like Central Park in New York City. Your objective should be to have a dog that is human focused and devoted that is willingly cooperative. You don’t need to be “alpha” and attempt to motivate this out of fear, but rather you achieve this by instilling desire by being a person whom a dog will cheerfully follow.

A puppy socialization class should start with teaching owners how to be fun and nice, and expressing it to their dogs’. The most important element is building an emotional working relationship with your puppy. A very important part of the class will be having each owner handle and groom their puppy for 15-minutes. The goal is to have the puppy except this without struggling. Owners should be taught how to play with their puppy, but this will not include tug games yet. Games of tug should not be taught until the puppy has learned to share. How do you teach a puppy to share? You teach them to retrieve which is the concept of sharing something with you. This is especially important for owners of guarding breeds like German Shepherds, Dobermans, and even the terrier breeds which were used to kill vermin and we never wanted them to share their kill with us. Since retrieving contains an element of chasing which most dogs love to do, we will not want to strengthen this behavior without putting some controls on this behavior. We want to make chasing permission based, and add brakes on the behavior by teaching the puppy to come back to us even when he is chasing something. This we want to teach by the time he is 16-weeks. The retrieve game will be the foundation for teaching a puppy to come back even when he is chasing something. Once your puppy will happily retrieve a toy, when friends come to your home you can initiate the play time and then let your friends continue the game while you leave the room for a few minutes. This will continue the positive socialization process and your puppy will grow up without fearing people who visit.

During the class the puppy should have plenty of opportunities (not forced or lured with treats) to meet people. If the other owners and people attending are pleasant and expressive with the puppies, the puppies will learn to better read human emotions and enjoy their company. The reason to avoid using food treats for these interactions is that we don’t want to turn people into treat dispensers. The use of food is not necessary to develop a social bond between a puppy and people. We don’t want our dogs to seek people out who are not inviting contact in hopes of getting a treat. We don’t want our dogs to become a nuisance. This is important because there are people in our communities that do not wish to interact with dogs. A puppy that learns to read emotions will come to realize which people are inviting and which are not.

The common theme to the class described above, is that we want the owners to be their dog’s best friend and the puppy to bond with their owners. We want our dogs to be social with other dogs, but we do not want to create a dog that struggles against the leash to get to every dog it sees. We want to teach self-control in the presence of other dogs and people. We don’t want the dog to only desire to be with the owner because they have treats. We want our dogs to desire their owners because they are fun and interesting, and the dog realizes that their owners are interested in them.

What our dogs should be learning during socialization is that all types of people are nice regardless of their age, or how they look or sound. The world is full of novel things and sounds. Toys are for playing, and toys and other appropriate things are for putting their teeth on, not other dogs, animals, or humans. We want to teach that there are plenty of resources to go around, and that there is no reason to be protective over food or water bowls, bones, toys, treats, attention, etc…

During the early part of your dog’s life, they should be spending more time with you than other dogs. Careful and limited socialization with other dogs will be beneficial, but we want our dog’s to learn to understand and relate to us, not just to other dogs. It is important that we have more influence of our dog’s behavior than other dogs. It is always best to prevent behavior we don’t want to see develop and have to change later.

So how do you accomplish this?

The most important element is building an emotional working relationship with your dog. Dog trainer and behaviorist John Rogerson, author of the book “The Dog Vinci Code” says that educating and controlling your puppy can be achieved within 6-days to 10-days. I highly recommend you get a copy of the book and read it now if you do not have it. John Rogerson is a brilliant and exceptional trainer and behaviorist.

We want our dogs’ experiences to be positive and well-rounded so they don’t view people or things as aliens or strange things they should fear later in life. The bottom line, socializing your dog should be about teaching your dog about the world with positive experiences and the training designed so your dog learns to interact in the world successfully.

Cleaning & Disinfecting

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