Puppy Socialisation

sammy | DOG, TRAINING | October 20, 2009

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p style=”text-align: center;”> THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIALISATION

If you do nothing else, it is essential that you socialise your puppy correctly.  It is probably the most important thing to do to help your puppy’s future well being.

It is understandable that some owners want to protect their puppies from potential threats and aggression from other dogs. However, one of the main causes of aggression in dogs is a lack of socialisation skills.

Your puppy’s safety is paramount, but meeting and greeting safe and friendly people and dogs of all types and ages as early in his life as possible, will help him to become a friendly, confident and fulfilled dog. Try to introduce your puppy to as many different sights and sounds as you can. If he reacts fearfully to any particular things, try not to strengthen this fear by over-comforting. Just quietly move him away to a distance where he feels safe and introduce him slowly, rewarding him for each confident and calm interaction.

As we are not dogs ourselves, socialisation with other dogs is one of the things that we cannot teach. They can only learn these skills from other dogs, so it is up to us to facilitate as many introductions with other puppies and adult dogs as we can and allow our puppies to learn these essential skills of how to be a dog.

This is a huge subject, but a very important one, so if you feel you need further help or advice, please don’t hesitate to contact a professional dog trainer or behaviourist.

Jenny www.fluentwoof.co.uk