Planning for puppy to come home ...

For those of you that have another dog(s) in the house it might be a good time to sit down and start planning on how, when, where and for how long your puppy will be allowed to interact with your other dog(s). It has been my experience that puppies will bond much quicker to another dog than to a person. Who are we kidding, a dog can play so much better than a person. They sniff butts, lick ... things... chase and dig and .... you get the picture. No way we can compete.

Puppies exposed to adult or larger dogs are often disciplined by the dog(s) in ways that we as humans don't even see it happen. Accidents happen and a bigger dog can harm a smaller one. If you leave the dogs alone together this effect magnifies itself. A once confident puppy is now leery to take on the world unless the other dog(s) say it's ok. This is often misinterpreted as weakness in our eyes when in fact this is environmental influence [learned behaviour] vs nurture [the natural personality of the puppy and what it left home with]. Puppies that have never submit peed before may start to submit pee to you without apparent reason and may be because the other dog(s) submits to you as the boss. Remember, we don't speak their language and it is all too often that good puppies have these experiences and too late to undo the damage by the time we recognize the reason for their behavioral change. Caution too, kenneling a puppy beside an adult dog(s) will have the same affect. It will be vital for you to make a plan for your puppy's continued education once it has left our home. 

We crate train and suggest you do the same. We have the puppy sleep beside the bed at night with us (in the crate, silly) to make sure we hear when they need to potty and most importantly so we can reassure them when they wake in the middle of the night in a new environment. A finger through the door is often all that is needed. It says, there is some one there that loves them.... 

At our end we will work on puppy development things like noise desensitization; walking on different surfaces, through water, up hills, over objects; through tunnels and playing with a variety of toys. All of this will be done as a pack of puppies. The adult dogs will not be there in case they step on them by accident or they discipline them.

Now is also a good time for you to consider your 'commands' that you will use for your puppy's behaviours.  Something as simple as 'sit' can conger up many different varieties of the action. What does your 'sit' expectation look like? How will you reinforce the behaviour you like? Will you train in English or?????

What will your release command be? Use of words that you would use in everyday conversation like, OK and alright might develop some confusion. Trust me, we used them for a while and were surprised when we were talking on the phone or to someone else and said 'OK or alright' the dog was gone and playing..... not what I was hoping for. If there hadn't been two of us there we might not have realized that we actually used the dog's break/release command in another context. Bad trainers ;-( I encourage you to learn from our mistakes.

Dogs think in terms of black and white. They do not easily understand the sometimes grey world of events that we find ourselves involved in. So for them, we need to maintain a learning environment that will help our furry friends flourish.

Hope you find this helpful,