Socialize your Dog

Routine socialization of puppies and dogs should include the following:

1 Meet several new people each week of many different sizes, ages and races

2. Acclimation to gentle touching and handling and mild restraint by family members and your vet.

3. Exposure to common household and yard noises such as vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers and music.

4. Exposure to car rides and to passing traffic.

5. Experience walking on different surfaces—tile, carpet, grass, gravel, sand, cement, chicken wire.

6. Regular meetings with dogs, cats and other animals your dog will routinely encounter.

Socializing your pup to your own family and home is a good start, but not nearly enough to promote stable temperament! Dogs that may have some genetic tendency to be reactively wary (for example, most of the terrier, herding, and guarding breeds) need extra heavy doses of socialization. If your dog has a breed standard that says something like “reserved” or “wary of strangers” this is your cue to super-socialize! You provide “pumped up” socialization by exposing the puppy to everything under the sun that you want her to be at ease with, in the most pleasant positive way that you can. Never push your puppy beyond his comfort level or give him more stimulation than he is ready to handle—an important part of socializing your puppy properly involves protecting him from unpleasant, emotionally overwhelming, or dangerous experiences. The result of continuous low key exposure to novel things is usually a more stable dog with vastly improved “bounce back” capability.

It is important to understand that the process of socialization doesn’t come to a dead stop once your dog passes four months of age, but rather that your dog’s willingness to accept novel things becomes greatly reduced. This means that while remedial socialization is still possible, making up for missed opportunities requires more time and effort and results are less predictable.

Since a dog’s degree of sociability is not set in stone at 4 months of age, this also means that you should not assume there will be no ill effects if you ever completely stop socializing him at some future time.