Socialising Puppies with People

Raising and training a pup to be people-friendly is an important goal of pet dog husbandry. During your pup’s first month at home, urgency dictates that socialisation with people is the prime puppy directive.

Your puppy must be fully socialised to people before it is three months old, even before puppy pre-school classes commence. Puppy classes are designed to continue socialising puppies with people, socialising with other puppies and for puppies to learn bite inhibition.

Generally you don’t bring your new pup home until it is 8 weeks of age but it is never to late to start! Unfortunately, your pup needs to be confined indoors (or in your yard) until it has acquired sufficient immunity from its vaccinations against the more serious dog diseases. However, even a relatively short period of social isolation at such a crucial developmental stage could all but ruin your puppy’s temperament.

Whereas dog-dog socialisation may be put on temporary hold until your pup is old enough to go to puppy school (which is a low-risk environment even if your puppy isn’t fully vaccinated), you simply cannot delay socialisation with people. It may be possible to live with a dog that does not like other dogs, but it is difficult and potentially dangerous to live with a dog that does not like people.

Consequently, there is considerable urgency to introduce your puppy to a wide variety of people – to family, friends, and strangers and especially to men and children. As a rule if thumb, your pup needs to meet at least a hundred different people before it is three months old (an average of three new people a day). Don’t let the number put you off…aim for at least one new person a day and go from there. The end result is well worth the effort in those early months.

3 Goals of Socialisation

• The first step is to teach your puppy to enjoy the presence, actions and antics of all people; first the family and then friends and strangers, especially children and men. Adult dogs tend to feel most uneasy around children and men, especially around little boys. This is more likely to develop if the puppy grows up with few or no children or men around, and if the puppy’s social contacts with children and men have been unpleasant or scary.
• Teach your puppy to enjoy being hugged and handled (restrained and examined) by people, especially by children, veterinarians, and groomers. Specifically, teach your puppy to enjoy being touched and handled in a variety of ‘hot spots’, namely around its collar, ears, paws, muzzle, tail and rear end.
• Teach your puppy to enjoy giving up valued objects when requested, especially its food bowl, bones, balls, chew toys, garbage and paper tissues.

1. Teaching your puppy to like and respect people

Introduce your puppy to as many people as possible during its first month at home. Initial impressions are important so make sure your puppy’s first meetings with people are pleasant and enjoyable. Have every guest hand-feed your puppy a couple of pieces of kibble. Puppies who enjoy the company of people grow into adult dogs who enjoy the company of people, and are less likely to be frightened or bite.

Invite a number of people to your home each day. It is not sufficient for your pup to meet the same people over and over again. Your pup needs to grow accustomed to meeting strangers, at least three a day. You could enlist the neighbours, postman, or other regulars in your street.

Give every guest a bag of training treats, so that your puppy will be inclined to like them from the outset. Use the kibble from your pup’s daily allowance so it doesn’t become overweight. Show your guests how to use the treats to lure/reward train it to come, sit, lie down and roll over. For example, ask your puppy to ‘come’. Praise it profusely as it approaches and give it a piece of kibble when it arrives. Back up and do it again. Repeat the sequence several times.

If your puppy is regularly hand-fed by guests in this manner, it will soon learn to enjoy the company of people and to approach happily and sit automatically when greeting them. And, of course, as an added bonus you will have successfully trained your family and friends to help you train your puppy.

To help meet more new people safely, you can take your puppy everywhere with you if it is small enough to carry – take him or her to the video store, garden centre, yard sales etc. – just don’t put your puppy down on the ground where the germs are and don’t let him sniff noses with other animals. At the supermarket you can sit outside with the puppy on your lap and watch people, carts, bikes and kids go by.

Children

For puppy owners with children, it is essential to teach your children how to act around the pup, and teach your pup how to act around children. Puppy owners without children need to invite children to your home to meet your puppy. Start with only one child at a time, preferably a well-trained one. Supervise the children at all times. Invite your friends’ and relatives’ children, as well as the neighbours’ children as they will be less likely to tease a dog they know and like.

Give children tasty treats (freeze-dried liver) as well as kibble as rewards during training, so your puppy will quickly learn to love the presence and presents of children. For the first week make sure your puppy’s interactions with children are carefully controlled and calm. Thereafter, however, it is important for puppy parties to be festive with balloons, music, games and treats for the puppies and children.

Puppy Party Games

Have the children sit in chairs in a big circle. The first child calls the puppy and has it lie down and sit up 3 times in succession before sending it to the next child – ‘Rover go to Jamie’, whereupon Jamie calls the puppy to come and perform 3 puppy ‘push-ups’ and so on.This is a great exercise to practice prompt recalls and lightning fast control commands (sits and downs). Don’t forget to praise the children, too.

In subsequent parties you can give special prizes to the child who can get the dog to balance a biscuit bone on its nose for the longest time (i.e. the longest sit-stay) or to get the dog to lie down and play dead for the longest time (i.e. the longest down-stay).

As a rule of thumb, before your puppy is three months old it needs to have been handled and trained by at least twenty children.

2. Handling and gentling

Your puppy needs to be handled by (1) familiar people before unfamiliar people, (2) adults before children, (3) women before men, and (4) girls before boys.

As with the socialisation exercises, adult family members need to accustom the pup to enjoy being handled and gently restrained, so that your puppy knows and enjoys the handling and gentling games before strangers and children become involved.

Hugging/restraint

This is the fun part – you get to hug your puppy! Provided your pup was handled frequently prior to weaning and especially neonatally, at 8 weeks of age it should go as limp as a noodle whenever picked up and settle down as relaxed as a ragdoll on your lap. Even if it didn’t have plentiful early handling, these exercises are easy at 8 weeks of age compared to a hard-to-handle adolescent, so start now!

Pick up your pup, put it on your lap, and hook one finger around its collar so it doesn’t jump off. Slowly and repetitively stroke the pup along the top of its head and back in an attempt to get it to settle down in any position it finds comfortable. If it is squirming, soothingly massage its chest or the base of its ears. Once it is relaxed, lay the pup on its back for a soothing tummy rub in a repetitive circular motion.

While your puppy is calm and relaxed, periodically pick it up to give it a short hug. Gradually and progressively increase the length of the hugs (restraint). After a while, pass the puppy to someone else and have them repeat the above exercises.

Handling/examination

Teaching your 8-week-old puppy to enjoy being handled and examined is as easy as it is essential. Many dogs have a number of ‘hotspots’, which if not defused in puppyhood can be extremely sensitive to touch e.g. the ears, paws, muzzle, collar area and rear end.

Take hold of your puppy’s collar and offer a treat from its daily allotment. Gaze into your puppy’s eyes and offer a treat. Look in one ear and offer a treat. Look in the other ear and offer another treat. Hold a paw and offer a treat. Repeat with each paw. Open its mouth and offer a treat. Feel its rear end and private parts and offer a treat. And then repeat the sequence. Each time you repeat the process, progressively handle and examine the area more thoroughly and for longer periods.

Once your puppy is happy being handled and examined by family members, it is time to play pass the puppy with your guests. Remember to praise your pup for getting things right, not punish it for getting things wrong. Punishment isn’t an effective way of controlling a dog – it usually indicates ineffective training plus causes the dog to dislike both the trainer and training.

Collar

It is important to teach your puppy to enjoy being grabbed by the collar, rather than react defensively. While playing at home, or later at the park, frequently interrupt puppy play sessions by taking your puppy by the collar, asking it to sit, praising it, offering a piece of kibble, and then letting it go play again. Thus, the puppy learns that being taken by the collar is not necessarily the end of the play session.

Never lead or drag your puppy into confinement as it will no doubt come to dislike being taken by the collar, as it will come to dislike confinement. Instead, teach your puppy to enjoy confinement. Stuff some hollow chew toys with kibble in your puppy’s confinement area, and then close the door with your puppy on the outside. In no time at all, your puppy will beg to go inside. Now simply instruct your pup , ‘Go to your doggy den/bed/crate’ and open the door. Your pup will happily rush inside and settle down peacefully with its chew toys.

Above all, NEVER call your puppy to you and then grab it by the collar to reprimand or punish. Doing this just once will make it hate coming when called and hate your reaching for its collar. If you punish your pup after it comes to you, it will take longer to come the next time. Eventually slow recalls will be no recalls.

3. Guarding valued objects

Object-guarding is a common problem with family dogs, and will develop throughout puppyhood if owners allow it to. First, make sure that your puppy develops a strong chew toy habit. If it always wants to play with its chew toys, it will not seek out inappropriate objects which need to be taken away.

Additionally, you have to teach your puppy to voluntarily relinquish its chew toys upon request, by teaching it that giving up the object doesn’t mean losing it for good. Your puppy should learn that giving up bones, toys, etc. means receiving something better in return – praise and treats (or play) – and also later getting back the original object.

Exchanging Valued Commodities for Treats

Start working with objects that both you and your pup can hold at the same time e.g. a rolled newspaper or Kong on a rope. Firstly, hold the object yourself and instruct the puppy to ‘leave it’. Then waggle the object in front of its muzzle enticingly and praise the puppy when it ‘takes it’. Don’t let go of the object.

Say, ‘Puppy, thank you’, stop waggling the object to encourage your puppy to stop tugging, and with your other hand waggle a very tasty treat (freeze-dried liver) in front of its nose. Praise your puppy as soon as it opens its mouth and you have regained full possession of the object.

Continue praising as you offer one, two, or three treats, then instruct your pup to take the object again and repeat the procedure. When your puppy has promptly relinquished the object upon request five times in a row, you may let go of the object each time. Now you are ready to work with smaller objects e.g. tennis balls, kong toys etc. Once your pup eagerly takes and receives promptly, simply drop or toss the object and say ‘Thank you’.

Retrieving is a lot of fun. Puppies love retrieving and quickly develop confidence about surrendering objects. Puppies think it’s a great deal. They temporarily swap their toys for treats, the owner safely holds the toy while they enjoy the treat, and then they get the toy back to exchange for more treats. If your pup offers too many unsolicited presents, simply instruct it, ‘Take it to your bed’, which is a great way to teach your puppy to ‘fetch’ and clean up its toys!

Bones & Food Bowls

A puppy may become protective and defensive if allowed to chew a bone in private and without interruption. Until you are quite comfortable taking bones away from your puppy, never let it have a bone on its own.

Instead, instruct ‘Leave It’ and ‘Take It’ as before, but hold on to the bone as your puppy chews. Periodically say, ‘Thank you!’ and waggle a very tasty treat in front of the puppy’s nose as you withdraw the bone. Hold the bone as the puppy eats the treats and then instruct the pup to sit and lie down before repeating the sequence over and over.

Hold your pup’s bowl while it eats kibble. Offer tasty treats and handle the puppy, and it will learn its dinners are more enjoyable when people are present. Let the puppy eat kibble from its bowl, offer a tasty treat, and then temporarily remove the bowl as the pup enjoys the treat. Then try removing the bowl prior to offering a treat. If it growls, remove the bowl and wait until it stops growling. Once the puppy stops growling, praise it, back up, and have it sit and lie down, give back the object and repeat the procedure.

Sit with your puppy while it is eating and have family and friends walk by. Each time someone approaches, spoon a small dollop of canned food on top of the kibble. Your puppy will quickly make the association between approaching people and juicy canned food (or meat) being added to its kibble.

Lastly, get your pup to sit and wait for its dinner. Pop one piece of kibble in and casually walk away. When your puppy begs for more, walk over, pick up its bowl, place in one more piece of kibble, wait for your pup to sit, and then put its bowl on the floor. Your pup will become calmer and its manners will improve with each ‘course’. Also, by feeding your puppy’s dinner in many small courses it will welcome your approaches.

It is important to mention here that toddlers and children should always be supervised around dogs, especially at feeding time – while the aim is to minimise problems around food and toys, children should never be allowed to crawl around the food bowl or have access to a dog with a bone.

Veterinarian and animal behaviourist, Dr Ian Dunbar is Director of the Center for Applied Animal Behaviour (Berkeley, California), founder of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (US) and host of the popular British TV series Dogs With Dunbar. Ian is the author of numerous books and videos on dog behaviour.