Havanese Puppy Socialization 101

Sandstone Dachshunds Blog » Tips on Socializing a Young Puppy

Puppy socialization is often started at 2-3 weeks, but a good breeder will start to handle the puppy and mold the puppy’s socializing abilities. It is very important that you start socializing your dog/puppy immediately when you bring …

Puppy Training and Socialization Training | chow chow pets.com

Puppy training begins with so many different aspects that relate to their overall development, including how to feed your puppy, housetraining, grooming

Puppy Training: Socialize your puppy | Houston PetTalk

It’s essential for Dog parents like you to know certain basic factors that determine your relationship with your Dog and can go a long way in training him effectively.

Before you begin training your Dog, it is absolutely essential that you build a loving bond with him. This is important as it helps you to understand his needs and instincts and also allows your Dog to have complete trust in you.

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How To Bond With Your Dog

Building a bond with your Dog is the first and the most crucial step involved in training him successfully. As soon as you bring your Dog home, you must first try to develop a caring and loving relationship with him in order to win his trust and confidence.

When Dogs are secure in the knowledge that they belong to the family, they are more likely to respond better to their owners’ training commands. Just like with any relationship, there must be mutual trust and respect between you and your Dog.

Trust takes time to develop and respect comes from defining boundaries and treating any breach of those boundaries with firmness and fairness.

Without enforceable limitations, respect can’t be developed. And when there is no respect, building a bond with your Dog is almost impossible.

4 Golden Rules To Building A Relationship With Your Dog :

Love Your Dog and He Will Love You back

Once you’re succesful in building a bond with your Dog, you can rest assured that training him and teaching him new and clever tricks will be a cakewalk.

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How Your Dog Learns…

Your Dog’s learning period can be divided into five phases:

The Teaching Phase – This is the phase where you must physically demonstrate to your Dog exactly what you want him to do.

The Practicing Phase – Practice makes Perfect. Once a lesson is learnt, practice with your Dog what you have just taught him.

The Generalizing Phase – Here you must continue practicing with your Dog in different locations and in an environment with a few distractions. You can take your Dog out for a walk, or to a nearby park and command him to practice whatever you’ve taught him.

Practicing the learned lessons in multiple locations and in the presence of small distractions will help him learn and retain lessons better .

The Testing Phase – Once you’re sure that your Dog has achieved almost 90% success….he responds correctly almost every time you give a command, you must start testing his accuracy in newer locations with a lot of distractions.

Example: Take him to the local shopping mall and ask him to obey your command. He may not come up with the correct response the very first time you do this, but you must not lose hope.

The idea is to test your Dog to see how he responds in an environment which is new to him. Set-up a situation where you are in control of the environment and your Dog.

There are only 2 possibilities:

Keep on testing until he succeeds. Follow the rule of the 3 Ps – patience, persistence, praise.

Internalizing Phase – Finally, comes the extremely rewarding phase where your Dog does everything he is taught to do even without your commands.

Remember:

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The first thing that must be remembered when it comes to a dog barking is that, sometimes, barking is unavoidable. The only way to truly mute a dog would be to remove their vocal chords; something no one would ever do, and something that could also be detrimental in that barking is occasionally useful (such as when alerting to an intruder). If your dog barks, before your embark on a training regime, you must allow for some element of barking in a dog’s life. It’s what they do! So be realistic, and only when barking becomes truly excessive should you seek help. Never look to eradicate a dog barking entirely, merely to make it manageable. Realism is an absolute key to halting excessive barking.

When trying to halt excessive barking, you will need to curb your natural instincts just like you’re hoping your pooch will learn to do. When your dog barks, what is the first thing most people do? That’s right: they yell at their dog, often saying “shut up!” or similar.

However, this is quite simply the worst thing to do. By reacting in such a manner, you are giving the dog the attention they want and zoning in on this bad behaviour. Just think – how many dogs have you actually seen stop barking when they’re yelled at to do so? Not many, and it’s because by yelling, you are simply reinforcing the dog’s point of drawing attention to a situation.

There are many different training ends, some of which are extremely expensive, that are designed to curb excessive barking. Yet the most effective is also the most simple, and the cheapest: ignore the barking. This is an utter ignorance of the act of barking – don’t move, don’t look, don’t respond. Quickly, the dog will learn that their barking – for whatever reason – isn’t getting the attention it deserves and they will desist. This solution takes a lot of patience and it may be best to warn your neighbours and seek their approval before embarking on this course, but it is arguably the most effective.

However, without effective leash training, a simple walk in the park can suddenly become an utter nightmare. Suddenly, the dream scenario of bracing walks and canine fun become a palaver of trying to control your dog and follow a leash. With leashes now becoming legal requirements for any dog outside of their own home, good leash obedience training is an absolute necessity for any dog owner. In fact, most professional dog trainers rate it as the second most important skill an owner can give a dog, only coming after house training.

The idea of a dog walking on a leash is, to most humans, simple and correct. The image of a dog trotting along merrily next to their owner, complete with leash, is one we rarely pause to question and it is therefore understandable that may new dog owners don’t understand this isn’t a natural situation. A dog no more understands the concept of walking on a leash than you would; however, once shown what to do and how to do it, it tends to be a trick easily picked up by most canines and then remembered for life.

When you first introduce a young puppy to the leash, try and remember how odd the situation must seem to them. How would you feel, for example, if someone came and attached a rope to you for seemingly no reason? You’d probably be pretty nonplussed, and your dog is going to react in exactly the same way.

Therefore, the biggest contribution you can make toward leash training is to be patient. Instead of affixing the leash and expecting your dog to understand what you want immediately, allow your puppy to get used to the idea. Encourage them to walk on the leash by incentives, such as food or treats, rather than dragging them along until they get the idea. Be patient and consistent, rewarding good behaviour and keep calm in the face of bad behaviour. Keep this attitude up, and soon you’ll be walking along together happily in a perfect pose of content dog and owner.

It is a sad fact that a percentage of dogs that are put to sleep are not actually ill; they tend to have some kind of social defiency which manifests itself in dangerous behaviour. Sometimes euthanasia can be the decision of the owner, but often – in cases of dogs biting humans or other dogs – the euthanasia is determined by the courts. It is therefore imperative that you take steps to prevent this from happening, and properly socialize your dog.

The idea of socializing a dog may sound complicated, but in reality it’s very basic. Socializing is simply about making sure your dog is, if not totally comfortable than at least calm, in a variety of situations. You need to ensure that your dog is comfortable with other people and animals, or the consequences could be very difficult to deal with. It is for the good of you, your dog and the general populace that they are controllable and preferably happy in a variety of social situations.

No one is saying that your dog needs to be sweet, cute and cuddly around everyone and everything; while ideal, this is rarely achievable. Instead, socialization is just about ensuring your dog is able to handle various situations that may arise without becoming aggressive or violent.

Unfortunately, this is much more difficult with older dogs, as behaviours that are learnt young – such as reacting badly to other dogs – often become ingrained. It is therefore, wherever possible, essential that you begin socializing your dog when they are as young as possible – no age is too young, provided they are suitably vaccinated.

The best thing is to try and control, and if possible manufacturer, a new situation for your dog to deal with. Introduce them to other dogs, but keep your dog on a tight leash and be ready to act swiftly yet calmly should problems arise. The same applies to dealing with children. The absolute essential is to remain calm when socializing your dog and not lose your temper, as doing so can increase the likelihood of bad behaviour. With time and patience, your dog will soon be able to cope with most situations presented to them, and you need worry no more.