This video is from Leerburg. Although I don’t support everything they have done or do at Leerburg as far as training, this video is spot on for socializing a new pup. All my new puppy owners please take a few minutes to watch this video.
Conditioning Your Puppy to a New Environment
What I like about this is it shows the owner taking a 4 month old puppy to a fairly new place and having everyone in that place ignore the puppy while she works on some obedience skills the puppy already knows. This is so important in training. It shows the puppy several things.
1. They can use already known skills in a new place that might be a little exciting / scary / distracting. Teaching the puppy to focus on you even if strange things are going on around them is what sets a well trained dog apart. Everyone’s dog is a star at home. We want our dogs to be stars everywhere!
2. They see that new places are not something to get all worked up about. If your dog only travels in the car to the vet and to the groomer, likely they won’t enjoy traveling. Take your new puppy to busy places as soon as you feel comfortable (12-13 weeks is great, after their second set of shots) and get them focusing on you. What should you be doing from 9-12 weeks? Training the new baby at home and in quite places how to ‘Sit’, ‘Down’, ‘Wait’, ‘Come’, walk nicely on a leash, ‘Watch’, etc. I will be making a video this week on what I teach, how I teach it, how quickly I can teach, how early I teach formal lessons, and how to continue that training after your puppy leaves, and what you should work on next. Your new puppy can and will be able to do everything that little Border Terrier was doing and do it just as well by 12 weeks of age.
3. The people ignore so the puppy doesn’t start expecting every person on the planet to stop and greet them. You can work on focus and the dog will be able to focus. When you are done training, feel free to let your puppy visit with some people. You absolutely need your puppy to enjoy meeting new people, but only when you say they should. I do this now with the litter we have. If they are swarming my feet like sharks, jumping up at me, pawing my legs I do not pay any attention to them, I go do something like pooper scoop the yard, clean off the patio table, sweep the patio. They ‘get it’ and stop acting crazy and start walking up to sit around me. As soon as they are all sitting (at least the ones who are interested in me at the time) then I squat down and make a huge fuss. Again, rewarding the calm behavior, ignoring the crazy.
Notice how the owner let the puppy investigate the cats, but then asked the puppy to refocus on her. That is what you want. “yes, that is interesting, now watch me, I have something for you to do”. If you have done your training right, the puppy will go “Oh yes, Mom is always the most fun, what are we going to do?”
Remember, it is never to young to start training and the longer you wait the harder it will be to train. You will have to break bad habits instead of simply molding the right habit from the very start.
~Becky