Puppy Socialization

What is Socialization?

Socialization is an extremely important part in your puppy’s life. It is a process of gradually exposing her to the world’s sights, sounds and textures to teach her how to be calm and deal with each and every new learning experience with confidence, while going about her business as a happy, healthy dog.

Puppies that are not socialized properly often grow to fear or feel the need to defend themselves against things they have not been acclimated to. This can lead to problems with aggression and other reactive behaviors later on in the puppy’s life. They often grow fear things that are not known and have trouble coping when being exposed to many of life’s challenges. Puppies that are well-socialized learn how to deal with these challenges and take life’s little curveballs in-stride.

How do I Socialize my Puppy?

The key to socialization is gradually exposing your puppy to each new experience. Pushing her into overly-stressful situations too quickly can have a negative effect on her learning process. She may find herself in a position that she isn’t able to cope with, possibly creating a situation that she wants no part of in the future. Again, the key is gradual exposure.

An important part of gradually exposing your puppy to new things, is being able to read your dog’s body language. If she looks scared or nervous, don’t keep pushing her. All socialization must be done at the dog’s level. Don’t try to force her into things she isn’t ready for. Start out with something easy and then gradually try to work her up to more intense events. Socialization must always be a positive experience. You want her to think that learning new things and places is fun and interesting, not frightening and stressful. Food is a great motivator. Use high-valued treats, petting, praise and a loving attitude to make her socialization exercises overwhelmingly positive ones.

What Types of Things or Places Should I Socialize my Puppy to?

Everything and everybody!! Take her to experience new places and to meet new people where you have a good deal of control over. A dog park for a young puppy (2 -4 months) may not be the best place since the chance of developing a fear or aggressive response to other dogs at such an early age is possible. Take her to friends, neighbors, and/or family members whom have dogs that are good around puppies. If you plan on taking her to places with other dogs, always make sure those dogs will be safe around your puppy.

Visit places that have a gathering of people without a lot of other dogs. Shopping centers are good places to get your dog used to other people. Just make sure they aren’t providing too much stimulation. Remember, you want gradual exposure at the dog’s level. Expose her to cold places, children, weird noises, strange smells, textures, etc… Basically, you want to expose her to everything and anything you can think of without overwhelming or frightening her.

The table below provides a good starting for your puppy’s socialization exercises. It by no means is a complete list. Try to think of other things, places or people you can add to it. Always use high-valued rewards to make each interaction successful. You can also use them to help guide her if she is a little skeptical at first.

Puppy Socialization Table

Exposure to different types of textures	Wood, Carpet, Tile, Grass, Wet Grass, Sand, Dirt, Water, Cement, Hills, Stones, Brick, Woodchips, etc.
Exposure to different locations	Different areas of the house, outside, car, beach, schoolyard, ball field, garage, groomer, vet, shopping plaza, friends, neighbors and family homes, neighborhood, etc.
Exposure to different people	Children, adults, men, women, elderly people, people in wheelchairs, people with crutches, canes, walkers, hats, sunglasses, people of different sizes, and colors, family, friends and neighbors
Exposure to different objects	Vacuum cleaner, beach balls, tennis balls, fuzzy toys, radio, television, car keys, cardboard items, children’s toys, etc.
Exposure to different noises (keep positive and watch pup’s comfort level)	Doorbell, children, garage-door opener, radio, television, cars, motorcycles, babies crying, people yelling, lawnmower, stove-timers, shopping carts, balls bouncing, skateboarders, etc.
Exposure to moving objects	Cats, squirrels, dogs, skateboarders, rollerbladers, bicycles, cars, joggers, children playing, etc.
Alone Time (in crate, at least an hour a day every day)	While you’re in…bathroom, outside, neighbor’s house, mowing lawn, taking out trash, cleaning the house, etc.
Exposure to different challenges	Up and down steps, jump over obstacles, play hide and seek, sliding doors, up on scales, walk through makeshift tunnel (cardboard, etc..) walk next to a vacuum, a stepstool, across a mat
Eat of out different food containers	Stainless steel bowl, wooden bowl, ceramic bowl, out of your hand, Buster cube, Kong, off of spoon, plates – paper, plastic, ceramic and wooden, nylon travel bowls, plastic travel water trays

More Socialization Ideas!

• Go to the beach and let your dog check out the sights, sounds and smells
• Make vet and groomer trips without getting examined (get approval first). Get a treat and leave.
• Brush your dog once, treat. Brush a few times, treat. Brush for 30 seconds, treat. Keep building tolerance to being groomed.
• Put puppy in bathtub, give treat and remove. Put her in tub, put on water and treat. Keep building up tolerance to getting a bath.
• Show your dog her toothbrush and treat. Open her mouth and treat. Try brushing one tooth and treat. Build up tolerance to getting teeth brushed.
• Show your dog the nail clippers and treat. Touch her paw and treat. Hold her paw and treat. Keep building up tolerance to getting her nails clipped.
• Have a neighbor or family member ring your doorbell or knock on your door without coming in. Keep practicing this to desensitize your dog to the doorbell or knocking and the arrival of guests.
• Take out her leash and just carry it around the house for 5 minutes ignoring your dog. Put it away. Take it out and place it on the counter, again, ignore the dog. Desensitize your dog to the sight of the leash and going for a walk.
• Put a hat on your head then give your dog a treat. Put on some sunglasses and repeat. Put on hat and sunglasses and again give her a treat.
• Have young children hand-feed your dog some food and treats.
  

Why Training Your Dog is So Important

We love our dogs. There’s no doubt about it. Each year, responsible and caring dog owners, spend millions and millions of dollars to feed, entertain, pamper and provide excellent health-care for their beloved dogs. For many people, almost nothing is too extravagant, or expensive for their dogs.

Another area where these responsible and caring pet owners are spending their hard-earned dollars and precious time on is proper training, especially with puppies. These folks understand that providing quality training for their dog or puppy is one of the most important things they can possibly do for their dog in his or lifetime. Proper training, preferably as early on in the relationship as possible, can produce a wealth of benefits that will carry through the dog’s life and make it easier for him to become a beloved member of his family unit.

Why Train?

Training activities can help improve your dog’s attention skills and impulse control abilities, and can reduce anxiety and frustration. Dogs appear to be more focused on their owners and comfortable in their surroundings. The net result is a sense of security and trust where they are able to let their guard down, because they know that they are safe from harm.

Through the lessons they learn in their training exercises, dogs learn to cope more effectively with conflict or emotionally stressful situations. They learn to have more confidence and are able approach difficult challenges with the feeling that they can be successful, which can reduce anxiety, frustration and fear. Through training, they also learn what is truly expected of them, which allows them to behave and live according to the guidelines that we’ve set forth.

Also, trained dogs require fewer restrictions, and are integrated more in the family. They receive more attention and interaction from family members, friends and strangers both inside the home and out. Let’s face it, we all know how frustrating it can be to go to a friend or family member’s home and have their out-of-control, untrained dog jump all over us, bite at our shoes or clothes, or even just bark, seemingly forever.

The Untrained Dog

If it’s frustrating for us on the receiving end, think of how embarrassing it probably is for the owner of the dog. If he or she is like most people with dogs fitting that description, they’re usually very uncomfortable with the thought of having company over, and will certainly put the dog away to another area of the house where they don’t have to worry about him or her.

The dog, in reality, just never really learned the proper way to meet and greet people, and only does what’s natural to him. He jumps out of excitement and looks to greet each new guest in his traditional canine manner of greeting. The more he jumps, the more he’s banished from guests. The more he’s banished, the more the excitement grows each time he sees a guest, which again results in further banishment. Life becomes a vicious circle of excitement and frustration. Such is the life of an untrained, impulsive dog.

Untrained dogs generally lack proper attention skills, are insecure, and, as stated above, act more on impulse than dogs who feel relaxed and secure because of their training. Dogs who behave poorly and are destructive, usually wind-up ruining more than just physical items. They destroy the bond they have with their families, and increase the chances that they will be removed from those families. These dogs are often sent off to secluded areas of the home or yard, or even shelters.

Roughly, each year in the United States alone, over 9 million animals are euthanized. The sad fact is that, in many of these cases, a large number of these dogs die unnecessarily in shelters as the direct result of unresolved behavior problems.

Additionally, large numbers of seemingly healthy companion dogs are also euthanized by veterinarians because of their intolerable behavior problems. Untrained puppies become untrained adult dogs. The seemingly harmless and “cute” behavior “quirks” that we usually tend to tolerate or overlook during the puppy stage can be become truly impossible or even dangerous to deal with when the dog is an adult. This can, in turn, cause a very anxious and stress-filled environment for the dog and his entire family.

It’s very easy to see, from the discussion points thus far, why it’s so critical for all dogs to receive the proper amount of quality training from their owners. However, as responsible and caring dog owners, aside from the obvious benefits of having a well-trained companion by your side, you get some very well-deserved and valuable fringe-benefits as well.

Take an Active Role in Your Dog’s Training

Owners, who play an active part in their dog’s training, gain a lot of useful experiences and valuable canine life lessons in the process. They become more observant and more in-tune to their dog’s behavior. They learn to identify, not-so-apparent, details about their dog’s behavior, so they are more equipped to handle issues or problems that may arise in the future. Owners will learn how to appreciate a dog’s biological and emotional requirements, so they are able to provide him with the necessary things in life to make him a healthy and happy member of the household. This, in turn, has positive ramifications for everybody whom comes into contact with the dog.

Instead of always using punishments or corrections to train the dog to behave properly, owners learn more effective and productive forms of communication and training to get their dog behave properly. Owners also develop a more informed estimation of their dog’s learning abilities and limitations. This provides the owner with a better understanding of the concepts and skills the dog can associate with more quickly, as well as those he may some difficulty with and take a little longer to comprehend.

All of these benefits lead to a better relationship and serve to strengthen the bond between owner and dog. They build understanding, communication, and mutual respect for one another. Training also builds leadership. Effective training will help your dog defer and comply with you to become a successful companion.

To summarize, training provides all of the following amazing benefits:

• A foundation of communication between owner and dog
• Enhances the human-dog relationship
• Promotes affection and mutual appreciation
• Provides the owner with effective management and control skills
• Builds confidence and trust
• Promotes relaxation and sense of well-being
• Enhances social adjustment, cooperation and competence
• Improves the dog’s attention and impulse-control abilities

In short, obedience training benefits everyone!

How Dogs Learn – Part 2

In Part I of “How Dogs Learn”, I touched on 2 major ways in which dogs learn new things about their environment. Through learned associations and the realization that their actions really do have consequences (both good and bad), dogs are able to make reasonable assumptions about environmental events, decide whether those events are favorable or not, and then learn how to make those events occur more often, less often, or not all.

In this section, I will talk about the different stages of learning and how you can apply them, along with the information discussed in Part I, to get the most out of all of your training situations.

The reason we think in terms of training, or learning in stages is because, in order to train a dog to perform some act or series of acts reliably and consistenly,  it’s usually easier to break the learning or training process down into smaller, more manageable pieces. This will help make even the most daunting task or training situation seem almost like child’s play. It will also allow for many more confidence-building opportunities along the way.

The stages serve as a training framework; so the training can progress logically from less-complex to more-complex concepts to allow the dog to succeed many times during the process.

The four steps, or stages that we’ll use are the following:

1. Acquisition Stage
2. Automatic Stage
3. Generalization Stage
4. Maintenance Stage

Acquisition Stage

You can think of the Acquistion stage as the entry point into the learning process. This is where the dog first becomes exposed to a learning or training opportunity. This is also where the dog first learns that certain activities are either rewarding or not rewarding.

For example, if we are training our dog to Sit upon hearing the word “Sit”, the Acquistion stage is where we would first show the dog what the act of “sitting” is and why he should do it. A very basic way to begin the process would be to bait a nice tasty treat in our hand and slowly begin to move it up and over the dog’s head. The goal in moving the treat over the dog’s head is that, as he is looking up at the treat, he’ll will then place his back-end on the ground, and sit to look at it. At that precise moment, we would reward the dog (tasty treat, petting, play, etc…) for doing so.

At first, the dog may not fully understand what you are trying to get him to do and may look at you with a blank stare, as if to say, “Ok, what am I supposed to do with that?”. However, after he’s been exposed to the exercise a few times, he’ll soon pick-up on what he needs to do, and realize that by doing so, he’ll recieve a nice tasty reward. This is the beginning of the learning process.

Through this exercise, the dog learns an important association between seeing the baited hand, the act of sitting to follow the hand, and ultimately receiving a reward for doing so. He has also learned another important lesson in that, by performing the “sitting” action, he has the ability to make good things happen. This will be the dog’s motiviation to perform the operation again when he sees similar circumstances in the future.

Automatic Stage

The Automatic stage is where the dog really starts to put the repetition of previously trained sessions or general environmental occurences together, and the “lightbulb” first goes off in his head. This is where he really begins to see the relationship, or association between different things that may be happening to him, and around him, and he then starts to “learn” what he needs to do in response to those things.

During this stage, he is becoming more and more alert to what he’s been seeing and/or hearing, and proficient in knowing what he needs to do about those things, when he sees or hears them.

So, going back to our training example, within the Automatic stage, the dog is really beginning to pick-up on what we’re trying to get him to do. He’s recognizing and responding to the hand movement easily, and offering the “Sit” behavior, fairly quickly. He may even begin to “Sit” well before the luring movement is completed. At this stage, we would also be able to begin adding the word “Sit” to luring movement.

The dog would then begin to associate the word “Sit” with the hand movement. Finally, we would remove the food lure altogether, and rely solely on the verbal “Sit” cue to get the dog to offer the sitting behavior. During all of these different exercises, we would be progressing the dog through the Automatic stage of learning.

Generalization Stage

The Generalization stage really just adds upon, or broadens the scope of the Automatic stage. In this stage, the dog applies what he has learned to a variety of different situations or circumstances.

In returning to our training example at this point the dog has become fairly proficient in hearing the verbal cue “Sit” and responding according in a few areas within his home. However, upon hearing the cue in other locations, the backyard perhaps, or possibly the petstore, his proficiency and reliability become very poor or even nonexistent. The goal now is to get the dog to respond reliably to the “Sit” cue in those two locations, as well as in any other location or situation he may be faced with.

This is generally accomplished by training the dog within the contexts of those new locations and making it easy for him to learn by taking a few steps back in the training process and teaching him the basics once again. If you want your dog to perform in a certain way in a certain environment or situtation, you’ll need to train him specifically in those places. You’ll also need to add the element of training him though various types of distractions, so that, no matter he’s faced with, he’ll be able to focus on you and respond to your cues.

Maintenance Stage

Finally, the Maintenance stage is reached when the dog has a thorough understanding of a particular learned behavior, and can apply that behavior in a variety of different situations with a high degree of reliability. The new, learned behavior has become second nature to the dog. At this stage, intermittent training is still required to maintain that level of generalization and reliability. Training is a lifelong committment. Depending on the dog, only a small amount of occasional training is all that may be needed. Other dogs may need some “refresher” exercises from previous stages to help maintain a high degree of learned knowledge.

To summarize, in thinking about how dogs learn and how to go about training them, it’s often helpful to think in terms of training in a series of stages. These stages aren’t ridgidly meant to be concrete boundaries that the dog must, without flaw, complete or pass before moving on to the next stage. They are to be used as a training framework to help organize your training efforts, and break them up into smaller, more manageable pieces. This will allow you to develop a more structured training plan, which will be easier for your dog to understand and follow, be more efficient, and allow you both to have more fun in the process.