Living with a puppy – A dog owner’s guide
By Virpi Leskinen
Part I
Congratulations! You have made a big decision by bringing a puppy into your home. This means taking the responsibility for your dog’s welfare. It also means you have a responsibility to learn about dog behavior and training over the next ten years to come. It means having a chance to experience friendship between a person and a dog, as well as loyalty and fidelity beyond compare. At the moment you are living in exciting and immensely critical times. Enjoy them fully, but also provide your newly acquired puppy living conditions that cherish the canines’ basic needs. In order to be able to guide your puppy’s development, train your puppy, and improve your puppy’s social skills in both dog and human society, you will need to learn some basics about puppy development as well as learning principles and dog behavior. This guide will help you get started on the journey to wonderful world of puppies. Puppy development stages and becoming a member of the human pack Dogs differ from humans in all possible ways. Anthropomorphizing your dog, in other words, viewing your dog as if it was a human with human needs and traits is simply wrong from the dog’s point of view. Dogs are happy when their doggy needs are met: when they know their place in their peaceful and balanced pack (your family), get adequate amounts of healthy nutrition as well as exercise, and when they are able to behave in a way that is innate to their breed or to canines in general. A competent breeder has already guided your pet through its baby weeks and the basic imprinting period until the age of 7 or 8 weeks. It is usually around this time when puppies go to their new homes, and when the responsibility for the puppy’s upbringing and training shifts onto the puppy owner’s shoulders. Even though the genetic makeup of the puppy determines the foundation of its behavior, and while the first weeks at the breeder’s place are equally important, you can still modify your dog’s behavior by providing a stimulating living environment and by supporting your puppy’s mental development. You need time and will to engage in different activities with your puppy, and a chance to wholeheartedly embark on a wonderful journey with your new acquired pack member! During the late socializing period lasting from the age of 7 weeks until the age of 12 weeks, the puppy’s development is incredibly fast and learning happens very rapidly. This time should be well spent. It is often said that during this socialization period, the puppy’s brain is open to receive huge amounts of good useful experiences and stimuli lasting for the rest of the puppy’s life. Learning is easy if new and varying things are introduced on a daily basis. Something that the puppy familiarizes itself with during the socialization period appears later on as “normal”, a phenomenon that is part of the puppy’s day to day living, no matter how occasional the encounters are. Socializing your puppy is important simply because living with a dog that cannot be trusted in normal everyday situations, can be tedious and highly stressful. As a puppy, dogs need a lot of different kind of stimuli and experiences. The most important socializing period takes place in early puppyhood, before the age of 16 weeks; the puppy should be exposed to as many experiences as possible. Right after the puppy has settled in its new home, it should be taken to visit different places (for example: malls, city centers, railway stations), to be introduced to varying environments and people (dog shows, sports events, children, other animals, staircases, loud noises etc). It is often recommended that puppies should be not taken outside of home before their shots are completed, but this way the most important socializing period is missed entirely, and therefore it is very likely that in the future it will be much harder for the dog to meet with new and sometimes scary things. Overprotecting your puppy interferes with its normal mental development, and it is possible to provide your puppy with safe access to varying places and new experiences without exposing it to unknown dogs. For puppies, everything in the world is new, and sometimes they might seem hesitant or even react quite strongly when around novel or scary stimuli. To be a trustworthy handler, you should always act with encouragement and show with your own calm example how to behave. Go and check out the “scary things” with your puppy, and never let your puppy be spooked by something without solving the situation with the puppy afterwards. Do not sooth your dog when it hesitates or shows apprehension, but instead encourage it to resolve the situation together with you. Get into new situations and environments with your puppy every day. Go and explore! Follow the footsteps of your dog’s wolf ancestors! Teach your puppy right from the beginning that being with you means safety. Crouch down to the level of the puppy, holding it protectively near you, and speak calmly. Once you have taught the puppy the meaning of this “safety zone”, you can use it in many situations to make the puppy feel secure when looking at the many wonders of the outside world. Taking care of your puppy’s safety has nothing to do with overprotecting the puppy or reinforcing your puppy’s fears. Ensuring your pet’s safety and comfort simply shows that you want your pack member’s life to be secure and calm in all possible situations. Touch and examine your puppy on a daily basis. When you are teaching your puppy to get used to normal routines such as nail clipping, ear cleaning, and grooming, you are at the same time teaching your puppy to get used to being handled by humans. Do not give up even if your puppy struggles or tries to get away. Be persistent and go through with what you initially began, and reward the puppy for calming down. Odd enough, many people find puppies completely irresistible. When you walk down the street with your cute pooch, people are likely to just stop and bend down to pat your puppy on the head without a warning. How would you feel in a similar situation with an enormous giant stranger stroking your head out of the blue? Most likely you would try to get away and feel quite insecure! Clearly, these kinds of incidences do not build the puppy’s trust towards strangers. As a dog owner, you are responsible for your pack’s safety; it is your duty to take care of these situations that are seemingly harmless. Take into account the puppy’s point of view; you need to make sure that impolite or even scary encounters do not take place. From your puppy’s perspective, the approaching stranger crouching over them is acting threatening. On top of that, it must feel unpleasant or even frightening to be stroked on the head from such heights. Take a careful look at an encounter of two dogs. They make it clear right from the beginning what’s the hierarchical order. One dog might lick the other dog’s mouth or roll on its back in order to be examined by the other, and this way initiating submissiveness before a play. One might press its head on top of the other’s back and in this way show what is the order. Only after all these rituals, dogs start to play, and by then they already know who’s leading the game. Dogs communicate their intentions very subtly, and assess each other in a matter of seconds. Sometimes human non-verbal communication contradicts with the canine communication, and before your puppy learns what the odd human gestures mean (baring teeth means smiling in human communication, but is a threat in the canine language), it has to have a lot of educating and pleasant experiences with a lot of people. Creating a good relationship is the utmost important task of the dog owner. In dog terms, the owner or handler is often called the pack leader. A more suitable term would simply be the responsible one, since it better describes the desirable status of a human living with dogs. The idea of the responsible one is self explanatorily in regards to who is responsible for the pack, so the dog does not need to worry about things it cannot handle. If the dog is forced to step in, conflicts are inevitable. From the dog’s point of view, living with a just and good responsible owner is safe and comforting. Therefore the most important tasks of the responsible one are: creating a tight bond with the pack members, teaching social rules, establishing a happy and balanced atmosphere, and satisfying the pack members’ basic needs. So how should a responsible owner behave and act? From your dog’s viewpoint, you should always be trustworthy; you should keep order, and communicate clearly to all pack members what is allowed and what is not. It is also especially important to instruct your children how to behave correctly when around dogs. You do not yell or shout at your dog, but reinforce your status with subtle signals. Your dog values your praise and attention when it has earned them, and when it really knows what for. Getting rough of physical with your dog does not earn their respect, whereas being kind and consistent does. At home, you stand out from the rest of the pack by having special privileges. You have the best sleeping or resting spot, a right to eat in peace, and also have the right to drive the pack members lower in the hierarchy away from the dinner table. You do not let your dog be rude by constantly begging for attention and cuddles, but you make sure that the dog is petted only after it has come when called or completed some other task that you assigned. You take care of the safety of the pack, and therefore you greet, or from dogs’ point of view, check out visitors before them. You go wherever you like to, and it is the dog’s responsibility to get out of the way. When on a walk, you as the responsible one decide where you are going and on what pace. You also arrange fun time for the pack members by providing training and playtime. You do not let anything traumatic happen to your dog, and you for example, drive away any charging strange dogs calmly but firmly. You are a gentle and just dog owner, truly the responsible one. (c) 2010 All Rights Reserved Virpi Leskinen Excerpts of the book currently being prepared for publication.
-Choosing a Puppy
-Getting Ready for Puppy
-Bringing Puppy Home
-Those First Few Nights
-House Training Puppy
-A Trip to the Vet
-Oh, those Puppy Teeth
-Puppy Needs a Friend
-Puppy Manners
-Basics of Puppy Training
Dog Whisperer
Dog obedience training
Dog Tracking
Agility Training for Dogs
Service dog training
Selecting a Service Dog
Special Needs Training
Conformation handling classes
Puppy Training
Kinds of Service Dogs: Mobility Assistance
Puppy Training 2
Search and Rescue Dogs
Seizure Dog Training Procedures
Temperament in Working Dogs
Therapy Dogs
Train Your Own Service Dog
Training Your Puppy Not to Bite
Training of Search and Rescue Dogs
Dog Collars
Dog Costumes
Dog Leashes
Designer Dog Collars
Leashes for Specific Dog Training
Bones For Dogs
Chew Dog Toys
Dog Balls
Fetch Toys
Interactive dog toys
Latex Dog Toys
Natural Dog Toys
Rope Dog Toys
Rubber Dog Toys
Training 101; House breaking when at Home
Tips for you and your puppy
Training Your Puppy Not to Bite
When It’s Not the Ideal Dog
