Three Tip For Early Puppy Socialization

Puppy socialization is the most important thing to teach your puppy from ages 8 to 16 weeks. Some experts say from 4 to 12 weeks. The breeder will usually start socializing the puppy from 4-8 weeks by exposing it to a variety of different people, animals, sights, and sounds. And then when the owner takes the puppy at eight weeks, they continue until 12 weeks or even 16 weeks. When we start socializing our puppy, we need to consider vaccinations. Your veterinarian will provide you with strict guidelines on what you can and cannot do until your puppy is fully vaccinated.

Puppy socialization is more than your puppy interacting with another dog or having a doggy play date with your neighbor.  Puppy socialization will include these things, but more importantly, your puppy needs to be exposed to various sights, sounds, textures of floors, and a range of other objects passing by them. We take puppies to home improvement stores, so that would include flatbeds, shopping carts, pallet jacks, cars, bikes, skateboards, airplanes, butterflies, and anything that moves.

Another important aspect of puppy socialization is proper handling. Being able to touch the paws, ears, look inside the mouth, and pull up the tail to examine their behind. Those types of things are significant for puppy socialization. So it goes way beyond just your puppy playing with another puppy. 

Proper puppy socialization also includes working with your puppy through a high level of distractions, such as being able to put them in a “down-stay” with numerous distractions around them. Look at the videos I've posted on the Top Gun Dog Training Instagram page, and you will see that all the puppies I work with do this exercise in the middle of a home improvement store. They do a “down-stay,” and the owner backs up and then calls them. The puppy comes, and they sit and wait for a treat. This is a skill all puppy owners should teach their puppy early on. If they do, they will be adept at socialization and managing distractions later in life. 

Tip #1

Start socializing your puppy early, at around 10 weeks old. We start taking the puppy places when they have their second round of vaccines. Some owners are hesitant to do this because their veterinarian is very adamant about waiting until the final round of vaccines, especially after receiving the rabies vaccine. We take them for car rides, walk them on the concrete in front of the house, and take them to relatively safe places, such as Home Depot or Lowe’s. 

We don't take them to grass where there could be contaminated dog feces, which is what's giving a puppy fatal diseases like parvo and distemper. We don't want that. We don't like the puppy to get worms or Giardia, a parasite. We want to prevent all of that. The vet is going to tell you, Don't let the puppy go on anybody's grass, because that's where contaminated feces will show up. Also, you want to avoid things like rabbit feces, because that could hurt the puppy as well.

The goal is to get the puppy interacting with people and to get them learning how to acclimate to different social environments. 

Tip #2

Take them to as many places as possible. This includes home improvement stores like Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Tractor Supply. It also includes craft stores like Home Goods, Hobby Lobby, and Michaels. Take them to outdoor shopping malls. We have a great one in Huntsville called Bridge Street, and that's where we take many puppies to socialize them. We can be outside, and we can go inside a variety of stores that allow dogs.

You want to avoid taking your puppy to dog parks or to parks where there's a lot of contaminated feces from other dogs. That's not a good idea. You're also not going to be taking them to daycare yet because daycares are going to require that the puppy be fully vaccinated. You must show proof of that before they can be admitted to a daycare. Eventually, you will want to take your puppy to hiking trails, outdoor festivals, and flea markets.. You can take them all kinds of places, and they acclimate quickly. They adapt easily. That's the importance of taking them to various locations. 

At this stage, we want your puppy to be able to easily ride in the car so you can take them places. We want your puppy to trust you and feel safe knowing that you're going to take them to a fun place, somewhere they can have a good time.

Tip #3

Be consistent with public outings. Many new puppy owners, as well as people I work with, will say, “Last month we took our puppy on a ride somewhere, and we went to a friend's house.” They did one social outing a month, and that's not enough. You have to do it frequently, two to three times a week. 

When I got Dixie, I started socializing her at 10 weeks old. She’s five and a half now, and she's a therapy dog. She's very confident. She's very socially adaptable. She goes places with me all the time now, and she has no problems anywhere. The first week I had her, I introduced her to a hundred people. I knocked on my neighbors' doors and had them pet her. I walked her around after the first week on a loose leash, where she would go to the same neighbors and interact with them again. When she had some of her vaccines, she would start interacting with the dogs that I knew. 

She is super, super socialized now, and I am so happy that I did that early on. By the time she was 12 weeks old, all of her socialization was complete. She was fully acclimated to almost everything and everywhere that I was going to take her for the rest of her life. And if you ever meet Dixie or see her in public, you will instantly acknowledge that she is highly adaptable in all social situations, just by her calm demeanor in the face of numerous distractions. Make sure to be consistent in taking your puppy to many places.

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