Raising your dog to be friendly to strangers is one of the most important things that you can teach your dog. Teaching you dog not to bite strangers if they look harmless is your most important goal as a dog owner. However, during your pup’s first months at home, teaching it to socialize with others should be your prime directive.
The first few months of your pup, it should already know how to interact with people. If you are successful in teaching your puppy how to interact socially with other people, it will carry it on and will not be a behavior problem in the future. Some people opt for puppy classes to teach their puppies how to socialize with people and other puppies. This is a good thing but socializing should not only be limited to the class. Socialization should be shown to your puppy in and out of your house to fully imprint it to its behavior.
Can Old Dogs Learn New Tricks?
In case you fail to train your puppy before it turns several months old, no need to fret because it can still learn how to socialize with people and other dogs. Teaching will become slightly harder but it isn’t something that you can’t do. Just make sure to not leave your puppy in isolation because the younger the puppy is, the more impressionable it is. That means that to fully make your puppy sociable, you need to train it starting at a young age. The first few years of your puppy is such a crucial developmental stage that even a few mistakes regarding its socialization can be the difference between a sociable dog and a feral one.
You must also understand that the breed of your puppy somehow determines its temperament. If your dog breed is known for their temperament issue, the sooner you have to train it. As I’ve said before, you need to expose your puppy to social interactions with people and other dogs as soon as possible. If dog to dog socialization is not possible, you can put it on hold until your dog is old enough to go to a dog park. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for dog to person socialization. Since dog-to-human interaction is not fully imprinted on their instinct as dog-to-dog interaction, you still need to teach them how to behave with people. Exposing them as early as possible to people will make dog training them far easier down the road.
The Takeaway
As you can see, the key to ensuring that your dog is sociable is to expose them to people interaction as early as possible. While older puppies can still be trained to be sociable to strangers, it will be harder compared to training your pups earlier. To get the best results, just make sure that your puppy is always included in all your social events.
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