Читать книгу Clever Dog: Understand What Your Dog is Telling You - Sarah Whitehead - Страница 16

TOP TIPS FOR ‘STRESS IMMUNISING’ AND SOCIALISING PUPPIES

» Start young. Even if your puppy has not yet completed all his vaccinations, you can carry him out and about to meet the world. The first critical window of opportunity for puppies to learn to cope with everyday life is before twelve weeks; after this, every day becomes potentially more difficult.

» Try not to wrap your puppy in cotton wool. He or she needs to learn how to cope with life. The balance between protection and exposure is an important one.

» Dogs need to be exposed repeatedly to all the sights, sounds, touches, smells and even tastes of their environment. Treat your puppy as if he is going to be a guide dog by taking him out and about as much as possible.

» Be brave enough to leave your puppy home alone for short periods.

» Find a good puppy class and enrol your dog as soon as they allow. The class should be specifically for pups of eighteen weeks and under, and should offer a combination of carefully controlled socialisation with other puppies and kind, gentle training.

» Even very young puppies can sometimes show problem behaviours. Don’t be fooled into thinking that he or she will grow out of it. Seek help early if you need it.

» Puppies and children are a wonderful, if sometimes wild, combination. Make sure that both have ‘calm down’ periods and that your puppy has somewhere he can go and rest undisturbed. Never leave your puppy unsupervised with children.

» Pups of eight weeks old can learn basic manners and training, such as ‘sit’, ‘down’, ‘come when called’ and multitudes of simple tricks such as ‘spin’, ‘rollover’ and ‘give a paw’. Learning is easy and fun when you are young.

» Puppies often go through a ‘fear period’, characterised by being confident one day and then being scared of something commonplace the next. Don’t reinforce the fear by giving attention; instead, pretend nothing has happened, wait until your pup recovers, then reward him for being brave the next time he encounters the same thing.

» Introduce your puppy to good-natured adult dogs as soon as you can. A ‘telling off’ from an older dog may be perfectly appropriate if your pup is too bumptious. This is distinguishable from aggression as it is all noise and bluster with no risk of damage. Don’t panic if it happens, as it’s likely to do you a favour.

» Two puppies from the same litter need to be walked, trained and socialised separately if they are to develop as individuals in their own right, and not many owners have the time or dedication needed for this. Pups that are over-dependent on each other or an older dog in the same household run the risk of lacking real-world experience and may have problems later.