Socializing with People and Other Dogs

Socialization with people and other dogs? 

When socializing our service dog puppies, we find one of the biggest mistakes is when it comes to having our puppies meet and greet everyone, and other dogs. It’s not that we don’t want them to do so, but we do want it to be done the right way. We cover socialization with people, and other dogs in-depth in the Academy, but we do want to mention it briefly here so that you have some guidelines to help you get started.

Teaching our puppies what normal is, means thinking about the future and how we want our pups to interact with their environment, including people and other dogs. Do we want them to greet everyone we meet? Do we want them to pull towards people or other dogs? No we don’t, so we don’t want to teach them to do this, or let them practice. This means we have to think about what normal would look like. The ideal would be for our SDIT/SD’s to ignore people and dogs. Thus we need to help them to do this by not creating a situation when they are puppies that lead them to believe that’s ok. 

How do we do that? We can do several things to help our service dog puppies understand the “rules” to meeting and greeting, or ignoring people and dogs. 

1.) Let your puppy decide. When you start introducing your puppy, pay attention to what they want. Do they even want to meet this person? What is their body language when being petted? Do they meet then move away? It’s important to let your puppy move away or not even greet if it’s not what they want.
2.) Decide what you want to happen when they do meet people. Do we want them to ignore everyone? Do we want them to sit for petting? Do we want them to wait for you to give permission?
3.) Strangers shouldn’t give your puppy treats. We don’t want our puppies associating treats with people. 


(Toby choosing to greet.)

Mixed messages another reason we want to control strangers greeting, or in fact petting our service dog puppies is that we want to be able to educate them at the same time. We want the public to understand that greeting or petting a working service dog, or any working dog, is not ok. 


From: The problem with social media’s obsession with - pet all the dogs


Why is it not ok for my service dog puppy to meet other dogs? As we mentioned above concerning strangers, we wan’t to teach our puppies what normal is. So that means we need to limit our service dog puppies from meeting everyone they encounter, and instead pick known puppies and dogs, and situations you can control. This allows for several things:

1.) You are assured the other dogs or puppies are healthy and have shots to protect your puppy. 
2.) You know the owner and the temperament of the other dogs or puppy. 
3.) It’s easier to monitor, control the play/greeting, and allow for a more natural interaction. (As apposed to greeting a strange dog at the end of a leash). 

Also, just as we practice polite greetings with people, and not just “social” greetings, we need to do the same thing with other dogs. They need to learn how to politely greet other dogs. Keeping the initial greeting short will help to keep the arousal level low which is important for polite and safe greetings. Keep the interaction very short also allows us to call our puppy away before he is to involved with other dog to hear us. We will generally allow the puppy to play after a few of these brief interactions and successful recalls.

So remember that socializing your service dog puppy is about more than exposing him to as many people, places, and things as you can think of.  It’s about setting up behaviors, habits, and communication skills he will use for the rest of his life. 

Tip: Body language is a huge part of creating successful greetings and interactions with strangers, both people and dogs. Thus learning about dog's body language in general, and your own dogs in particular adds another element to your training.
Susan Garrett has a great podcast series about dog body language including: "Dog body language: Understanding canine communication signals and emotions."

🗓️ Next Week: April is Facebook Group month: My Service Dog and Me FREE Facebook group. 

Resources 

My Service Dog and Me: 
https://linktr.ee/myservicedogandme
Can my service dog play with other dogs. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLe_7GA5FOM

Credit - AKC
The problem with social media’s obsession with - pet all the dogs

Credit - Susan Garett (Bachelor of Science majoring in Animal Science)
Dog body language: Understanding canine communication signals and emotions.