Is there a step by step guide to puppy socialization?

[loveisrael]

I'm hoping there is a guide for puppy socialization for the first several months of the puppy's life. Ideally I'm looking for something regimented that guides you to exactly what your puppy should be doing on any given day/week.

"Week 1 (8 weeks old):

• X
• Y
• Z

Week 2 (9 weeks old)

• X
• Y
• Z"

And so on.

 

[onlybygrace101]

@loveisrael There's piles of ideas if you Google "puppy socialisation checklist" or "puppy socialisation passport". I think these are good for inspiration, but also sort of miss the point.

There isn't one magic list of things that your puppy should see by X age in order to become a happy, confident adult dog. And you don't have to do everything. Your puppy doesn't need to see a tall black man with a limp carrying an umbrella in order to be confident around tall black men with limps carrying umbrellas later in life.

Socialisation is about three things:

• Teaching the pup how to behave around things that will be a regular part of his life. For me sheep and horse riders are on that list, whereas busy roads and close encounters with young kids are not. If you have kids or live in the city your list will be different to mine. Technically this is not purely about socialisation, it is also about rewarding the right behaviour - but starting as soon as possible makes the training easier.
• Experiencing a wide variety of new things with all senses - sight, sound, smell, walking on different surfaces, going on car rides, seeing what the world's like after dark etc.
• ALSO (and more importantly IMO) building an optimistic outlook towards novelty. This means that the experiences the puppy has with these new things need to be overwhelmingly positive or neutral. Once the puppy has built up this optimism he will be quite resilient to new things that he encounters, even if he never saw them as a pup.

Let the puppy engage with things in his own time. If he seems nervous, move further away or pick him up so he feels safer, and wait. Socialisation shouldn't mean being forced to interact with people or things if the pup doesn't want that. If your pup wants to interact and it's appropriate, by all means let him - but it's far better to spend 20-30 minutes just watching the world go by, than to have 20-30 people pat your pup in one morning down at the farmer's market.

While socialisation needs to be a major focus during the early months (up to 14-16 weeks depending on which source you look at), it's also important that the puppy regularly sees new things throughout his first year. My goal with a pup is that he has one new experience every day until 16 weeks, and then one new experience every week up to 12 months. I don't achieve that (nobody's perfect) but every happy/neutral experience increases the odds that I will have a confident older dog.

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@onlybygrace101 Such a thoughtful and educated reply! That is literally what you should do.

Puppy should basically observe things from a distance and make the decision to interact or get closer themselves. Someone wants to pet your pup? Make that person stay back, get low and ignore the puppy. Toss treats at the puppies feet to make it a positive experience as he’s getting closer to the person (or not getting closer but observant) they don’t get to give him a treat, you want him to see you as super important so you always give the treats.

There’s really no timeline because it mainly depends on where the puppy is at in confidence and some dogs have a lot naturally and others need help understanding that feeling.

 

[dreamjaney]

@loveisrael Socializing means bringing the dog around new areas, places, sounds, things, without it interacting with them or people, pets. Just let him see, hear them for the first few months. Dont let your dog interact with dogs you dont know.

 

[eront]

@loveisrael Not really, because each puppy is different and socialization is something to do at their pace.

I generally have a schedule where we do something but I let the sessions build on each other. If I notice puppy is nervous or overly excited with something, we'll spend more time on that.

So, like, every day at 3:45 we go out and we work on introducing puppy to people places and things. If puppy isn't okay with something, we'll end the session and revisit it another day at a greater distance.