http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BaYwbnQp8Q 4BaYwbnQp8Q
Allowing your puppy to meet and greet other dogs, allows your puppy to build up a language
of communication with those other dogs. It's really important now to not only socialize
your puppy with other puppies, but with adult dogs too. And, again, I do this on the leash.
I'm using my dog Sadie here. It's really interesting, because when Sadie sniffed just then, she
was sniffing were Mojo had toilted. So she was getting information about him before she
even met him. Again, you can see, that they're greeting each first by sniffing each other
around the face, and then Sadie wanted to get information about Mojo by sniffing his
behind. All the time, these dogs are picking up information about each other. Mojo is giving
Sadie a really nice calming signal, just lying down, saying "Hey, I'm no threat. Don't be
a threat to me." Sadie is a real ground sniffer. She gets a lot of her information about her
world by sniffing on the ground around her. This is especially important if you've got
a dog that's nervous of greeting other dogs. If you just have your dog in an area, sniffing
where that other dog that you want it to greet has been, that means that your dog is already
getting information about the other dog that they're going to greet. Again, Joyce and I
are keeping the leashes very, very relaxed. I wouldn't do this kind of greeting with extendable
leashes or really, really long leashes -- I think a 4 to 6 foot leash is enough, because
you don't want to get those leashes tangled. The longer they are the more tangled they're
gonna get. I think we can get to the point now where we can let them both off. Good.
This is nice now, because Sadie is really investigating Mojo. Now they're going nose
to nose. Mojo is giving submission. This was really good, because Mojo was going on his
back, submitting. But see how he wasn't being forced by Sadie. He did it under his own volition,
and he did it just to tell her "I'm no threat to you. Please don't be a threat to me" by
the showing the most vulnerable parts of him, which is his stomach. And Sadie then sniffed
him. She was wanting, again, to get more information about him. You'll find that with older dogs,
and Sadie's a pretty old dog, she's about 11-years-old now, that you'll find that puppies
tend to follow older dogs around. And in a way it's nice, because Sadie is a pretty laid
back dog, and she's also giving him signals and teaching him. So, she's also telling him
that she's no threat by turning her head away, averting her eyes, walking away from him.
But she's also allowing him to be close to her. And you need a good teacher like this.
I think it's really important that puppies don't just get to socialize with other puppies,
but that they also get to socialize with older dogs that can teach them lessons. If your
dog does not get important socialization, your dog will never know how to interact appropriately
with other dogs. So socialization like this is so important. If you didn't do anything
else with your dog, socialization is the most important thing to do, because it sets your
puppy up for a lifetime of being able to cope with other dogs coming into its area, greeting
other dogs, hanging out with other dogs, going to doggy daycare, going on walks with other
dogs, having other dogs into their home on their territory. If you do not socialize a
puppy before it's 16- -weeks-old, in general, what you'll have find is that puppy doesn't
learn canine language, and it becomes much harder for that puppy to be able to greet
other dogs. If you can socialize your puppy to other dogs and other puppies before 16-weeks-old,
and that puppy has great experiences, that is going to be the most important lesson that
your puppy can learn. And that's how you socialize your puppy, positively. I'm Victoria Stilwell
for eHow Pets.
