Socalisation With Your Puppy, Dog Park Drama.

Do not make the mistake that we did. Do not take your puppy to a dog park when they are super young. Or do but know that it might not be the best for your pup.

Puppy socalisation is a complicated subject but at the core it is about exposing your puppy to environments they are likely to be in as an adult when they are young to help stop fears developing. It does not mean your dog has to meet 100 people and interact with 100 dogs all at once. Socalising a puppy is best done at distance first then getting closer so your puppy can observe, take it all in and process at their own speed. Socalisation is a lot more about places and things than people and dogs. If you want a dog who can run alongside you whilst you cycle, best you get them properly introduced to bikes. Want a dog that can hop aboard your boat, slowly introduce them to it. Like the idea of walking your dog through a city centre to grab coffee, make sure they understand all the things in that environment - busy streets, people, traffic etc.

We thought we had struck gold when we discovered a fenced in dog park a 5 minute walk from our house. Roo could be offlead safely, she could play with other dogs etc. How wrong we were. At first it was fine, sometimes we would go and there would be no one there. Then we meet a friendly Corgie, Mustard. Roo became obsessed with him. Then more and more dogs started being at the dog park at the same time as us, sometimes big dogs. Roo always seemed shy, she would stick to our legs and wouldn't want to play. The other dogs would come running over to her, forcing her to engage. At the time we didn't think anything of it, how silly of us. This wasn't the main reason we stopped using the dog park though, but we do think this was one of the causes of Roo's reactivity.

The main reason we stopped using the dog park was because Roo stopped listening to us. Her recall was shocking, she wouldn't bring things back and getting her to leave was a nightmare. We were actively teaching her that this place was so much more exciting than us. After we stopped going, her engagement gradually improved and her trianing has come on leaps and bounds.

Socalisation is one of the main things we would spend a lot more time on with our next dog. Taking things slowly and watching the pup to see what they are finding difficult. If you get this stage right, you don't have to spend months counter conditioning with threshold training. We would have spent time on the edge of a park with Roo on lead, watching everything go by. Dogs, people, children and bikes. All things Roo ended up having issues with. We would have taken her to retail parks to walk around the car park seeing people and cars go by. We would have asked people to give us space and not put their hand down to try and stroke her.

Getting a puppy is so exciting and there are so many places you want to take them but it is so very important that you introduce new things slowly and gradually. Take your time in the begining, they are only babies after all. You wouldn't take a new born to a rave so don't take your pup to a busy dog park and expect them to cope well. Don't expect to walk them down a busy road with cars flying by and for them to walk on by with no issues. These things are scary and they need to be properly introduced.