11 JulEpisode 67 | Puppy Socialization In The Time Of Quarantine
Nothing makes people want puppies quite like a global pandemic! Those who are raising puppies during quarantine may face some challenges when it comes to socialization. But, if you succeed at doing a good job with it -- if you can clear the unusual hurdles that new dog owners have to face right now -- you will be paving the way for a great future for your dog and while developing your own training abilities.
Annie discusses what socialization is, how to spot signs of possible stress, and how to start at "criteria: zero" in order to build new and appropriate behaviors (and keep bad ones from happening). She talks about using food in socialization, using the right toys, and making use of sounds and objects you might be able to find in your home and enlisting neighbors in a safe way. She also talks about how to help your young dog get adequate puppy playtime, even if that means you... have to pretend to be a puppy.
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Transcript:
Annie:
Hey everyone. So lots of people have gotten puppies in the last few months during quarantine, which I'm super excited about. But the truth is, while the crazy world pandemic we're living through might mean that you have more time to spend at home with your puppy, which by and large is a very good thing, it also means that there are some very real challenges that you may be facing that really might make things harder than they would be for a puppy owner getting a puppy in more normal times.
You might not have the support system around you that you used to have. You might not have access to safe places that you can go with your puppy outside of your home. You're probably dealing with financial stress. You might be having to move unexpectedly. You might get sick. But you know, all of this is to say that if you can get through having a puppy during quarantine, you know, it's kind of like I tell my clients, if your puppy can make it here, he can make it anywhere, in New York City.
Same thing with this. If you can get you and your new puppy through this difficult period in the right ways, you're really going to be setting yourself up for a life together that is going to be enjoyable. I have had people ask me, do you think there's going to be a generation of terrible dogs out there because they didn't get to live normal lives in their COVID-19 era puppyhood. And I say, I hope not because I hope that people who are getting dogs are using this time to get to know their dog and to figure out what their dog needs and how they can give their dog what the dog needs. Even in these strange times where everything is a little harder than it usually is. You know, you're swinging with a weighted bat right now, probably in everything you do. So, when things return to some state of normal, if they ever do, everything's gonna be all the easier.
So if you have a new puppy and if you have some extra time on your hands right now, what a great moment to figure out how to be a good dog owner. And what is a good dog owner? Well, I think a good dog owner is one who is conscious of the fact that we are asking dogs to come live in our world. They don't have a whole lot of choice, most of the time, in picking what home they end up in. So I think our job is to keep them safe, but also to help them feel good about the human world we're asking them to live in as much as possible, and also to find ways to give them what they need in our world, in all the important ways: physically, socially, mentally.
And I also think a good dog owner tries to come up with a lot of opportunities for dogs to have some agency and the ability to make choices. And as the architects of the world they live in, we can come up with ways to manage the environment in such a way that we are going to up the likelihood w’ere going to get a lot of behaviors that we like, that we can then encourage with positive reinforcement. So how would I say that more succinctly: I guess a good dog owner is one who helps their dog live a happy life in the human world without having to use force or coercion to get them to–uh-oh, this is turning into a very long sentence! Well, you get the gist of what I'm trying to say, I hope.
So if you have just become a first time puppy owner during quarantine, this episode is for you. But this is a pretty big topic, you know, new puppy ownership. So I'm specifically going to talk about socialization, the process of introducing your dog to your life. But again, this is tricky because your life right now is probably not like what your life normally was. And you might not know your life is going to have to be like, so this is why the bat is weighted here, because you might have to do a little bit of extra work thinking both about how you can get your puppy feeling comfortable in your world now, but also how you can make sure that the blueprint is going to be there if your life drastically changes at some point in the future; your puppy isn't going to feel like you've asked him to go live on Mars.
For example, you live in the city in a walk up or an elevator building with people coming and going all the time. But you got a puppy while you were staying with family members who live in the suburbs or somewhere really rural. That experience could be really hard for your dog if it first happens after three months spent in this very different environment.
The truth is socialization is a lifelong process. Dogs are constantly learning. They're constantly learning to feel good or not good about the world around them. They're constantly trying to figure out if their surroundings are safe and dangerous, but that process is super heightened in the lives of young puppies, particularly in that eight to 12 week period. That's like the prime socialization window. The way I think about it, it's like, that's the period where the filing cabinet of their brains are wide open, just ready to receive information. And as they grow up that filing cabinet shuts little by little, but again, this doesn't mean that it's going to eventually shut completely and you'll never be able to open it, but the better job that you do on the younger end in helping to acclimate your dog to things you want him to feel good about, the easier it's going to be later on to introduce new things.
When you are “socializing” a dog, you're working to pair new things with good things in order to help the dog understand that the new thing is a good thing. It's like you're helping to create situations of transitive equality. If every time I see a skateboard, I get a treat, skateboards must be good because treats are good. Now treats are not the only way that you're going to help your dog make these kinds of associations. But as I've said, many times on this podcast, you have to remember that your dog is learning all the time. And at the heart of socialization is teaching dogs to behave in ways that we like, because they are feeling good and happy and safe. That's the foundation we want to set because so many behaviors we don't like stem from fear and discomfort and unfamiliarity with something.
So I suggest that you start paying attention to what your dog enjoys and then see how you can pair those experiences, those moments with the new people, sights sounds, et cetera you're wanting your dog to feel good about. And food is going to be a big part of that because it's very predictable when your dog eats, you're the one controlling where your dog eats, what your dog eats, when your dog eats, and your dog probably really likes his food.
So I'm going to talk in a second specifically about how to use food, but I just want to point out that, you know, there's also this correlative property, or is it transitive property? One or the other, or maybe both, is it the same thing? It's been, it's been too long since I've taken any math classes. There's the fact that you are the person who is delivering to your dog so many of life's good things, food just being one of those things, but access to all the good things. So your mere presence is going to become something that indicates to your dog, “Oh, you know what? This place, I've never been here, but it's a good place. I'm sure I'm going to be safe here. I like it. Why? Because my human's here. And if she's here, it must be a pretty good place because she's given me a million meals and plays with me with my toys and snuggles with me on the couch and all the other stuff.”
So when it comes to food, you want to make sure that you're feeding your dog — and again, we’re talking about food, which might be your dog's meals. It might be your dog's treats. Your dog does not have like a meal stomach and a treat stomach. In the end it all ends up in the same place. So you can portion out what your dog is going to eat for the day, in the beginning of the day. And that might be some portion of food and some portion of special treats. But the ideal is if you have, in addition to some like special training treats that you can break up into small pieces, if you just have a food that your dog is really into, you're going to be able to use just a regular meal to really get some socialization mileage. That might mean feeding your dog in a room where you don't usually feed your dog, because you want your dog to feel good about that room. And this is a great moment, I think, to use a slow food bowl, I will link to more about slow food bowls in the show notes. Slow food bowl is one kind of work to eat toy.
And obviously I'm always a fan of feeding dogs in work to eat toys for a million reasons. It's a great way, especially in this period of quarantine, to give your dog a chance to exercise, exercise their brain, exercise their mouth a little bit, maybe their paws. Give your dog a job, give your dog something appropriate to do that can be done in a small place, that can be done during meal time. And most of us are not asking our dogs to go hunt and forage their own food these days. We're just giving it to them, which is certainly nice of us. But you know, it can deprive them of the joy of earning a living, the joy of problem solving, tearing things apart, figuring things out.
The reason that I'm saying try a slow food bowl, if you're feeding a dog in a new room is because they are of course designed to slow down feeding. They have like little nubs sticking out of them or maze shapes in them. And they're nice because you can use them with any kind of food. And it's not going to get food all over your floor. So if you're feeding in a room where you might not want dog food on the floor, the food will probably remain in the bowl unless your dog is a particularly messy eater. And it's going to extend the amount of time your dog is going to be spending in this new room. So kind of like putting more money in the piggy bank of “this room is a good place to be because not only do I get my fun toy and my food in this room, some of the time, but also we get to hang out there enjoying my food and this toy for a whole long while.”
Now, I also would encourage you to have a variety of people feeding your dog every day, ideally. That might mean having different people in your household give meals, or knocking on the neighbor's door and seeing if the neighbor would just put a bowl of food on the ground for your dog. That could be enough. I'm not even asking that you invite strange new people into your home. You could meet in the hallways, stand 10 feet apart, have the neighbor, put the food down and your dog can go to it, and that is going to help the process of your dog learning, “Hey, there are lots of different OK people in this world, not just my human, and people come in all different sizes, shapes, colors. People smell different. People sound different. People move differently. And I don't need to be scared of someone with a beard or someone with a hat or someone who smells like cigarettes.”
Now I want to pause for a second before I talk about some other practices, protocol that you can put in place while you're working to socialize your dog to point out what good socialization should and shouldn't look like. One of the things I suggest you use this time to work on is to start being able to read what your dog is saying to you with body language. Dogs don't speak English, but they can be very good communicators, and I want you to develop a keen eye for when your dog might not be comfortable.
We want to be introducing our dogs to new things in a way they can handle without stressing them out. Introducing your dog to, say, something that might be slightly out of the ordinary, I don't know, say like a blender. It's not putting the blender on at full force and then holding your puppy up to it and trying to force feed him treats the whole time. Sure, if you're introducing your dog to something that they seem to feel neutral about that perhaps isn't so out of the ordinary, yeah. You could maybe just toss treats on the bathmat if you want your dog to learn to feel good about the bathmat and let your dog eat the treats off of it, that might be just fine.
But if your dog is showing any kind of fear, you want to introduce the new thing only at a distance, at a volume, at an intensity that your dog can handle without stress. In fact, if your dog is stressed, your dog probably won't want to eat treats. So that's one indication that you need to scale everything back a few notches, but you might also watch for what we call stress signals. Often dogs will lick their lips and their nose when they're a little bit stressed out.
We sometimes also call these self soothing behaviors or displacement behaviors. They're things dogs do with their body that might not make a lot of sense to us, but that indicate to us and probably developed so that they could indicate to other dogs that they're not feeling super comfortable and maybe engaging in these behaviors also makes them feel better in some way.
Example of displacement behavior in humans, I would say, is like tapping your fingers when you're anxious, or punching something when you're mad, or jumping up and down when you're happy they serve some kind of purpose in the way we're communicating to others, perhaps. They make us feel a certain way. They don't totally make a lot of sense, but that's fine if we can learn what it most likely means when we see these visual clues of discomfort.
Yawning is another one. Of course, if your dog is super sleepy, relaxed in his bed and he yawns, then, okay, that's probably not a stress signal. But if you're encountering your six foot five red bearded neighbor in the hallway and your dog is suddenly yawning, that could be an indication to you that you need to help your dog learn to feel okay about this person and this kind of person. You know, you're not going to be able to introduce your dog to every single person in the world. But the more examples you can put into this wide open filing cabinet of their minds, the better they're going to be able to generalize, “Oh, you know, I've never seen someone who looks quite like that, but I have seen men with big beards and my experiences with them have been pretty good. So this new guy must be all right too.”
You also want to look out for general stiffness in the body. Eyes that are looking all the way to the side, often while the rest of the body is very still. My dog does this when he is trying to avoid something that seems to be making him uncomfortable, often paired with a lip lick. I kind of think of it like he's like, “if I can just hold very still and keep my eyes as far away from the scary thing as possible, no one will know I'm here.”
Sometimes dogs will do ear scratches when they're feeling a little anxious and uncomfortable. I always think of that one as like your dog is, I'm trying to pretend he's just involved in something else and not, not even interested in the scary monster. So be cognizant of what your dog is telling you with his body when you are exposing him to new things.
The other thing I wanted to interject is that it's very important that your dog always have an escape route when you are working on socializing them to potentially scary stimuli. You want your dog to be able to come and go at will. Again, remember we are really forcing these animals to live in our world, but that doesn't mean that we can't give them some choices. And I think the choice of whether or not to approach potentially scary thing is a gift that we should be giving to puppies, especially.
And what you'll find is that a dog who has the opportunity to approach things at his own pace, on his own schedule, is going to progress farther, faster than dogs who are forced into situations with the hope that they will learn to accept, if not like, whatever the thing is. You know, this latter method can work, but it's not going to produce the kind of learning that I want my dog to experience. And it's not the kind of teacher I want to be. When we use this, like, “I'm just going to hold you right up face to face with the blender on full speed until you're fine with it” method of training, this is called flooding. And a great example of flooding, actually two great examples of flooding can be seen in the very first episode of The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Milan. I'll put a link to it in the show notes.
The first dog that he works with in the episode is a tiny Chihuahua named Nunu who doesn't want to be handled by anyone other than his mama. And Cesar puts this tiny dog on his lap and the dog does some lip licking, ears back. Does the whale eye, showing the side of his eye, and then tries to attack Cesar who just forces him to stay in place until he eventually just kind of like gives up on life. You see dogs often giving up on life in episodes of The Dog Whisperer.
The second dog that he works with is a large dog named Kane who's terrified of shiny floors. And basically it's considered a big success in this episode, after Cesar Milan repeatedly drags this huge dog across linoleum floors, eventually the dog willingly goes, but looking like some kind of miserable zombie. And this segment again, is a great thing to watch if you're trying to work at observing stress signals or these displacement behaviors. We see lots of lip licking with poor Kane and panting, really heavy, like “my life is in danger” panting.
What you do want to be looking for is nice, soft, relaxed body language, wiggly bodies, loose mouths, loose ears, happy eyes. Our wonderful trainer Em Beauprey did a webinar recently where he impersonated lots of different dog body language. And is impersonated the right word? I guess! He, like, pretended to be a dog and showed all these different positions and displacement behaviors. And it's so silly and so wonderful and so helpful. So if you have not seen Em's webinar, I believe it's called, um, “Dog Body Language as Demonstrated by a Human,” it's pretty great. He also has a stuffed Caterpillar that he uses for the demonstration. The Caterpillar's name is Douglas, which I think is hilarious. Anyway, I think that that webinar might be really helpful to those who are looking to better understand dog body language.
So you're going to watch for signs of stress and you are going to always provide your dog an out whether that's introducing your dog to things in a space where he can physically get away, or maybe even providing getaways that your dog can choose to utilize. You know, we do this kind of thing in like puppy play time where we'll make sure that each person’s lap is a safe zone and you want your dog to understand, Hey, if you jump in my lap, I'm going to push away all those other puppies. This is a place just for you. And you can sit in my lap and regain your strength and your courage for however long that you want.
Now, of course you might not be able to be bringing your dog to puppy play times right now. And a huge part of socialization is that quality, good interaction with other puppies. Puppies really need that. I think a lot of puppy problems are solved simply when puppies get to play with one another. If you think about it, puppies really should be around puppies all the time, right? They're born in litters. And when we take them out of their litters and put them in homes alone with, you know, a couple of humans, maybe they are really missing out on something that is a key component to their development in every way.
So how are you going to make sure that your puppy can get at least some amount of puppy-puppy time every day? I will tell you what I've been suggesting to my clients. First, go back and watch that video that Em Beauprey did, because he does a nice job of showing what play behaviors look like, what happy dogs look like. And I never used to suggest trying to play with your puppy as if you were a puppy. I would never suggest this to clients in the past because it seemed kind of unnecessary. I mean, I'm pretty sure puppies don't think that we are puppies, and if they're getting some good playtime with other puppies, I don't think that they're desperate for us to become puppies for them, but if they're not getting good playtime with other puppies, well, you know what, you might be the best substitute for a puppy.
And if you watch any of us do puppy playtime, us trainers lead puppy playtime, I think you will see some of us sort of engage in puppy play-like moves. Again, most people don't have one puppy after another, after another, like all the time, the way that when you're a puppy playtime instructor, you're meeting new puppies all the time, all the time. So it is kind of worth figuring out how to play like a puppy if you're a trainer. What does that look like? It's like elbows on the ground, flat forearms on the ground, butt up in the air, wiggling, lots of sort of back and forth movement. Your turn. No, my turn, no, your turn. Sometimes some gentle patting, soft patting with your arms, going down really low to the ground. I'll post a video or two in the show notes of mama puppies playing with their baby puppies. And that's sort of a nice thing to look up on YouTube to see what it is when an adult, of course, in this case, a dog, makes an effort to play with puppies in a way that the puppies are going to appreciate.
Playing tug. I think tug with rules is also a nice way to help your puppy get out some of his puppy energy and use his mouth in a way that's, you know, not nipping on your hands and feet. I suggested using a long tug rope or something like a flirt pole, because you want as much room between your hand and your dog's mouth as possible. And play in conjunction with practicing “drop it,” which is as simple as when your dog has a toy in his mouth, say “drop it,” drop some treats on the ground, whether or not your dog lets go of the thing at first, and what your dog is gonna learn is, “you know what, every time she says drop it, she drops things on the ground. So I better have my mouth open and ready when I hear those words.”
You know, if you have a large TV, I think it can't hurt to see how your dog does if you put on Animal Planet. If you put on Too Cute, the show for which I wrote many of the quiz questions. That's a show that shows puppies and kittens for an hour. And notice how your puppy reacts to that. If your puppy seems disturbed, and there are times when I have seen dogs who seem overly agitated, uncomfortable, upset, concerned, anxious about animals on TV. It is definitely a thing. But if your puppy seems engaged and into it, that is certainly not a total replacement for a playtime with another puppy, but it is something.
Beyond that, I suggest trying to find another puppy in your neighborhood that your puppy can play with on the regular. You can email everyone you know, ask if they know anyone in the neighborhood. Look on your local Facebook groups, ask your vet. At School for the Dogs, we have been trying to play a matchmaker with our members and friends in our private Facebook group by making like a members and friends database that people can update if they are looking for social opportunities for their puppies. And actually right now we're giving access to the closed Facebook group if you purchase any of our new online courses, which are at schoolforthedogs.com/courses. And you know, ideally puppies should be playing with other puppies, but every now and then you'll find an older dog who is really great with puppies. And if there is a slightly older dog who's a good playmate for your puppy, then go with that. But again, you should be watching that dog's body language as well to make sure that dog seems to feel comfortable.
And like I was saying with any place, situation, you want your dog to be able to get away, and the other dog too. For that reason, even though it's really tempting to let your puppy interact with dogs on the street while on leash, I would definitely discourage you from doing that. Because first of all, a lot of adult dogs don't like puppies. And I always think that people don't even realize that about their adult dogs. Everybody thinks their adult dog is going to like puppies because humans like puppies. And it's hard for us to understand why some dogs might not like them, but not every dog likes puppies. And you need to respect that. And your dog does not need to learn the tough lesson of being grabbed by the neck by a dog who has no tolerance for a tiny yappy pup. And you know, two dogs on leash, there's not a whole lot of place for either dog to go. I'd rather introductions happen with dogs one-on-one in a safe space where both can get away from one another quite easily.
The last thing I wanted to suggest is that you bring your dog with you as much as possible during this quarantine period. You can work on training your dog to feel good about being in a bag. A dog who is comfortable being in a bag is simply going to be easier for you to bring with you. And they make some really good bags now even for large dogs. So if you have a small puppy, who's going to be a large dog. You can start with a small bag and progress to something bigger. We have lots of clients who use the Boat and Tote, which is just like a big canvas bag that you can get at I think like LL Bean. They're not made especially for dogs, but they work quite well. The K9 Sports Sack is a dog backpack that we sell in our online store storeforthedogs.com.
But you know, any bag that your dog can fit into, that's comfortable for you to carry and comfortable for your dog to be in, can work. You want to make sure your dog is secured to it somehow, whether that's with a leash tied to it or a clip that is in the bag. You can socialize your dog to being in the bag by feeding your dog when your dog is in the bag. And it's going to help you be able to introduce your dogs to new things. Walk around the farmer's market with your dog in a bag, or take the bus, or even just sit on a park bench.
It can be less stressful for a dog often to sit contained in the safety of a bag then for a dog to be trying to navigate all the people and carts and kids on scooters and everything else that you're going to find somewhere like a green market. And you can kind of also like obscure a dog in a bag, a puppy in a bag, usually better than you can if you have a puppy in your arms or a puppy on leash. And I don't want people coming out of nowhere and accosting my puppy because my puppy is super cute. I want to have more control over that situation. I want to have treats on me, I want to be able to say, “yes, you can approach” or “no, you can't approach.” “Yes, how about you give my dog a treat?” And I find if I have a bag for the dog, that that's usually easier.
Which brings me, actually one more point I want to make, which is the whole focus of socialization as we've been talking about it is helping your dog feel good about lots of different situations in order to get behaviors that you want. It's not about getting the behaviors in order to teach your dog how to behave in a specific environment. This is so important. You know, I think it's like humans have “Sit” disease. We constantly want our dogs to be sitting. And how often have I seen a puppy who is, is out for maybe their very first or second walk. The world is huge and exciting and possibly scary. And here's this new person approaching, wanting to say hi. And then the dog’s owner is trying to get the dog to sit because they feel like this dog should never be approached by someone unless the dog is sitting. Cause otherwise the dog might jump up or I don't know what. And it's asking too much too quickly.
You want to first focus on the way the dog is feeling, get your dog feeling really good about the someone approaching. And then, you know what, then you can work on having a beautiful sit while someone approaches. But otherwise what you can get is a dog who associates someone approaching with the stress of, “Oh my God, this human suddenly wants me to be doing this behavior that I haven't practiced in this environment. And I hardly even know inside yet. And all I really want to do is sniff this person, but I'm getting yanked around now by my collar because he wants me to do something, but I don't know what it is.”
You know, I give the example of like, imagine I had a cousin right, coming to visit New York City from rural Nebraska and I really wanted her to like New York City. I would probably take her to a show and buy her a nice dinner. I wouldn't bring her in the middle of Times Square and ask her to do my taxes. So I like to call it criteria zero to start out with, you're always starting out by basically rewarding for nothing. And then you're going to be able to build on that, but you're first creating the good feelings, using rewards, by basically like positively reinforcing just the dog existing and then you can slowly raise your criteria. When I see this happen on the street where someone's trying to get poor Bella to sit, and Bella's stressed out, I always want to approach him, just be like, “Bella, be cute, good job!” Because that's really what you should be thinking about rewarding when you are focusing on socialization. And if you have a puppy, I think that certainly should be your focus
Lots more to be said on this topic. Perhaps I will do a part two next week. We'll see. I will put in the show notes, the webinar I did recently on puppy socialization during quarantine, which has some overlap of information here, but also some other tips and tricks. So do make sure to check that out. And also for a limited time, you can get a free copy of my guide to the Dog Training Triad, which I think is such an important thing to think about when you're starting out training a puppy, it's about 20 pages long. And I would love to share that with you or if you know a puppy owner who might get something out of it. You can find it schoolforthedogs.com/triad. If you have any specific puppy questions you would like me to address, feel free to reach out annie@schoolforthedogs.com.
Links:
First Episode of The Dog Whisperer featuring Nunu and Kane – (both being flooded — but lots of good examples of stress signals)
Dog Body Language Demonstated By A Human with Em Beauprey – Webinar
Annie's webinar on raising a puppy during quarantine
FREE EBOOK on The Dog Training Triad
