Socialization Skills

Pup­pies are not born know­ing how the world works and it’s not down­loaded from their mom dur­ing nurs­ing.  Nev­er­the­less, the world goes round.  So how’s a pup sup­posed to learn what’s good, bad, harm­ful, safe, pleas­ant, and pun­ish­ing?  By socializing.

Social­iza­tion is the act of expos­ing your puppy to new, pleas­ant expe­ri­ences — with the goal to cre­ate a con­fi­dent dog.  That’s right, I said con­fi­dent.  The polar oppo­site of con­fi­dent in the dog world is anx­ious.  And not social­iz­ing a puppy will cre­ate a dog who is fear­ful, hes­i­tant, ner­vous, anx­ious, or aggres­sive when intro­duced to a new envi­ron­ment or stim­u­lus.  You know, those dogs who are scared to live in their own skin.

Also notice social­iza­tion isn’t just expo­sure.  It’s expo­sure with pleas­ant con­se­quences. Just tak­ing your puppy around new peo­ple, places, ani­mals, and things DOES NOT social­ize.  It’s the inter­ac­tion with those things. Keep in mind that a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence can come from uncer­tainty (fear of the unknown), or a bad expe­ri­ence,  and it can come from you or the envi­ron­ment.  I had a won­der­ful Sheltie breeder in Ohio call me about a puppy she placed in my area.  This puppy left her just like every other puppy with no prob­lems.  Within two months he was so fear­ful of peo­ple he wouldn’t even let the owner touch him.  After speak­ing with her and get­ting some back ground infor­ma­tion it was obvi­ous the prob­lem was due to improper social­iz­ing.  You see, this Sheltie puppy was placed with a trainer’s assis­tant who had all the best inten­tions.  She wanted to social­ize her new puppy and had access to hun­dreds of peo­ple and dogs.  Sadly, she didn’t real­ize pass­ing her puppy from per­son to per­son with a goal of “the puppy must be han­dled by 100 strangers” back fired.  Let’s pre­tend you’re the puppy, and I’m your owner.  Now let’s pre­tend you’re not sure what to make of strangers, a lit­tle uncom­fort­able, but noth­ing seri­ous.  Now let’s pre­tend I force 100 ran­dom strangers to hug you.  So that’s one hun­dred times some­thing you are uneasy about comes into your space and just starts touch­ing you (pet­ting). Which actu­ally had the side effect of “touch is bad.”

Social­iza­tion is teach­ing a puppy about the world around him.  It’s teach­ing the accep­tance of new places, things, sounds, etc.  A much bet­ter plan would have been to do some­thing that made the Sheltie puppy want to approach strangers.  Maybe let­ting the dog come to them and get­ting a good sniff.  Or how about giv­ing the dog a small tasty treat (we call that “strangers have the best candy” in the train­ing world.)  If you try and force “close” all they want to do is get far­ther away.  If you give them plenty of space to get close at their own pace, then they want to explore the option of being close.  Why?  Because it’s non-threatening.

So if you or some­one you know is social­iz­ing a puppy, tell them to use moti­va­tion.  Tell them: Social­iza­tion is expo­sure with pleas­ant con­se­quences to teach accep­tance of new experiences.