Do you have a young dog in a multiple-dog family? Last week, a question came up in my puppy group about going on walks. Their pup displays very different behaviour depending on whether he goes out with the other dogs or he goes on his own.
It is common for people to take their pup out from the beginning with the other dogs in the household. Since walks will involve all the dogs going together, as a rule, it makes sense to do that from the start, right? I’m afraid that is not the case.
With a pup, goals that you have for the future typically are not what should happen initially. Just as with housetraining, feeding schedules and exercise needs, expectations and practices must be adapted to suit the needs and skills of the young pup.
Socialization to the World Is A Top Priority
Taking a young pup along with your other dogs on walks may seem logical, but here’s the problem. The presence of the other dogs reduces the pup’s exposure to things in the environment. This is problematic as your priority with a young pup should be to socialize them to their world. The distraction of the other dogs takes away the pup’s chance to experience what is going on around them. Take the other dogs away, and bam! You have a completely different puppy. The pup that usually happily putters along is now frozen and worried about things that didn’t seem to be an issue before. Now you see where things really stand. Your pup isn’t as comfortable as you would think. Being with the other dogs is a great confidence booster on walks, but it is false confidence.
With busy schedules and never enough time, I get it that you may need to walk your dogs together. But if your pup isn’t getting daily opportunities to go out on their own, they will miss out on necessary learning, and confidence-building will be slowed.
Want to get started with this but aren’t quite sure how? Getting your young dog back on track doesn’t have to take a lot of extra time if you know what to do. Go to hipPUP.ca and wait for the pop-up to book a complimentary call. I’ll give you an easy tip to start building your pup’s confidence that only takes 5 minutes!
