How to Socialize Your Puppy

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village and today we’re going to talk about puppies. So let’s start with socialization. Absolutely the most important thing you can do with your little puppy is to socialize him. This little wiggly puppy is a corgi puppy. His name is Barto. I need a distracter. Barto was raised on a farm until six weeks of age. So he had exposure to a lot of different animals and people and children. This is the way to go with your puppy. It’s very important that your puppy experiences all the different types of people, animals and situations that he will encounter later in life. Typically there’s a period between about 4-6 weeks of age to 12-14 weeks of age, which is what we call the critical socialization period for your puppy. During this critical socialization period your puppy learns to handle just about anything at a young age. If you keep your puppy isolated until he’s about 6 or 8 months of age, he’s not able to handle different situations, trips to the vet, trips to the kennel and they don’t even learn how to play with other dogs. So expose your puppy to people of different sizes, shapes, those with hats on, different ethnicities, children in a positive way. Also get your puppy used to the broom, the vacuum cleaner, people wearing hats and people coming over. Take your puppy to doggy daycare. Now one caveat is that you don’t necessarily want your puppy to associate with dogs, who you’re not sure about their health history or vaccination history. Now it is more important to expose your puppy to other dogs than not most dogs are put to sleep in this country for behavioral issues and many of those could have been prevented through proper socialization. So well it’s not a good idea to take your dog to the dog park around a lot of dogs in poop that you’re not sure about. It is important to get him around other puppies and other dogs, so he learns how to behave socially. So get your puppy out and socialize him."