Episode #115 New Puppy Meets Resident Dog with Bailey Atwood

Are you thinking of adding a puppy to your family and already have a dog? What breed should you get? Does sex matter? When should you add a new dog to the family and how do you go about it? What can you do to prepare your resident dog for the puppy who is coming home? These are all questions we get at Baxter & Bella. Today we discuss them on the podcast. Thanks for tuning in.

Transcript

Amy: 0:00

This is the puppy training podcast episode 115 new puppy meets resident dog this podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning as you train your own dog from home, and I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the puppy training podcast. And I'm your host, Amy Jensen. Hey, everybody, welcome to the puppy training podcast. Thanks for joining me today. We have a good topic we get asked this a lot as trainers here at Baxter & Bella. And so I wanted to do a podcast on it. And my trainer Bailey's joining us today because she's pretty much an expert on this. She's had a lot of dogs during her family as she's a service dog trainer. And they come and go. And so I thought, let's bring Bailey on and let her talk to you about the topic of a new puppy meets a resident dog. So thanks, Bailey, for joining us today. How are you?

Bailey: 0:58

I'm doing great. It's good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Amy: 1:01

All right, Bailey's. Let's start at the very beginning. Maybe like I have a dog, Baxter. He's a year old year and a half almost. And I'm thinking of getting a new puppy. And all these questions started to come to mind, like, how to choose a puppy to add to the family? And should I get a male or a female? And does that matter? And what breed matters? What are your initial thoughts on when a client comes and says, I think we're ready to add a new puppy to the family?

Bailey: 1:27

Well, my first thought is I'm super excited for that person, because it is very exciting and just overwhelming. And you feel all of those emotions again. So I love helping owners out with this topic. The first thing I really think about is the breed. Are you happy with the breed that you got for your original puppy your resident dog at this point? Is there anything different that you're looking for at this point, I think really thinking about the breed is important. So you want to look for a dog that really you think is going to fit into your family, your activity level and who's in your family, etc. The other thing is financial costs with adding another dog, it is going to be likely double the price. With larger breed dogs, you have to think about extra food, extra vet bills, etc. And other the other thing that you want to think about is grooming. Grooming is a rather expensive attribute to having another dog. But then again, some people choose that over having the other dogs that tend to shed a lot. So really just determining the breed. And then the next step would be looking into breeders. The type of vibe that I really liked when I looking at breeders is having that family friend type of relationship, you want to make sure that you find a breeder who is interested in the puppy, interested in your home wanting to know what the space is going to be like who's going to be around your puppy, because then you really can see that they care about you really helping make the transition easy for you. And the puppy going into that new fun situation that you're about to enter. And then as far as male and female, I tend to really lean towards just overall temperament of the dog versus the male or female aspect of it. I think that is important because you want to find a dog that is going to fit well into the lifestyle of you and the current dog that you have. When I'm looking at getting a new puppy, I want to find one that is somewhat in that balanced area. So what that means is, I don't want to really have the puppy that is shy in the corner and more scared than the other puppies in the litter. But I also might not want to have the puppy that is barking and jumping and trying to maybe pester her the other puppies tried to find that one that is happy, curious, seems to be comfortable with different things like picking a puppy up different sounds, things like that. So that's kind of what I'm looking for at first really diving in with that specific breeder about what you're looking for, I think is a big thing.

Amy: 3:55

And I love that you pointed out all of this thought that goes into this, right? This isn't just Oh, I saw a cute puppy or I see a cute puppy on social media and I'm gonna get it right away. It's there are some things to think about and to process before making that decision. Because these dogs live with us for a long time.

Bailey: 4:12

Right? All puppies are cute. So it can definitely be easy to be drawn to just the looks, but you want to make sure that they fit your lifestyle as well.

Amy: 4:20

So what age would you say is a good age to bring a new puppy in? If I have a resident dog? When do you like to start over with a new puppy?

Bailey: 4:28

Yeah, that really depends on your household and how your current dog is doing. I think the biggest things to look for is that you want to make sure house training is good with your current dog and you want to make sure that crate training is going well. And any other behavioral problems that you're seeing are either being worked on, or are pretty much good at that point because you don't want your new puppy picking up on them. So depending on all of those different factors, usually between six months to 18 months is a good timeframe. So Sometimes a little bit sooner than that you can run into things like the littermate syndrome syndrome. And then later on, you might tend to go towards dogs that tend to just coexist together versus having that playful playmate around the

Amy: 5:12

home. Yeah, it is important, I feel like to get the first dog to a point where they're responding to me, they're listening to me, we have a relationship. Before I bring that new dog home. And I think you pointed on the other one is house training, hell like to have a really good basis on house training. Before I'm doing it all over again, with a new puppy.

Bailey: 5:34

Absolutely. Because if the new puppy sees the older puppy pain behind the sofa, your new puppy might be just as likely to do that.

Amy: 5:41

Yeah, just like we like to have dogs that help teach the puppy what to do, we know that there's some times the dogs are teaching those puppies what we don't want them to do as well. So on that note, Bailey, of, you know, making sure my resident dog is off on a good pathway, I think it's important to note that no dog is perfect. And I don't want people to think that they have to wait until their resident dog is perfect to introduce a new dog because I'm not perfect. And I don't think I'll ever be to that level either. So I don't expect my dog to be. But on that topic, how can we help the resident dog prepare for the new puppy beforehand, such as you know, understanding their body language to prevent fights or overstimulation? And then working on those unwanted behaviors? How do we you know, work on resolving those beforehand that help get them ready for this new puppy? Yeah, and

Bailey: 6:27

that's a great point to mention is that nobody's gonna be perfect, there probably isn't going to be that moment when you wake up and say, Okay, today is the day that we are all ready for that new puppy. So we just want to have a game plan. So as far as those behavioral problems do, you want to just be actively working on that alert marking, you want to be working on the digging in the yard? Do you want to have somewhat of a game in place to make sure that the puppy isn't able to isn't going to pick up on those behaviors or if the behaviors are still present, be prepared to reward the puppy when they're not doing that to reward the puppy when they hear barking and they don't respond. So as long as you're just aware of those problems, and you have a game plan. Body language. I'm glad you mentioned that, because that is a really important thing. We often hear the dog bit and there was absolutely no warning. Well, there normally is some type of subtle body language that we just didn't pick up on that tells us the dog is uncomfortable not wanting that interaction. Some things to look for are their ears back maybe some side eyeing, just cowering, or simply just not wanting to approach that situation. So really being familiar with your own resident dog's body language is really helpful so that when that puppy is pouncing on that older dog, and we is not really the older dog is not really wanting that interaction, we know when to step in. The other thing that I would really like to have kind of solid with my resident dog is a good recall. The reason being when those new puppies and dogs are going to be interacting, there's going to be a lot of energy, there's going to be some overstimulation taking place. So if I'm able to say to my dog, Maggie come in, then she's able to come running that is going to help encourage that new puppy to also work and listen to me despite the distractions, despite playing and interacting with the other dog. So that is an easy way to make sure that we can step in when things are starting to get a little bit overwhelming by having the recall and just basic obedience down. Another fun thing to kind of look into is if we can get some in home dog experience for your current dog to kind of just practice if you have a friend, family neighbor, who would be willing to come over for dinner some night or just to hang out and bring their dog to meet your dog. And you can kind of have a practice session where you set up this exercise pen and have them meet and see how your dog does throughout the evening with that puppy or other dog in the household. So those are some things I really like to be prepared for and helped my resident dog transition to having a new puppy in the household.

Amy: 8:59

Yeah, those are great points. I love the idea of bringing a guest dog over and practicing. Right? So you got that session and just seeing what it's going to look like. And then you get to practice reading your dog's body language and also learning the body language of the new dog that's present and assessing. Are they happy? Are they playful? Are they tense? Are they stiff? And should we put them together? Should we keep using this pin? On that note of pens, I find when I bring a new puppy to my house, I set up sections so I try to section off my house so that I have a pin and I have crates and I have a baby gate and i i literally try to box in my house as much as possible so that if needed, I can put the puppy in this space and the older dog in this space. My older dog Bruno, he's 10 now and he's trained every little puppy that comes through our house, you know, for boarding train or for service dog work or whatever it is and he has his own pen with his own little door and if he wants to escape the intense puppy play, he knows he can just go in that pen and he's safe. And he's not on puppy duty all day. Yeah, it's definitely helpful for each dog in the situation to have a way to let us know that they are uncomfortable or just that they don't want to interact right then and to have an option to just step away. So let's say that we made the decision to get a new puppy. And we're planning on getting them in, you know, we know this day they're coming home. And we're going to bring them into the household and introduce them to our resident dog, what's the best way to go about that?

Bailey: 10:28

Yeah, so as far as the introduction goes, we really want to have it set up so that we can see the body language of each of the puppies. So the best way to do this is typically having some type of barrier like an exercise pen spread out, so that each dog has plenty of space. And then if you have more than one person that can help you out with this, it is very helpful so that you can have one person somewhat monitoring one dog on one side of the fence and one dog on the other side of the gate. So what we want to do is help them approach each other, maybe for three to five seconds, let them do a quick sniff, let them really evaluate each other. And then we can say, Okay, let's go and each person can guide the puppy away create some distance, this is going to help bring that energy level back down, it's going to give us a chance to check in to see how both of the dogs are doing. And then we can just go ahead and have them re see each other recently each other for a few seconds again, now what we want to look for with this is just again, we talk a lot about balance, having that good type of interaction where they aren't, we don't want to see that either of them are scared if one of them is trying to get away avoid the situation, chances are, we just need a little bit more time a little bit more space between them. But we also don't want to see that they're both pouncing at the gate that they're barking that they're trying to knock over the fence to get to one another. So we want to try and find that good in between spot where they're just sniffing, they're able to still focus in on us if we're making a fun sound over in the corner. So that's how I do that initial introduction.

Amy: 11:55

This has been super helpful. Thank you so much for coming on and giving us some thoughts on this. Hopefully this helps you guys who are thinking about bringing a new puppy into your home and you have a resident dog. Definitely some questions to ask yourself before you dive in. And then some tips to get you headed in the right direction. So thanks Bailey for joining us.

Unknown: 12:12

Of course.

Amy: 12:16

If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other Puppy Training question, visit my site Baxter & bella.com to contact me