Episode #159 Introducing a New Puppy to a Current Dog

Are you ready to rock the holiday season with a new puppy addition to your family, but feeling a little overwhelmed about introducing them to your current dog? That's exactly what we're here to help you with, ensuring a harmonious transition while you juggle the festivities. We dig deep into the essentials of understanding dog behavior, particularly during the busy holiday season, and the steps necessary before bringing home a new family member. We discuss the need for barriers or gates during the initial meet-and-greet and the benefits of maintaining daily routines amidst the holiday chaos!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Puppy Training Podcast, episode 159, introducing a new puppy to a current 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, happy December. Are you ready for Christmas at your house? It's coming next week, right? Well, I guess. What is it? Are we several days away at this point? Who knows, when you're listening to this podcast, actually, maybe it's months away, I don't know. Well, christmas is coming quickly. My kids, I know, are super excited to be out of school for a little while. That does start next week for us, and this brings up the topic of bringing a new dog home. I know what this is. A common thing for families at this time of year is to introduce a new dog into the family, which we are super excited about. I really want to help you with that today, but before we talk about that, let me just chat about the next few weeks at your house. Okay, whether you have a new puppy or you are not bringing a new puppy home, you may have a dog and you're just here listening on how to train your current dog.

Speaker 1: 1:12

The next few weeks can be a little bit stressful for our animals, so you may notice your dog acting a little differently as holiday changes appear. Notice things like changes in home decor. I mean, really you guys. We bring an entire tree into our house and decorate it. Have you all seen the funny meme that's going around with the dog questioning why are we allowed to bring an entire tree into our home but they can't bring in one little stick? It's pretty funny and true, right? So other changes might be the number of people entering and exiting your house in the next few weeks, things being dropped off, whether it's packages or neighborhood gifts, more coming and going from you and your family to events and evening parties just things to think about, be aware of and recognize. These things may change how your dog behaves. Maybe they act a little more anxious or nervous, maybe they're excited or a little naughty, right, this time of year can add stress to their day and make sure that you're giving them downtime throughout the day. Keep up on that crate time or the pen time, basically just to create a quiet place where they can go, feel safe and get a good nap in, also play some quiet music or turn on a fan to help drown out other noises in the house that may be adding to the chaos. So as you tuck them away into a safe room to have their naps, just add a little white noise in the background. Sleep is a huge factor, you guys, of good behavior.

Speaker 1: 2:32

So make sure your dog is getting enough, and sometimes when we hit the holidays it tends to go right. We're just busy, busy, busy, go, go, go. And sometimes schedules get off and the dogs are a little bit stressed by it. So trying to stick to your daily routine as much as possible is really helpful for them. Keep up on those go sniff adventures. If you go on daily walks with your dog, keep up the daily walks. If you're doing training sessions hopefully you are Do those regularly as well, even if they're a little bit shorter than normal or maybe a little bit spread out throughout the day. Totally great, right. We actually like you to spread out your training sessions throughout the day and not just doing one session. So just keep up on those things. If you can do the best, you can. Right, we get it. Life happens. But I will say that keeping up on these routines will help your dog relax and enjoy the holidays better. So I think it's a good idea. Dogs just like to know what to expect and when to expect it, so not messing with their routines too terribly much is really helpful for them.

Speaker 1: 3:32

All right, speaking of the holidays, as I mentioned, it is a common time to bring a new dog into the family. Please make sure that you've done your research and plan on this dog being a member of your household for the next 10 to 15 years. It's really important. So research the type of dog you're looking to get. Make sure that it matches your lifestyle and your energy levels right. There's so many different factors from breed to breed, but we here at BackstreetBella love adding dogs to families. We love helping you guys be successful in living with a canine. Happily, it is what we do. So thank you for listening to the podcast and if you need more help, if you have questions, if you have this new puppy and you don't quite know what to do and you're binging on the podcast, that's great. But just so you know, we have tons more information, help, access to trainers and things like that that is available to you through our online program. So if you haven't checked that out yet, jump online, go to BackstreetBellacom and sign up for our program. You won't find a better deal anywhere and we really do help you for the life of your dog. Check that out.

Speaker 1: 4:39

Now for the topic of the day. Let's say you are bringing a new dog home and you need to introduce it to your current dog. How do you go about this? It can be a little tricky. Now, a while ago, we talked about introducing your new dog to a household cat. Today, let's focus more about dog-dog interactions. Now I recommend using a barrier or gate. Anytime I'm introducing a new puppy to any household pet, in this case, your current dog. So we like to do this within the confines of your home, but we're going to use gates or exercise pens or some barrier, with a little bit of strategic planning and positive reinforcement, because this method will help create a structured environment and it will allow these two dogs or three dogs or however many dogs you have. It'll be a nice, controlled environment where we can reduce the likelihood of stress or conflicts between the dogs.

Speaker 1: 5:31

So begin by setting up a designated area for each dog using gates and pens. They can be at a crate, whatever the barrier you choose to use. But we want to separate the dogs. We're just going to say there's two dogs for the time being. This provides a visual separation for your dogs and it ensures that each dog has their own space, which will reduce the risk of any kind of territorial disputes. So we're going to allow both dogs to become familiar with their areas and then we're going to watch their body language before we initiate any direct interactions. So start the introduction process with the dogs on opposite sides of the barrier. Allow them to see and smell each other without direct contact so they can sniff each other through the gate. That's great, but they're not able to get to each other's bodies because of that barrier.

Speaker 1: 6:16

Now we're going to use positive reinforcement meaning food rewards and praise to reward good, calm, friendly behavior. So if they're wagging their tails and they're loose and noodley in their body language, they seem to be happy. I might just do a little food scatter on the floor. Now, when you do food scatters, dogs can be a little bit territorial over their food. So recognize as you reward them, reward them away from one another. So whether you're luring them away from one another or if you're just doing a little food scatter behind them, or they turn away from one another, go collect their little food scatter and then come back and say hello to each other again. This will help them, as they see each other, to feel positive about it, as they then get to play another super fun game of turning away, going and collecting their little food scatter and then they get to come back and say hello again, so that can create a nice positive feeling.

Speaker 1: 7:03

With these new introductions, we want to keep these sessions short and supervised, and then our job is to monitor their body language. We're looking for signs of curiosity, playfulness, relaxation. Positive behaviors should be rewarded, while any signs of tension or discomfort we can just simply separate them. So teach them to move away from the other dog if needed. So again, we need to watch that body language and before we're going to let these dogs be together without the barrier, we want nice, playful, relaxed, curiosity type behavior. So no tensing, freezing, staring, growling None of that. Now, this might take one session, which is maybe five, ten minutes. This might take a week, right? So be patient. We're going to go at our dog's pace both of them. We have to make sure both are happy. So if one's happy and one's not, we need to wait till both of them are happy to be together. So creating those separate spaces where they have a pen and a crate, or maybe we're using some gates to give this dog this room and this dog this space, until they are a little more friendly. Then they can be together.

Speaker 1: 8:12

So we're going to also start to incorporate what we call parallel activities. That will encourage positive associations. For example, have both dogs engage in activities like chewing on toys or enjoying treats side by side. I find that that goes best if we're doing training side by side. So I might ask both dogs to do a sit. I'm feeding both dogs. Ask both dogs to do a down I'm feeding both dogs. Now, your new puppies aren't going to know these terms or the cues, but you can definitely lure them into these positions, lure them into a sit, lure them into a down and make sure you include that other dog, the older dog, with the training and the reinforcement right. Feed them food as well. That will help them feel positive about this new little sidekick that's appeared and is here to stay. So feeding and rewarding both dogs as they do parallel activities. So even if you're just walking around your house and they follow you, reward both dogs for following you. Just take that training session. They're going to have both puppies or both dogs working on things at the same time.

Speaker 1: 9:12

Now, as you're teaching your new dog new behaviors, it is also okay to have your older dog in a crate while you teach the new puppy a behavior and then bring out the older dog and work with them side by side. But just recognize, doing those parallel activities will help them be more friendly to one another because they're not focused on each other, they're actually focused on me. So even some play or anything I'm asking them to do where they're focused on an outside task but they're doing it together, will help them get along better. So I also like to just regularly rotate the dogs between the confined areas. So as we are managing our household, you know we're moving dogs from room to room or space to space occasionally, as needed. We're just rotating the household is what we call it because we want everyone to be happy and friendly, right? So that's going to look differently at everybody's house depending on what kind of body language you're seeing with your dogs.

Speaker 1: 10:06

But don't feel badly about rotating your household, like where this puppy needs to be in a pen while this dog's out for a little bit, and then this dog needs to go in a pen while the puppy's out for a little bit. That's totally fine, because we want both dogs to be happy, relaxed and just getting used to one another's presence without overwhelming either dog. Also, another tip for you would be establishing feeding routines that involve the dogs eating on opposite sides of a gate or within separate pens, so they're not together eating their meals. We don't want to create any sort of resource guarding tendencies in them, so giving them their own spaces to eat their meals will help with that. Now, as your dogs show increased comfort and positive interactions with each other through the gate, through exercise pens, we can gradually allow them some supervised interactions together. We're just going to monitor this and again, I would practice those parallel activities when they are together, allowing them to do things and focus on me or a game or another toy, but they are doing it side by side and then, if you see any negative behavior, we can immediately interrupt, redirect and separate as needed.

Speaker 1: 11:09

Okay, so we'll want to make sure that we're monitoring their together times in the beginning to make sure they're both friendly and then maintain consistency in routines and positive reinforcement to help build the strong foundation for their relationship. Being patient is really important. You guys, as I mentioned, it's going to take different time periods for different dogs and households. So if there's any signs of stress or tension, just go back to earlier stages of the introduction process and progress at a slower pace. All right, that's it for today. Happy holidays everybody. Remember, by providing these structured environments, controlling their interactions and reinforcing positive behaviors, we can definitely foster good, happy relationships between our dogs, and that's our goal, right? Happy training, thank you. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training session, visit my site BaxterAndBellacom to contact me.