Socialization

For the first week of socialization, we’re first looking to understand how socialization works, and why it’s important. We’ll then walk through introducing your dog to new people, and how to approach the situation so they’re comfortable! We’ll then set you up with a list of activities to try each week.

Sometimes socialization can be boring, for both humans and dogs! In this workshop, we’ll walk through how we can make the process more fun, and how you can avoid overdoing it and frustrating your dog. Then we’ll jump into objects and how to socialize them to your dog – before you know it, that dreaded vacuum will be your dog’s best friend! Lastly, we’ll set you up with another list of activities to get your dog familiar with objects you’ll run into in your daily life.

Unless you’re out in the middle of nowhere, it’s likely your dog will need to appropriately interact with other dogs on a near-daily basis. Whether you’re getting ready to hit the dog park, or just want to have nice greetings on walks, socializing your dog to their own kind is incredibly important. We’ll break down the best way to introduce new dogs, and of course, give a list of challenges for that week to progress your dog's ability to say hi to other dogs!

Some dogs are great with kids, others…not so much – and given that hurting a child is one of the biggest fears that dog owners have, it’s definitely not something to skip over. This workshop will go deep into how to recognize the signs that your puppy is uncomfortable around children, and how you can keep everyone safe. We’ll break down step by step how to help your dog acclimate to a little human, and then give a safe and easy list of challenges to work through.

There’s something that we haven’t covered yet that’s pretty important – fear periods. While not every dog has them, it’s a relatively common occurrence. During a dogs development, they can suddenly and temporarily exhibit signs of fear and anxiety. Luckily fear periods are short, but its critical that all dog parents understand the signs, and manage their dog’s experience so that they limit the long term impact of the fear period. We’ll then move onto introducing your dog to a new environment, alongside a new list of challenges for your to work through to get your dog comfortable with new spaces.

In this last workshop, we’ll review everything we’ve learned in the previous workshop, and help you understand your socialization tasks beyond puppyhood. We’ll also deliver some final tips for socializing to things we might not have covered in previous workshops, so you have a toolkit to deal with whatever socialization challenges await you and your dog down the road.