Twelve days of Christmas -rescue dogs - day 5

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Day 5

How do we build social skills?

Answer-WITH CARE!

If you are puzzled by this response please read the last 4 posts which you can find if you scroll back to last week.

Everything we do with a new dog in the home should be slow. I always say to my clients -whether they have horses or dogs-you are unlikely to run into difficulties if you take things slowly, and if you are cautious. There really is no problem with taking time. Things have a habit of going wrong when we don’t use time wisely.

Yes, wouldn’t it be lovely to visit a busy park, go to a beach or cafe and mingle with other dogs and chat to people about the lovely new dog that you now live with?

For us being social is mostly positive but this is often not the case for many dogs, but it is most certainly not appropriate for newly rehomed dogs

Yes it is possible that a few may enjoy it but the majority WON’T.

Is it so hard for us to understand?

There are many people who prefer a quiet life to one that is full of people. Being allowed to decide what kind of area we walk in is one of the things we often value above all else.

Building social skills is a slow process--- it cannot be rushed. If it’s assumed that a newly rehomed dog would like to visit busy places in order to “socialise” it is likely that things will go badly wrong

I can’t tell you how often I have to tell people that their dogs are leaping/ plunging/ barking and impossible to control not because they are enjoying themselves BUT because they aren’t. This communication couldn’t be clearer

A dog that is displaying these behaviours is not enjoying themselves -they are trying to tell us they can’t cope.

The way to build confidence around strange people and dogs is to build things slowly AND to observe the dog as you go.

A skilled and social dog is calm and moves in a confident way and responds calmly when approached and this is different again to a dog that is overwhelmed and exceptionally quiet and one that freezes many times during walks

* Is the dog hyper vigilant?

* Does the dog appear to be really excited on seeing other dogs?

* Does the dog freeze on walks?

* Does the dog bark and jump on seeing other dogs?

* Does the dog freeze during walks?

If the answer to any of these is yes, please drastically shorten walks and choose MUCH quieter areas.

Take a leaf out of your dogs book, find areas to chill out, take a coffee for you and some chews for your dog and just let your dog absorb the new world

PLEASE!!!!!

Social Skills and Confidence take months to build, and are earned -spiraling anxiety takes only days to build.

Which do you choose?

NB

Please do like and share this post-even if you know all of this and are providing it for your own dog there are many dogs out there that need their people to read these posts

Pennie Clayton 2025

#speakingdogs