You’ve just brought home your new puppy and now it’s time to socialize them! But what does that mean exactly? Taking your adorable little fluff ball out in public will surely result in a barrage of ‘Ooohs’ and a constant parade of people who want to touch them. Should you let strangers pet your new puppy or is there a better way to teach your dog about the world around them?
We coach our clients to say ‘No’ to requests for petting from strangers. Just because your puppy is cute doesn’t mean they must be available for public consumption. So how do you socialize your puppy if you don’t let people touch them?
Reasons not to Let Strangers Pet Your Puppy
First, let’s talk about some potential consequences that can develop from letting strangers pet your puppy.
- Your puppy learns to ignore you and seek reinforcement from outside sources.
- Your puppy learns that you won’t keep them safe in the event they prefer not to have strangers touch them.
- Your puppy learns to escalate their behavior to make people go away when they don’t feel safe.
Create Safe Spaces
Creating a safe environment for your puppy is your number one priority! Dogs and people engage in vastly different forms of social interaction. Dogs sniff to explore their environment and smells include information about potential danger. They want to smell new people (specifically their butts!) to determine whether this person is safe. However, sniffing someone’s behind is not socially acceptable by human standards.
Allowing your puppy to engage in inappropriate (to humans) behavior they’ve already been set up to fail. These failures are often addressed with ill-advised leash corrections. Now your puppy has learned that investigating new people is potentially dangerous and painful! Worse, they’ve learned that they can’t always trust you, the person who is supposed to protect them. Associating people or yourself with pain is the LAST thing you want your puppy to learn. Teach your young dog that people aren’t a threat by avoiding aversive experiences!
Species Appropriate Greetings
Letting a stranger pet your puppy or otherwise invade their space space disregards your puppy’s natural exploration process. It’s erroneous to assume that your puppy wants to be touched by someone they don’t know. After all, do you like it when strangers try to touch you? Think about it. Some people are huggers but other’s aren’t. When we meet someone new there are culturally appropriate ways to make the introduction. Some people kiss cheeks or shake hands. Some cultures bow without ever touching one another. Reaching over someone’s head to stroke them behind the ears could get you punched!
By the same token, reaching over a puppy’s head could intimidate them and prompt defensive behavior. Many people, especially children, are bitten when reaching for a dog. If your puppy is displaying signs of stress be their advocate. Avoid letting strangers or children engage with your dog by reaching over, grabbing their faces, or trying to hug them.
Avoid Bootleg Reinforcement
Getting bit is a worst case scenario but there are other reasons to avoid letting strangers pet your puppy. At best your puppy will learn to seek out strangers as opposed to listening to you. This could result in unsafe situations where your dog charges toward people or other dogs. It’s important for safety that your new puppy learn to ignore distractions in the environment. You have to teach them to tune out external sources of information.
If your puppy learns that they can get things they want from strangers they’re less likely to choose you. By that token your new puppy has to learn to favor you as the source of all things awesome in their world. That won’t happen if they receive reinforcement for engaging with stranger.
Proper Socialization
So how do you socialize properly if you don’t allow strangers to pet your puppy? Teaching your puppy to succeed in whatever environment they’re in the main goal of socialization. This includes teaching them to ignore much of the stimuli they are exposed to on a regular basis. You want a puppy that is confident around strangers, but not at the expense of their focus on you.
Remember these key points when exploring the world with your puppy:
- Create positive associations is easier from a safe distance
- Advocate for your puppy means setting firm boundaries
- Signs of fear, anxiety, and stress can be subtle and often display at fidgeting or hyperexcitement.
Create Positive Associations
Begin introductions from a distance that allows our puppy to remain calm and under control. It’s hard to learn that swimming is fun if you’re drowning in the deep end of the pool. If your puppy isn’t eating, on a loose leash, or responding to previously learned cues slow down and reevaluate your approach. Pair new experiences with food or play to create a positive association. Give your puppy a time to assess the situation. Let them look at the person, dog, or thing from as many different angles as possible. Rushing and introduction to anything new will result in either a negative experience or learning the wrong habits.
Set Clear Boundaries
It’s okay to tell people ‘No, thanks’ or and request more space. You owe strangers nothing and certainly not at the expense of your new puppy’s mental health. Practice your ‘crossing guard’ impersonation. Hold up your hand and say, ‘Stop right there!’ There’s no need to be rude and setting clear boundaries does not constitute rudeness. You are your dog’s only and best advocate. Tell people what you want them to do! ‘Stand on the curb,’ ‘Take 3 steps back,’ or ‘Keep your hands behind your back,’ are all effective scripts for managing people’s behavior. Training dogs in public is a lot like defensive driving. Anticipate problematic behavior from strangers and act promptly to redirect it.
Managing your puppy’s access to resources teaches them they can’t just do whatever they please. Set limits on your puppy when they are young before they learn to test boundaries as adolescents. Avoid situations that stress you or your puppy out so that you are reactively resorting to aversive handling.
Recognize Signs of Fear, Anxiety or Stress (FAS)
One of the earliest signs of fear, anxiety, or stress is fidgeting or hyperarousal. Leash pulling, tugging on the leash, and jumping are often misconstrued as playfulness or friendliness. In reality, these are signs of a nervous system in overdrive and can quickly escalate to dangerous when poorly managed. Strain on their leash activates a dog’s opposition reflex putting them into a reactive state of mind. A leash connected to their collar quickly culminates in damage to the soft tissues in their next. Damage to their thyroid due to leash pulling could necessitate dependency on pharmaceuticals for future hormone regulation.
Other early signs on nervous system activation include pinned ears, wide eyes, tongue flicking, yawning, panting, pacing, freezing, or sweaty paws. You dog may balk or turn their head away in avoidance or appeasement. Ignoring these signals causes them escalate to lunging, barking, growling, or snapping. Recognize, intervene, and redirect your puppy during low level displays of distress in order to avoid bigger outbursts.
Conclusion
Set your puppy up for success in public spaces by limiting the exposure to aversive experiences. It’s not up to us to determine what’s aversive to our dogs. It IS our responsibility to set our dog’s up for success by recognizing early signs of stress and acting accordingly. It only takes one negative experience for your new puppy to learn that people are dangerous or that you won’t protect them.
Keep them safe by saying ‘No’ when strangers want to pet your puppy!
