Socializing Puppies During Isolation

McCann Dog Training
5 min readMar 22, 2020

Right, so you brought home your gorgeous new pup, ready with your plan to train and socialize…. and then, the sh!t hit the fan!

First, some commiseration. This can’t feel good for those of you with young pups right now, but I’d like to reassure you that it’s really not a horrible thing. Socialization has become a really confused point in the dog world. Over-socialization often leads to over-stimulated dogs who lose their minds and are hard to control when they see other people and dogs. This will help a lot of dogs have better social skills through calculated exposure rather than interaction.

Now remember that we’re humans — and we are VERY adaptable! Training is still available through online means and most of us have more time than usual. As for socialization, well — we can get through that too! This will be okay.

More good news — dogs are also adaptable. If you’ve ever had a dog before, you know that at some point, they’ve experienced a novel stimulus outside of puppyhood. You may remember your 7 year old golden seeing that big man in the hat and being concerned, or reacting to the new potted plant you brought home…. low body, light ‘chuffing’, stretching in to sniff, but ready to bolt away at a moment’s notice. Life continued as it will when your now young dog sees novel stimulus as an adult. You don’t need them to see EVERYTHING out there. That’s impossible even during the best times, which these are far from.

Now, having said that — you still have work to do! Put your creative thinking cap on and go to it!

🚩 Exposure VS Interaction

I’ll say it again because it’s very important. The point of socialization is exposure, not interaction. Pups do not have to interact with a thing to learn from it and take it in as a safe part of life. Experiencing a person 6-feet or more away, observing through sight, smell and hearing is enough. We do not need to add touch. Petting is more for us, than it is for the dog.

🚩 This Will Help Your Greeting Manners

Seeing from a distance and not jumping all over the person will actually work in your favour to help create the manners you’ll want. Dropping the rehearsal of your pup jumping all over every new person they meet in an effort to socialize will…

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