How to Raise the Perfect Dog (12 page)

This cautious period can sometimes coincide with the time a breeder releases a puppy to his new home. New owners often interpret a puppy’s understandable reticence as something that must instantly be comforted. When they don’t permit him the honor of overcoming his own insecurities in his own way, they can actually undo some of the meticulous hard work that his natural mother and his breeder have put into his education up to this point. “I am currently trying to teach a friend this lesson,” Brooke confides. “Her dog falls apart the minute she is around and curls up and hides from other dogs. But when he is here on his own, he is playful, eats well, and walks properly on his leash. I use a firm voice for his commands and restrain myself from the high-pitched baby talk that I use when they are newborns. The long and short of it is, keep the puppy safe, but never rescue.” To prevent a puppy from developing fear or anxiety issues, owners shouldn’t interfere with the nature of the learning process, which includes feeling uncomfortable and also making mistakes. For puppies, this means we must let them investigate every new situation in the order of nose-eyes-ears, while allowing them to work through their own strategies for meeting new challenges… even frightening ones. We’ll discuss this more in the next chapter.

Follow Mom’s Example

No reputable breeder will permit you to bring a puppy home with you before it is eight weeks of age, but I believe it’s important for people to understand all the different influences that go into making your dog who he is
before
the day he finally becomes yours. That’s because, if a puppy is raised by an instinctual, thorough mother like Angel’s mom, Binky, you will already have a great head start on your job. Your dog will already have instilled in him the concept of rules, boundaries, and limitations and will come to you armed with a freshman-level understanding of the most important canine social dos and don’ts. There’s no question that Binky gave her all in caring for Angel and his litter-mates, but she didn’t let her emotions get in the way of imposing the natural laws and structure every dog needs if he is going to grow up to be a good canine citizen and a model member of another pack. If your puppy has had a top-notch breeder like Brooke or Diana, he’ll have the added advantage of having passed a beginner course in the peculiarities of the human world, including the feeding ritual, the concept of indoor-outdoor borders, and even a little crate training or house-breaking thrown in for extra credit.

Your primary job as his new pack leader is to continue furthering his education, using the same natural common sense.

4
PUPPY COMES HOME

Easing the Transition from Litter to Family

Mr. President as a puppy

Y
ou’ve done your research, found the right breeder, rescue, or shelter, selected a puppy with the correct energy level, and are as certain as you can be that she will grow up to be your perfect canine companion for life. Now it’s time to bring her home. I always say, when you’re a pack leader, everything you do means something to your dog. Every action, every emotion, every signal you send—accidentally or intentionally—will be input into her computer and used to reevaluate who you are and what function you should play in her life. With puppies, all those tiny moments matter even more. Your puppy’s brain is still developing, and she is looking to you to model the behavior patterns she will follow from now on. Junior, Blizzard, Angel, and Mr. President all started out as calm-submissive, medium-energy, issue-free puppies. But even I—yes, I, the Dog Whisperer—could mess up their already perfect programming if I didn’t pay attention to every interaction I had with them from the first day forward, especially during those earliest weeks in which my puppies were making the transition from their first pack—their mom and littermates—to living with my pack—my human family and my other dogs.

THE TRIP HOME

When you pick up your dog from the breeder’s, shelter, or rescue, the previous caretaker will talk you through adoption or sales contracts, as well as fill you in on the details of her health history, including documented records of any shots she has had up until now. When your puppy comes home with you, she should already have had at least her first round of immunizations, against distemper, hepatitis, parainfluenza, and parvo, something we’ll address in more detail in the next chapter. Ideally, you will have already been to visit your puppy at least once before the actual adoption. Many breeders like their new owners to handle the puppies after they are two or three weeks old, to begin to get them familiar with the scents of their new pack leaders—remember, dogs memorize and recognize an individual’s scents in much the same way we humans remember faces, except dogs’ noses are hundreds of times more accurate than human eyes! In other words, your new puppy would be able to pick you out of a police lineup with far more accuracy than you would be able to recognize her in a lineup of similar-breed dogs!

Your dog’s powerful sense of scent works to your advantage in other ways. To help ease your puppy’s transition away from her first family, make sure to bring with you some clothing or toys that bear the scent of her mother and littermates. They will provide needed comfort for her first few days apart from the support system she has come to depend upon. You will also have with you a kennel or carrying case to transport your puppy. If this is the carrying case that will become your puppy’s permanent “crate” at your home, you can ask your breeder to start getting the puppy used to that particular crate a week or so in advance. You can even provide an item—a towel or undershirt—to put in the crate that has your scent on it,
as long as it is totally sanitary and has never come into contact with any nonimmunized dogs or other pets!
The more we can use our dogs’ noses to help them prepare for new situations, the easier any change will be for them.

KENNEL/CRATE TIPS
Choosing a Crate Style

WIRE CRATES

• Stay cooler in hot environments

• Give more ventilation

• Give a 360-degree view to the puppy

• Can be covered with a towel to minimize distractions

• Often fold flat for storage

Note:
Make sure to keep the floor lined with comfortable paper, cardboard, or bedding.

HARD PLASTIC CRATES

• Are easy to clean
  

• Have comfortable, smooth floors that can be easily arranged with bedding and a raised sleeping area
  

• Are lightweight and better for portability
  

• Provide a ready-made “den-like” environment—naturally calming for excited puppies and helpful in soothing separation anxiety issues
  

The choice is yours, but whichever style you choose, be sure the crate is big enough so that there is enough room for the dog to stand up and turn around, and in which she can lie down and sleep in a comfortable position. It’s also best to allow some extra room for your puppy’s rapid growth.

When it comes time to bring your puppy to the car, you may be carrying her from the breeder’s in her crate, or you may choose the option that I prefer: walking her to the curb and allowing her to go into the car (and into her open crate inside the car) of her own volition. There’s a reason that I suggest to owners that they allow their puppies to propel themselves into new situations as much as possible: puppies are not marsupials, and they are not primates. When their mother wants them to go somewhere, she lets them figure out a way to follow her there. If they are too slow, somehow stray off the path, or get blocked by an object that’s in their way, she will go back, pick them up by the scruff, and move them back to where they need to be. Then she will continue on her journey, and they will once again have to figure out how to follow her. She doesn’t spend her days carrying her litter from place to place. If she did, her pups would never learn to fend for themselves, and that would be disastrous for the pack as a whole.

We need to keep our puppies’ mothers in mind at all times when helping them make the switch from their early lives to what will be their living situation for the majority of their puppyhood. Becoming a
partner
in your dog’s life from day one means helping her through challenging new circumstances but never rescuing her from those situations or doing all the work for her. Nature, with the added help of the mother, has already created a time-tested, nearly foolproof strategy for a dog’s education. We have to be aware that sometimes our best intentions drive us to actually block puppies from getting the benefits of Mother Nature’s lesson plan. Those best intentions, for too many owners, usually involve carrying their puppies around everywhere like babies, so the puppies never get a sense of how they got to where they’re going. This is very much against their nature and can seriously stunt their learning and development.

To use my method for introducing the puppy to the car and her kennel, park the car as close as possible to the pickup spot so you will be able to let the puppy follow you there. Many great breeders, like Brooke and Diana, have already conditioned their puppies to the sensation of the leash, so you can actually begin the leash-training process with this very first exercise you share together.

Once you reach your vehicle, open the door or tailgate and lift up the puppy by her scruff, but put only her front two paws down on the car seat or cargo area. This will trigger her brain to automatically want to put all four feet down where the first two landed. You have helped her accomplish this monumental new feat, but you haven’t done all the work for her. Instead you’ve been a
partner
in the learning experience.

Next, the puppy will want to explore the new space, first with her body and then with her nose, so you can use food to lure her into her transport kennel. She’ll also be attracted by the item containing the scents of her littermates and mom. Make sure she is relaxed and comfortable inside the kennel before you close the door. Never, ever close a door on an excited or anxious puppy. This can contribute to kennel phobias and even separation anxiety. Finally, position her near enough to smell and see you during the drive home.

Remember, scent and sight are far more important to your puppy than sound! In fact, sound can sometimes reinforce any fear or anxiety the puppy may be experiencing about this first-time adventure. If your puppy is whining throughout the trip and you are constantly repeating, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” what you are actually communicating to your puppy—not with the words but with the energy behind that sound—is that her
discomfort and whining
are okay. Also, try to refrain from using the squeaky, high-pitched cooing and baby talk people seem to slip into when they are around cute baby animals. If you are feeling sorry for the puppy, her first impression of you will be one of a creature with weak energy. As always, silent, calm-assertive energy is better for your puppy than talk or even touch at this point.

To calm a very anxious puppy, I always recommend using scent to distract first, then, once the puppy begins to relax, reinforcing that with a treat if necessary. But petting a fretful puppy can actually create exactly the outcome you don’t want—a puppy that always gets upset whenever she is inside a car or her kennel.

INTRODUCING YOUR PUPPY TO YOUR HOME

For those of you who have read my other books about rehabilitating adult dogs, you will be familiar with my instructions for walking a new dog around her new neighborhood for thirty minutes to an hour before inviting her into your home. This begins the forging of a bond and simulates the experience of migration, so that moving into your house feels like migrating from one area to another, and thus makes sense to her on a primal level.

For puppies, I recommend a kind of “abridged” version of this process. Before you bring your puppy inside your house it’s important for her to have a sense of the environment she’s going to live in, to get a taste of the smells, sounds, and sights of your yard, home, and neighborhood. You must begin to communicate to your puppy that your driveway or hedges or white picket fence marks the beginning of your territory. If your puppy already has had some experience with a leash or is open to wearing one, place a short leash high up on the puppy’s neck, so you can have a comfortable amount of control. This is the ideal situation, both to establish a lifetime routine and for your puppy’s immediate safety. Next, place the puppy on the ground, then walk toward your home, letting her follow you inside the front door. Do not let her get distracted or sniff the ground. Chris and Johanna Komives describe following this protocol with their new puppy, Eliza: “When I picked her up from the breeder, I put a leash on her—the breeder had already familiarized the puppies with leashes—and walked her briefly before putting her in the car,” says Chris. Clearly, Chris remembered the lessons he’s learned from six seasons of shooting
Dog Whisperer
, since this is another exercise I always insist upon for clients adopting adult dogs, but it’s also a first-rate way to begin the bonding process with a new puppy. “I had her crate in the car and put her in and waited until she was calm before closing the door and driving off,” Chris continues. “When we arrived home, I sprayed bleach-water in front of our house and two houses down and walked her this distance before entering the backyard. I let her explore the backyard, and then showed her the area in the back hallway we had prepared for her.”

If you live in an apartment, place the puppy a few feet outside the door and wait for her to follow you inside. Patience is key here, because she may be a bit disoriented and a little reticent in the beginning. Hesitancy is normal in puppies, because everything is new to them. As we discussed in the last chapter, your puppy may still be in the “cautious” phase that marks the end of her early socialization period. So don’t force the puppy inside if she is “putting the brakes on.” Remember my formula: nose-eyes-ears. Use a bully stick, treat, scented toy, or the item with her littermates’ or mother’s scents on it to engage her nose. Eventually she will show natural curiosity and willingness to come in after you. As timid as she might seem at first, it’s in her computer program to follow you. It’s very important that you remain calm, relaxed, and fully accepting of her natural tentativeness. On the day you plan to bring your puppy home, set aside several hours or even a good part of the day for the process so that you don’t become impatient. Remember, the energy you share with your puppy will become her energy. If you are tense and frustrated with her, she will reflect that negativity right back at you. Introducing a puppy to new environments should be a joyful activity for you, not one of frustration and stress.