Tips For Introducing New Dogs Successfully

1. Make Sure Someone that Lives in the House is Home at All Times
For the first few days to one week after you have introduced your dog to your home, someone else needs to be home at all times. It may be a good idea to take a vacation from work and stay with your dog at all hours of the day. The dog has to get as used to you as it does to your house, and the only way to make sure your dog will be able to become less fearful about its new surroundings is if it feels safe when you are there with it.

2. All Family Members Should Have Treats and Train
As soon as your dog has grown at least slightly accustomed to your family member’s presence, you should immediately begin having all of the members of your family training the puppy from the beginning. Your dog needs to know it is not high on the totem pole, and the only way to ensure that is to have every member of your family both commanding and rewarding your dog with praise.

3. Start Crate Training
It is very important to give your dog a safe place that it can stay when it is feeling anxious. Crate training early will ensure it has that safe place. Dogs naturally feel safer in enclosed, tight spaces, and though it is hard to crate train dogs at first, a dog that is properly crate trained will be considerably more mentally healthy.

4. Take Your Dog on Long Walks
You should also be regularly taking your dog on long, tiring walks. The more your dog is tired out, the less anxiety it can feel in its new surroundings. Tired dogs are calmer dogs, and calmer dogs adjust better to their environment. Even if your dog is known to find only an hour walk sufficiently tiring, you should still consider double that simply to make sure that your dog is physically and mentally exhausted, so it will focus less on the anxieties it is feeling.

5. Take Proper Precautions With Old Pets
Finally, there are a variety of safe practices that you need to do if you already have pets in your home. Follow those instructions to the letter, because you need your dog to feel safe around all of the members of its new “pack” and that includes other dogs, cats, etc. The last thing you want is for your dog to be attacked by an old dog already living in the home. It could set your training back for weeks.

New Dogs to New Homes

Dogs do adjust fairly quickly when given the proper types of training. They need to, because in the wild they will have to be moving from location to location in order to forage for new food and stay safe from predators. But for you to train them effectively in your new home, you need to make sure you are prepared and ready to handle the responsibilities of bringing a new pet into the household.