“I brought home my new puppy last week, but with all these restrictions I’m panicking. How can I socialise him if I can’t have visitors or take him out?”
This client isn’t the only one to be worrying. You know how important it is to socialise your puppy in those first vital few weeks. The clock is ticking…
Socialisation is about your puppy having positive, low-stress experiences of the things she might meet in everyday life to help her to be comfortable and confident in our complex world and not be bothered by new things she might subsequently encounter.
There’s a lot to cover during socialisation – your puppy needs to be comfortable with people, other dogs and animals, different surfaces, noise and places, and we recommend new puppy owners should book into a group training class before the end of the socialisation period, too.
But how on earth can you do all that during this coronavirus lockdown when you aren’t allowed out much and you have to stay away from other people?
– Perhaps you can’t take your pup out at all yet, because their vaccinations haven’t been completed or have been delayed.
– Or you might be a breeder with a litter of puppies that can’t be picked up by their new owners for a while, so the responsibility for their socialisation is on you.
The bad news – you can’t do the ideal socialisation programme during this lockdown.
And you simply can’t afford to wait until the current restrictions are lifted. It may take several weeks for that to happen – and then it will be too late.
The good news is that there is still a lot you can do.
Keep training and keep safe,
Carol