How to introduce dogs/animals [my 6 biggest lessons]. By Shelly Wood
Blog date; 10th October 2020
I had said to a friend “as long as they don’t hate each other and there’s not incessant barking, I think it will be fine.” By day two, I was convinced Mija hated Cross and in part, because of his incessant barking!
1) Be mindful…
I’ve lived with multiple dogs most of my life, but rarely have I been thoughtful with introductions. I usually let new dogs meet on “neutral territory” as I always heard that was a good idea, but after meeting on neutral ground, the next step for me was “we all live together now” and then I would follow the general advice of “dogs will be dogs” and “let them work it out”. I was mostly lucky with this laissez faire approach, although I did run into challenges with one pair of dogs that I think could have been avoided or at least lessened with more appropriate introductions.
Recently, I decided to foster an eight-month-old lab mix, Cross, and then shortly after he was adopted to an amazing family, I adopted a little puppy, Castor. I’ve been deliberate about the introductions of these new animals to the household and I’ve learned a lot through that process. Ryan Cartlidge of Animal Training Academy would say (and did say I think!) that these decisions were like “jumping into the deep end of the pool – and then splashing around until you learn how to swim”. Based on my experience, here are a few of the things that have allowed me to jump into the deep end of that metaphorical pool and that have helped to keep me afloat so far.
2) You don’t have to be ‘The smartest person in the room” (learn from others)
Before jumping into that deep end of the pool, I made sure I had taken some swimming lessons. Lessons included learning from years of living with multiple animals, observation of multiple animals who I have had a chance to work with, education about animal behavior (I’m a bit addicted to learning about animal behavior!), and making use of available resources about animal introductions. In thinking through what bringing another animal into the house might look like, I relied heavily on a wonderful article written by Ken Ramirez that I have read several times over the last couple of years “Marlin Meets Tulip – A Systematic Introduction” (see article HERE).
Although I do not have the luxury of living anywhere as spacious as The Ranch, the principles discussed in this article were a help in planning to bring each of these new animals into my home.
One of the important pieces of planning before bringing a new dog into the house was thinking through what antecedent arrangements would best keep everyone safe, as comfortable as possible and generally set us up for success (see picture above).
3) Consider your Feng Shui (Antecedent arrangement)
Due to a remodel project, I have an empty room on the first floor of my house. In that room, I set up a dog crate, and put enrichment items in the crate, as well as throughout the room. Some of the enrichment items I had on hand were snuffle mats, Kongs, West Paw toys, natural treats and chews, synthetic chews, puzzle feeders, stuffed frozen Kongs, and a variety of toys. Some of these things went in the crate and room, and some went in a stash to be swapped out later. I also have a Pet Tutor and that ended up being a life saver. That room has a door on it that could be shut if need be, but I also put a gate in front of the door, so I could shut it entirely, or leave it open for visibility between the animals. Outside of that room is a hallway where I put another gate, so the new animal’s territory could easily be expanded to a room and a hallway. On the other side of the hallway is a dining area where I often positioned myself in the early stages of introductions and on another side of the dining area is the living room and the stairs to the second floor of the house. I put a large gate there so that Mija, my existing dog, had access to the couch, her crate, all of her toys, and the upstairs for total escape should she want it.
Now that I have a puppy in the house, I have also added two exercise pens to this set up – one in the dining room, and one in the living room which has helped not only with systematic introductions, but also with potty training, preventing jumping, preventing chewing, preventing tons of hopped up play in the house, etc. Oh! And I live with an amazing kitty, Wednesday, as well, and I made sure she had access to her private get away in the basement as well as access to everywhere in the house except the new dog’s living quarters. Thinking through what types of gates, crates and pens to have, and where to put them has been critical in safety, management and systematically introducing these animals.
4) Slow & systematic (Parallel walking)
Another important planning piece before ever bringing either dog into the home was thinking through how the dogs should first meet. In both instances, I decided to have the dogs meet outside of the home, with the new dog being handled by someone my dog knows and loves. With Cross, we had the luxury of meeting a few times off the property and doing some parallel walking with this friend.
What that looked like was, my friend would be somewhere with Cross, I would show up with my dog Mija, we would be quite a distance from each other, and we would start making our way toward each other. As we made our way toward each other, we would do a lot of weaving and horizontal walking, talking as we got nearer each other. I did a lot of marking and reinforcing eye contact from Mija, and my friend marked and reinforced any focus toward her at all from Cross. Once we got within about twenty or so feet of each other, we would start walking parallel with each other, so we were all just on a walk together, but with a good bit of distance between us. We used the dogs’ body language as a guide to decrease (or increase) distance. After a couple of walks like that, we walked in the house together with Mija walking in first and Cross and my friend walking in second. I put Mija behind the gated area she would be hanging out in, and Cross in “his room”. While Cross was here, I was very lucky in that I had several friends who were a huge help and who continued to come over so we could go on walks like that. Over time, we let the dogs interact a bit on these walks and then play in the yard together on multiple occasions. Things were a little different with Castor because he was not quite nine weeks when he came here, but the principles – slow and systematic still applied.