Socialization

[Cheza]

I did a little digging and found this thread:

http://chazhound.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77742&highlight=best+places+to+socialize&page=1

But it mildly confuses me... taking dogs to the mall? Nowhere around here allows dogs except pet stores really, and I am not taking her there until she's gotten all her shots. There's a great kind of... outdoor promenade downtown here that gets really lively at night and on weekends, but it's a concrete jungle and I'm not sure I want to take her there either.

So dog-wise we are all good... but for people I'm coming up at a loss

 

[BuckarooT35]

This is what confuses me in this country too...are there malls that allows dogs to be socialized in their environment? WEll...I haven't found one yet either. If someone can tell me which state dogs are allowed in shopping mall, maybe when we go over, we can bring our dog there too??? I will appreciate it very much ... :hail: thanks...

 

[bubbatd]

To me it starts from the whelp ......this is why I HATE bad Breeders and Puppy Mills ! This was my biggest job when I had litters . With a litter of 10 pups , cleaning up 30 to 40 poops a day took minutes compared to spending at least 30 minutes a day with each pup .

 

[Cheza]

Well she's already had many friendly hands, and will continue to have many until she is sent home with me, but I'd like to continue the process with strangers. Just can't find a good place to do it.

 

[skKi]

I think they mean outside the mall. There's a lot of people traffic and very few dogs, so it's pretty ideal for meeting people. Who could resist a cute puppy? I did that with Pit and it worked wonderfully for socialization.

 

[Cheza]

Hm, maybe not a bad idea if i can find a mall that has some grass around as well. Everything is very "city" here.
We lived in an apartment complex with Cheza so that's how she got hers, but we're in a house now so the neighbours aren't as apparent

 

[lizzybeth727]

Most hardware stores, including Home Deopt and Lowes, allow pets. Great place for socialization, too - lots of strange noises and sights.

 

[Cheza]

Most hardware stores, including Home Deopt and Lowes, allow pets. Great place for socialization, too - lots of strange noises and sights.

seriously??? how did I miss this? lol

 

[lizzybeth727]

Yep... I don't think it's highly advertised, but it's true. My dog likes to go flower shopping with me.

 

[Cheza]

holy crap, i will have to call some around here and see, that would be fantastic

 

[Lizmo]

Invite lots of friends over? Seriously, if you don't have a good way for your pup to get socialized, bring the people to you

Of course, Petsmart is a great place and if you have any locally owned doggie stores, that'd be fantastic. I would take her to your outdoor promenade.

Personally, I wouldn't wait till 16 weeks old, but thats just me.

 

[Gypsydals]

Invite lots of friends over? Seriously, if you don't have a good way for your pup to get socialized, bring the people to you

Of course, Petsmart is a great place and if you have any locally owned doggie stores, that'd be fantastic. I would take her to your outdoor promenade.

Personally, I wouldn't wait till 16 weeks old, but thats just me.

Even with taking a pup out in public, having LOTS of people over is still a good idea. I think sometimes we get all focused in on taking a puppy outside of the house for socializing we forget it needs to be done in the home too. I know I for one am guilty of that.


I wouldn't wait until 16 weeks either, because at that time you are entering into another fear stage. Sign up for a puppy socialization class too. Thats a great place for a pup to meet new people, new dogs and different situations.

 

[Sch3Dana]

My personal experience is that the pricier the merchandise, the more welcome you are with your puppy (of course take bags and paper towels in case of an accidents). When I lived in LA I went to Bloomingdales and Nordstrom with puppies. You could also pick little boutique shops in Beverly Hills and be safe, but they might have kicked me out based on fashion sense (or lack thereof) so I left those stores alone :rofl1:

 

[Lizmo]

I wouldn't wait until 16 weeks either, because at that time you are entering into another fear stage. Sign up for a puppy socialization class too. Thats a great place for a pup to meet new people, new dogs and different situations.

Exactly. Blaze went through a fear period at around 15 weeks and just came out of it about a week ago at 5 months. If I had waited till 16 weeks to socialize him, I would have had serious problems.

To me, I see more problems with waiting than beign scared of the pup getting sick. If your pup has come from a healthy bitch, a clean kennel, then you shouldn't worry alot. Here is a quote from a friend of mine on another board:

I honestly don't know what the problem is with rest stops or any other reasonably decent (no open filth) public place for short periods. This is a healthy puppy, which means it should have good maternal immunity - and if you don't believe in that he should have been vaccinated.

I deliberately take my pups between 8 and 12 weeks to places like that (and no, I don't vaccinate) so that they can develop their immune systems as they should.

The kids, and puppies, who are at the greatest risk of illness ime are those that are isolated and over protected. I don't take my puppies lives lightly, but lets face it, life has risks, and the best time to develop a competent immune system as well as social skills are between 8 and 12 weeks.

My experiences with parvo has been in puppies over 4 months of age, the sickest with full vaccination history. The vulnerable window seems to be post Rabies vaccines (hmmmmmm) and at the 16-20 week time frame when maternal immunity switches to adult. IF I was going to keep a puppy home and semi-isolated (semi because viruses are everywhere) it would be during that time frame.

 

[Cheza]

I really didn't think there were so many places that allowed dogs... I just assumed they were pretty much forbidden from... everywhere lol.

We have friendly people and friendly dogs that we are extending an open invitation to once she comes home, so we will be making an effort to have people over as well.

I don't have many fears of taking her places in public before she's fully vaccinated, just to places with a lot of dogs.

Thanks everyone!

 

[BuckarooT35]

Rest Stops

We travel a lot during the summers and this time we are going to have Cooper with us. His first long trip was to Grand Fork, North Dakota where our son (he's human:rofl1 is in military school. We live here in Missouri so that was a 14 hour straight drive from here. We stop at rest stops and gasoline stops and whathavetheygottoeat stops, too...It was Cooper's first snow experience and loves eating snow...

His second long trip was to Tennessee for our annual fly-in convention. That was a 9 hour trip with rest stop stops. Cooper is still alive and healthy...and still go with us to short trips to our airport.

His third long trip will be this coming July 28 - August 3rd, a week of activities at Airventure fly-in at Oshkosh, Wisconsin. That will be another 8 hour drive minus rest stops...barring any accidents I believe he will survive that one too...he came from good stock...and we feed him well, sometimes too well..

 

[Gypsydals]

Besides Lizmo, if you start traveling with them as a puppy and they get sick its smaller messes to clean up. And by the time they are an adult "hopefully" they are over the car sickness.

I waited with my girl Chloe to do socializing after her shots, and it too alot of work after that to get her past that. And even then she was still quite standoffish towards strangers. Ivan on the other hand the day after I got him, he went to the park with me to watch fireworks. Hes been just about ever where with me. The Only thing I did wrong is I didn't have people coming here. So he tends to be a bit of a jerk when people come over.

 

[Lizmo]

Good point about the car travel. Both my dogs traveled as pups (one still is a pup LOL!), and don't have any problems now.

Cheza, there was a thread on here called "100 things in 100 days" You should check into that....I'll try to find it for you.

 

[Cheza]

Thanks Liz that would be fantastic.

We didn't do such a hot job with Cheza, she is such a spaz, especially when people are over, but she came home via a 2.5 hrs car ride, and go figure she's amazing in the car lol.

So with this one we are going to take her EVERYWHERE, muahaha..

 

[Lizmo]

Well, I'm not having any luck with the search function here (it's never liked me) so I made the same thread on another forum for more ideas, so I'll post that link here.....

http://www.bordercollie.org/boards/index.php?showtopic=15809&hl=

It's funny, going back and looking at this list. There are only a hand full of things I haven't done. Otherwise I've done everything on the list with Blaze!