Dear Critter Corner: We have recently adopted two pups about a month apart from one another. They are both young and have had no real prior training. We have been a multi-dog household in the past but are feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. Can you give us any tips?
While adopting one young dog has its challenges, adopting two is even more challenging. It’s nice for them to have each other for company, to play with, and to help burn off puppy energy, but sometimes this means two young minds are looking for things to get into. Here are a few tips to get through the initial stage.
Have good structure and boundary setting in place from the start. This can be semi-rigid feeding and walking schedules. Have a set of rules in place that the whole family agrees upon, and decide what should be done if a rule is broken. For example, the dogs are jumping on you as you walk through the door. What will you do? My go-to is to teach incompatible behaviors for jumping. I would work on teaching my pups to sit to receive attention or the magic four-on-the-floor rule, meaning they only receive attention when four feet are on the floor.
Other things to consider are bonding times with you away from one another. Our pups will bond with one another much easier than they will bond with you (a different species). An easy way to work on bonding with your pup is to set up separate training times. Not only will this make the training go smoothly, since you will only be focusing on one pup at a time, but it will be much easier to fine-tune the exercise before bringing them together to work as a team.
In the beginning, you will also want to closely monitor them together to see if there are any underlying behavior issues that may need to be addressed or managed. One that comes to mind is the sharing of resources, including places to sleep and items to chew or play with. It’s a good idea to keep high-value items out of reach unless you are there to manage the pups.
If you need additional help with training your pup, check out our website for upcoming classes or schedule a consultation to address a specific behavior.