I am on the engagement stage of my dog. How should I handle my GSD with friends and other dogs?

Hi Cindy,

I have a 13 week old female German Shepherd. I have the Michael Ellis DVDs, and overall she is doing great with them. Currently we are on the engagement stages still, and she is doing better and better, but still has some focus issues. She stays focused most of the time, but I have to watch her closely or sometimes she will check out and it takes direct interaction to get her back (Eg, food passing nose, small pop on leash, etc). Note that this is in familiar environments, and new but relatively empty and uninteresting environments such as a soccer field at 6 am.

With that said, bigger environmental distractions such as people and animals become an issue. I understand it takes more work on engagement training to have her properly ignoring those random people, along with work in progressively more distracting environments, but my worry is simply of the people and animals I know. As far as people go, we all have people (and their animals) in our lives and I'm not sure how I should be handling her with both family friends, and family dogs. I am worried that having her play with other dogs (only a few, but still) will harm her focus and engagement training in the long run. Already it will take her a lot of work to simply ignore other random dogs, let alone the one or two she will be around often at family homes, etc. Same goes for family and their kids. Especially with a cute little puppy, people you know will want to pet, excite, and play with the dog.

What should I be doing with those people and animals? How should I be handling it? I don't have a problem with controlling her interaction with other family people and dogs, but training her to ignore family feels a bit like I'm robbing her. I'm expecting to be her world, but she is not the only one in my world. So I just need to figure out how to handle that.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Lee