What's the best way to introduce my new 10-week-old boxer puppy to my roommate's grieving 8-year-old boxer?

I lost the love of my life — my 10.5-year-old boxer — to Large Cell Lymphoma the beginning of the month. It’s been devastating, and the silence in the house has been overwhelming.

I recently brought home an 8-week-old male boxer (now 10 weeks), and I’m enrolled in and really enjoying your training courses. I’m hoping for guidance on another situation.

My roommate has an 8-year-old female boxer who lived her whole life with my dog who passed. He was the alpha — she followed his lead in everything — and she’s grieving too. We’ve kept both dogs on leash and haven’t fully introduced them yet because we didn’t want to stress the adult dog more than necessary. Sometimes Millie (the 8-year-old) wags her tail near the puppy, other times she just watches him. The puppy is also hesitant and keeps his distance. They’ve been in the same house for one week. Should we just keep moving slowly, or is there a better way to introduce them? How fast or slow should we go? I want to do this right.

Leerburg's Answer:

I'd refer to the puppy video (Your Puppy 8 Weeks to 12 Months), you'll see how we 'introduce' new puppies to our adults. We don't actually do face-to-face on-leash introductions, we use the exercise pen or baby gates so that neither dog is restrained on leash. As long as the older dog isn't being aggressive or stressing the puppy out we've found this works better in the beginning stages.