I was reading Dunbar's book on puppies the other day and he says puppies need to stay in the house until they finish their shots, so you need to invite 100 people over to your house in 30 days. He says 100 people need to feed, pet, play and help train your puppy in order for them to grow up to enjoy people. Hmmm...

I don't agree with the puppy needs to stay in the house all the time. But I was curious about his socializing ideas vs Leerburgs. Don't they say that they don't let other people pet their dogs? How do they socialize puppies? And what about other dogs? I know they advocate keeping your dogs away from other dogs on walks and stuff, so what about socializing them with other dogs? Especially people who don't have other dogs in the home?

It's all in the definition of "socializing".

For me it means the dog has to accept anything and everything I expose it to and remain pretty much neutral.

My old GSD Thunder was started in SAR and we did lots of demos with scout groups, etc so being around kids was a necessary that contact with stranger was required.

It still didn't mean I allowed a lot of hands on and playing with strangers.

With strange dogs I have absolutely no need for my dogs to play and run around with them.

I am fortunate in that there are many family dogs the can be let out in the yard together but mine still don't do a lot of playing with them.

Fact is, before we put Thunder down my two, intact, male GSDs were together 24/7 and VERY RARELY did much interacting.

I think it's all about personal choices and what you want from your dogs.

One thing for sure I would be caught dead INSIDE a dog park.

Not very far from where I live a Great Dane killed a Golden Retriever at one of the bigger dog parks.

I think those places are more about the idiots on two legs then on four.

Lori, Leerburg as we know it today evolved from Ed and Cindy's working dog breeding operations. For years, the primary focus was on working and Schutzhund dogs, so that is where the original ideology emanated from. If you think working dog, then social interaction is much less important than environmental desensitizing. That is the difference in philosophy that you are seeing.

As Bob said, much of how you raise a puppy will depend on your personal goals for your dog. IMO 100 people in 30 days is not realistic. I don't need to visit with 100 people in a month, so obviously I don't feel that is necessary for my dog. My dog is a social butterfly with humans naturally, so no socialization was ever necessary with humans. She does not tolerate other animals, which prevents us from going some places together, but her work is much more important than any regret I have about not being able to take her on visits.

Another factor that needs consideration, IMHO, is that not every dog can be socialized to fully meet one's expectations. I have seen many dogs that could be socialized to the point of tolerance, but some social situations were still stressful for them stressful for them.

IMHO, socializing a dog is the same as training it to be indifferent to its environment. At minimum, we expect our dog to be totally indifferent to other people, animals, or her surroundings. That said, if she is curious or shows she can be friendly with someone or something in our environment, all the better. I let her make that call. What we don't tolerate is negative reactivity (fear or aggression) to those things and we work on that through desensitizing and marker training.

Bailey loves other people, most of them anyway, but I let her decide if she wants to go up and make friends or be petted. People don't automatically get permission to approach her.

As for other dogs, she isn't crazy about any of them but she at least tolerates passing or being in proximity of another dog without being a knucklehead. That's all I expect of her.

So, in that sense, that's what we consider in our goals for socialization. It wasn't 100 people in the first 30 days in the house. It was hundreds, if not thousands, of people, animals, objects, and situations over her lifetime in a constant state of training and desensitizing.

 Quote: Lori Hall

I was reading Dunbar's book on puppies the other day and he says puppies need to stay in the house until they finish their shots, so you need to invite 100 people over to your house in 30 days. He says 100 people need to feed, pet, play and help train your puppy in order for them to grow up to enjoy people. Hmmm...

I don't agree with the puppy needs to stay in the house all the time. But I was curious about his socializing ideas vs Leerburgs. Don't they say that they don't let other people pet their dogs? How do they socialize puppies? And what about other dogs? I know they advocate keeping your dogs away from other dogs on walks and stuff, so what about socializing them with other dogs? Especially people who don't have other dogs in the home?

Lori, I agree with what the others here has already said:

YOUR "social goals" for YOUR pet dog are YOUR own choice.

Don't want a Guard Dog for personal and/or property protection ?

Want your dog to LOVE being petted by everybody ??

Want it to PLAY with friends' & relatives' dogs ???

Then socialize it with those individual goals in mind.

If you check out Ed Frawley's terrific DVD "Your Puppy 8 Weeks to 8 Months" http://leerburg.com/120.htm (which I highly recommend buying) then you will see him introducing a pup to random Strangers on the Street, and having them feed it treats he gives them for socialization purposes

If you have tons of visitors & house guests over on a regular basis, then your puppy will naturally learn to welcome that interaction as part of its normal life!

All of that is pretty much what we did with Kasey - we for sure, did not have 100 people over to our house in 30 days! Sounds exhausting! But we did take him to the beach and sit on a bench to see people as they passed by for example. Same at parks, etc. We just didn't let him walk around until he had his puppy parvo and distemper (don't do the other stuff).

Duane and Bob, that makes total sense now why Ed and Cindy did things that way. And total sense on how you 'socialize' your dog depending on circumstances. Trainers are very hypersensitive to socializing because of all the people who just stick their puppies/dogs in the backyard and go to work all day, not exposing them to anything, and then turning them into a shelter when they don't end up friendly all by themselves.

My pup was absolutely exposed to 100 people in the first 30 days.

But they didn't all come to my house. And he didn't interact with all of them.

But big people, small people, people of different ethnicities, people with hats, without hats and so on and so on.

The idea is that what your pup sees as part of life in the early weeks is what they'll continue to see as part of life.

I went to low risk areas, friends houses, small town festivals where dogs were unlikely (and we don't have issues with parvo and distemper here for the most part) etc. And I have a large extended family. I mean, in the first weekend home he'd met 30 people of all different ages and had been to three different houses.

Lots of places I just interacted with him, did puppy tricks, fed treats. But the different people and situations became normal background noise to him.