We are considering getting a border to live with us, and I was wondering how we introduce a new person to the household?

At the moment it's just me, my husband and Max, no kids or anything. So when we get a border how do we introduce them in a harmonious way? Would we need to try to introduce this person as another pack leader?

Obviously we will have Max on lead and tethered to us for a while - he's been untethered lately having earnt his freedom with appropriate behaviour - and he's crate trained.

Would it help to have the new person walk Max or feed him or just ignore him completely?

Rhonda,

I've never given this much thought. I've not had boarders but have had long term guests. I expected my dog to behave like he does with anyone visiting my home. I didn't prohibit contact but I didn't foster it either. For the most part it was life as usual and I never ran into any problems. It was very rare my guests were alone with the dog but with a boarder that might be different. I'd probably crate him in my room when I wasn't home.

Really good posts, Mike and Kacie.

JMO.

My dogs are not guests who are required to interact with other guests, and they are not family members who must make nice with roommates (if I had them) in any but the most distant and respectful way.

They're "wholly owned subsidiaries."

 Quote: connie sutherland

My dogs are not guests who are required to interact with other guests,

They're "wholly owned subsidiaries."

'nuff said

I live in a house with two roommates - one interacts with my dogs nearly daily, and takes care of them when I am gone. I trust her implicitly, and if something comes up where she doesn't know how to respond, she calls me.
My other roommate would have been selected for elimination by nature if we were in different times... so - he is allowed minimal supervised contact, and when the dogs are out and he is actually home (rare) one is one lead and the other is on a long down stay. In order to be petted by him, (also rare) BOTH dogs must be calm and on a stay command, and I must be there. I also will have one being petted, the other with me so there is no overly excited multiple dogs bouncing around competing for attention. That roommate is not allowed to go into my room at all, and does not, for any reason let them out of their kennels when I am at work or otherwise.
As far as guests or visitors go, I have trained one dog (working on the other) that the doorbell/knocking is the command to go to their beds and stay. I greet guests, get all the excitement taken care of, guests get settled, sit down, we start grilling, cooking, or whatever and the general atmosphere is calm and indifferent before the dogs are allowed to be around. This helps the dogs to be calm as well.
The only exception to this was when I had a sketchy person come to my door asking to clean my carpet for "free" as a promotion, but he was looking past me and into my home (he appeared to be "casing" my house) I gave a hand signal to the dog, who came over and sat next to me at the door, and she actually started a low growl as well - which I didn't correct (this time) Two days later a person down the street had their house broken into a few hours after they allowed the men in to clean the carpet.

That's really good advice, thanks guys. I just wasn't sure if the boarder would have to 'become part of the pack' due to them staying for an extended period of time. But we would never expect a boarder to do anything with the dog when we weren't there. He's always been crated while we are out and I see no reason to change that just because a roommate was home. I'd be too paranoid that they would teach him bad behaviours while no-one was around - it happened with my cat, she 'suddenly' started begging for my food.

So we will limit interaction and make sure we are in charge of any that do happen. My ultimate situation I guess would be that Max almost completely ignores the boarder, except to get out of the way and be polite until they are common place. After that we will see how it goes.

It will be a challenge to get him to ignore though, he has personal space issues, in that he doesn't have any personal space and thinks no-one does either. Puppy glued to any part of us he can reach is standard, and it usually extends to guests unless we keep him tethered away from them. So back to tethering while out of crate for a while I think.

With my last shepherd, who was a gem around all people, we had a Russian roommate M-F for a year. He was given instructions about how to behave around her; mainly to not feed her at all. He voiced understanding, then proceeded to "drop" his interesting food on the floor while he was cooking (and we weren't looking), thus turning her into a beggar and garbage investigator, which we never quite broke! Just an example of how too much freedom can lead to unwanted results.