Kris­tel-Marie Ram­nath

The busy lifestyles of many dog own­ers can lead to the pet be­ing left alone for long pe­ri­ods, with the re­sult­ing be­lief that maybe an­oth­er dog for com­pan­ion­ship dur­ing those lone­ly hours is nec­es­sary. Be­fore adding more dogs to the home, it is im­por­tant to con­sid­er the per­son­al­i­ty of your ex­ist­ing dog. While dogs are so­cial by na­ture, there are some sit­u­a­tions where you may want to think twice about get­ting a friend for your pet. Fac­tors that will guide you in this de­ci­sion in­clude the age of your dog, en­er­gy lev­el, pri­or so­cial­i­sa­tion, and ear­ly life ex­pe­ri­ences.

Adopt­ing a high-en­er­gy pup­py be­cause you feel sor­ry for your el­der­ly dog, who sleeps most of the day, may not be such a good idea. Sim­i­lar­ly, if you have nev­er in­tro­duced your dog to oth­er dogs, ex­pect­ing him to sud­den­ly share his home with an­oth­er dog may prove more chal­leng­ing than you had an­tic­i­pat­ed.

Once you have de­cid­ed that your dog is of an age, en­er­gy lev­el, and tem­pera­ment to ben­e­fit from hav­ing an­oth­er dog at home, it is im­por­tant that you in­tro­duce the new dog to your pet care­ful­ly. First im­pres­sions mat­ter, even in the dog world.

Scent is an im­por­tant method of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for dogs, and you can help to in­te­grate the new dog in­to your home us­ing his odour be­fore the dogs even set eyes on each oth­er. Stroking the new dog’s head and body with a soft cloth and then rub­bing this cloth around the home and fur­ni­ture spreads the scent of the new dog and mix­es it with the scent of the res­i­dent dog.

Scent-swap­ping is al­so use­ful and in­volves ex­chang­ing the bed­ding of both dogs to en­able them to smell each oth­er pri­or to meet­ing. By sleep­ing on the bed im­preg­nat­ed with the scent of the oth­er dog, you are al­so in­te­grat­ing the scents of both dogs with each oth­er.

When you are ready to in­tro­duce the two dogs “face-to-face” for the first time, it is best to do so in a neu­tral en­vi­ron­ment such as a park, rather than in your home. This avoids or re­duces the risk of your res­i­dent dog feel­ing threat­ened and be­com­ing ter­ri­to­r­i­al be­cause he per­ceives that his home is be­ing in­vad­ed. In ad­di­tion, the in­ter­est of a walk and the dis­trac­tions pro­vid­ed by the new sights and scents will make the in­tro­duc­tion less in­tense.

The first step in the process is for two peo­ple to walk the dogs in par­al­lel, keep­ing them a large dis­tance apart. This way, they are aware of one an­oth­er but not close enough to fo­cus on try­ing to reach each oth­er.

Walk the dogs in the same di­rec­tion with this wide buffer be­tween them, of­fer­ing a small treat when each dog looks away from the oth­er and to­ward their walk­er. Re­ward­ing the dogs for be­ing calm in the pres­ence of each oth­er re­in­forces the pos­i­tive as­so­ci­a­tion. Once the dogs can walk calm­ly at this dis­tance, trade places (while still main­tain­ing the large sep­a­ra­tion) so each dog has a chance to sniff where the oth­er dog just walked. If you took the time and ef­fort to do the scent-swap­ping, each dog should recog­nise the oth­er’s scent and be cu­ri­ous about the fa­mil­iar smell.

If both dogs ap­pear re­laxed, grad­u­al­ly de­crease the dis­tance be­tween them while con­tin­u­ing the par­al­lel walk­ing. The goal is to grad­u­al­ly close the dis­tance be­tween the two dogs un­til they can walk side by side. How­ev­er, a smooth in­tro­duc­tion might re­quire sev­er­al par­al­lel walk­ing ses­sions be­fore both dogs are calm enough to get clos­er.

Next week, we will con­tin­ue with how to in­tro­duce a new dog to your res­i­dent dog, in­clud­ing what be­hav­iour­al signs to look out for, and tak­ing the in­tro­duc­tion from a neu­tral ter­ri­to­ry in­to your home.