Looking after your Dog - Castle Veterinary Group
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Things To Be Learnt Hierarchy Feeding Reproduction Emergencies Well-being Health Vaccinations It is always a great event when a puppy arrives in its host family. After often several weeks of waiting, the newcomer is the centre of care and attention. But, if these good relations are to last, you will have to make sure that the situation of the puppy you have just acquired is one which eases integration. It is indeed these first weeks of life together which, to a large extent, will set the pattern for your pet´s behaviour in future years. In particular, you must avoid two big mistakes: •thinking of the animal as a human being as far as intellectual and emotional capacities are concerned •or, on the contrary, acting as though it were no more than a machine, devoid of feeling and of understanding Your dog is a living creature. In their natural environment, dogs live in groups with complex hierarchical social rules. Its development is based on attachment, and the first weeks are crucial for the rest of its life. This is when it learns the basic features of its environment, and how to control itself. The very long period of its dependence on its mother (or human tutors) goes with its considerable learning capacity. It is able to acquire social rituals favouring the harmony of the group and to forge individual bonds with one or other members of it. For dogs, communication involves all of the senses (sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch). It represents a blend of instinctive messages, reflexes and more complex learned sequences combining posture, vocalisation and emission. •Like all mammals, a dog will adapt- several times in the course of its life, if need be- to very different conditions, families and environments. But do not forget that, whatever the circumstances, your companion is always going to react as a dog, with a dog´s understanding and a dog´s reflexes. •Nor should you forget that your pet is unique- an individual moulded by its parents, birth, early environment, time spent with the mother, and all its various experiences of life. All of the general rules which you are going to be given here will need to be adapted to each individual case. So are you aware now of your dog´s complexity, richness and limits? If so, then, let us see a few important points so as to avoid getting off on the wrong foot. Attachment/detachment Your puppy has no doubt only just left its mother, the primary object of its attachment. •If it is less than 6 months old, then it is going to need someone to replace her. And so it will choose a person who can provide warmth and comfort. It will try to be always as close as possible to this person, whose contact is a source of calm for it. It is vital that this new attachment should be formed, for the pup to be able to set off to discover this new world of yours. •At about the age of 6 months, the time of puberty, you will need to detach your baby dog from you- not that this in any way means ceasing to love it! What it means is simply helping it to replace its primary attachment, which was necessary at the beginning, by an attachment to the group as a whole, which will be vital for the rest of its life. For this, what you need to do is to make sure that, in the contacts between you and the little dog, the initiative comes from you and not from the puppy. This will enable it to put up with your being absent. And in this way it will not fall prey to a certain all too common pathology: separation anxiety, causing the dog to howl and ravage or foul the house when you are not there. This pathology is now well known and easy to treat. Adopting a little dog means accepting that you are going to be using a floor-mop for a certain time. At the ideal age for adoption- around 8 or 9 weeks- toilet-trained puppies are few and far between! To expedite matters, there are a few rules to follow, and especially some mistakes to avoid making. •Spot the right moment: in very young pups, each and every meal, drink and awakening triggers the need to "do its business". If you take your dog out right then, you stand a good chance of being able to hand out a bit of reinforcement (strokes) for business done in a place of your choosing. •Reward works better than punishment! It does not need to be systematic in order to be efficacious.
Looking After Your Puppy/Dog Looking After Your Puppy/Dog Things To Be Learnt Toilet training
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