Socialisation & Habituation

Correct socialisation & habituation, done right, is so important.

Socialisation & Habituation plays an important and influential part of your puppy’s development and learning; it helps your puppy to learn how to interact to the wider world around them.

It is the process of helping your puppy to feel safe, happy and confident in lots of different situations and environments in the real world. It’s all about creating as many varied, positive, safe and enjoyable experiences for your puppy as you can. With young puppies it helps to be able to do this as soon as possible to help them cope and to avoid future scary surprises and experiences throughout their lives. The infographic above right is a great example of a more correct and realistic idea of socialisation and habituation.

The environment and world in which a puppy finds itself in and how secure and how protected it feels can have a major effect on their learning ability. Puppies go through a critical period of development, from 3 weeks of age to 16 weeks of age. In these early socialisation periods, young puppies have a reduced fear of new situations and experiences which creates an optimal window and environment for an increased ability to learn.

However, be selective with what you expose your puppy to and try to keep it positive, this is an overwhelming time for a young puppy.

Socialisation

Socialisation is all to do with your puppy learning how to appropriately interact with people, dogs and other animals. It is essential for developing confidence, resilience and build positive associations/relationships.

This must be done carefully, if your puppy has any negative social experiences – being frightened by a person or threatened by an unfamiliar dog, this can lead to increased fearfulness towards strangers or dogs later in life.

Socialisation is particularly important if your puppy is going to be living in an urban environment as they are more likely to have a fear of dogs or strangers.

Habituation

Habituation is the process of your puppy learning to get used to the sights, sounds and experiences of daily life, realising that these things are neither harmful or rewarding.

Puppies during the socialisation phase are less fearful of investigating unfamiliar things in their environment, and they recover immediately after being startled by sudden/intense sounds. This is the best time to introduce these experiences to your puppy so they learn to have a neutral response.

Socialisation and habituation are all about giving your puppy the skills, confidence and tools to be able to cope with everything they may encounter in life.

Be careful to not overload your best friend! The last thing we want to do is rush into things without considering how overwhelming this may be for your puppy.

It’s important to help your puppy build up positive experiences throughout their crucial development periods, but it’s so important they go at their own pace, allowing them to sit and just observe and giving them the choice to interact or to just watch the world go by.

Listen to what your dog is telling you, for your dog feeling safe, secure and protected is far more important than anything we can teach.

Finally, if you're in the North London area, you may like to consider our comprehensive puppy life skills courses, designed to guide you through your dog’s different learning and development stages.

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