Teaching Appropriate Puppy Greetings
One of the things we teach our puppy parents at Puppy School is how to encourage their puppy to engage in appropriate greetings with other puppies and dogs, especially when they are on a lead.
We encourage puppies to get used to other puppies and dogs slowly because it's important:
a) for confident puppies to learn not all dogs want to say hello or play immediately (if at all) and
b) we want shy puppies to build confidence and feel safe around other dogs without being overwhelmed.
Our puppy greeting exercises help puppies to learn that greeting others is safe and rewarding instead of overwhelming or frustrating.
Many dogs with good social skills will read another dogs energy and decide whether they want to continue to interact or walk away and disengage within 3 seconds.
However, when a dog is on a lead, it's not so easy to walk away or disengage so as our dogs' guardians, we need to be ready to encourage these short meetings when dogs initially meet, especially whilst they are on a lead. Leads can be a cause of tension, frustration, heightened arousal and emotion so if the lead prevents them from moving away they are instead forced to interact which can result in reactive behaviours and the start of lead reactivity.
If a greeting goes on too long, it can become uncomfortable so the 3 second rule prevents this from happening. Imagine someone coming over to you and shaking your hand for 3 seconds - you could cope with that couldn’t you? Now imagine someone coming over to you and shaking your hand for 4, 5, 6, or more seconds – that would start to feel really uncomfortable and you’d want to remove yourself from that situation. It is exactly the same for most dogs!
We can support positive greetings between dogs by:
Encouraging much shorter greetings (3 seconds or less),
Learning to identify what our dogs are trying to communicate through their body language and
Considering how all dogs involved in the interaction are feeling, not just our own dog.
In our video clips below, you'll see our puppy parents implementing the 3 second rule during their Week 3 puppy class. The important thing here is to lure your puppy away, not pull them away. As you'll see, the leads are always kept loose to keep frustration levels low and to avoid any negative connections with being on a lead around other dogs. The puppies are being guided away with a food lure which is then given to them as a reward for turning away and subsequently re-engaging with their guardian. Everything about these greetings is positive.
In the first video, the Pointer puppy is a very shy puppy but with help from his mum, he has an outlet to escape but with enough of a 'hello' to see that another puppy can be safe.
In the second video, both puppies are confident puppies but there's a considerable size difference. Our happy bouncy Goldendoodle wants to say 'hello' far too enthusiastically to a much smaller puppy. By both guardians implementing the 3 second rule, he begins to learn that wasn't appropriate, he doesn't get to continue his overly exuberant 'hello' and is reinforced for returning his focus towards his human without feeling frustrated. At the same time, our smaller puppy is also given an escape route without any negative experiences occurring or continuing.
Without this approach, that could have been a very different experience for our smaller puppy. It was fantastic work by all our puppy guardians!
So to sum up, implementing this 3 second technique can be useful in many situations including:
When your puppy or dog is involved in a difficult encounter with another puppy or dog
If you see an unknown dog walking towards you
If your puppy or dog has been playing too long with another puppy or dog and you want to move your puppy or dog away in a positive way
If your puppy or dog is easily frustrated; as they learn they won’t be pulled back but instead they'll learn to turn away and be rewarded.
