Lizzy Meets Salinas and Frodo

Lizzy is a high energy gal who never stops moving which means that my personal dogs are not her biggest fans. Regardless, introductions went very well with relatively little snarking considering what a wild child she is.

I am always a big propenent for slow careful introductions between dogs. First impressions count and if you are careful not to overwhelm the dogs you have a far better chance of the dogs developing a good or at least tolerant relationship.

To do this you need to know your personal dogs body language well and the history of how they react to newcomers. Each dog is different and that means you need to tweak introductions accordingly. As the human in the equation you have the responsibility of making sure that things are going well and if they aren't, stepping in and redirecting the dogs' attention. Letting them "just work it out" is not a responsible option. "Working it out" for the most part involves one dog getting bullied and another dog getting to practice and perfect their bullying - neither of those should be allowed to happen.

And if things aren't going well just stop for now. Keep the dogs separate for awhile until they can better tolerate each other and the newness has worn off. Try taking them for a walk when you have another person to help and start out the walk across the street from each other, slowly working up to the point where the dogs can walk side by side. Just remember that it is the dogs' behavior that sets the time frame of the introductions, not your personal introduction time frame.

Frodo and Lizzy, keeping things civil by not making eye contact

My dog Frodo can easily get bullied by hyper dogs that like to push other dogs until they will engage with them. He will snap a bit but if I don't intervene new dogs tend to push him around. So from the beginning if the new dog doesn't listen after he tells them to give him space. I start to intervene. In the video I let her be a bit of a butt to him initially because I want him to tell her to back off. If he hadn't done that then I would have stepped in and distracted her with a toy. After things calm a bit with Frodo and Lizzy starts to lose interest I bring out Salinas so all three dogs are out. Lizzy is now focused on Sal and Frodo takes off to a quiet corner to enjoy a bit of peace.

Lizzy doing a good job looking away to let Sal know she doesn't want to fight.

Unlike Frodo, Salinas can hold her own. New dogs learn very quickly that Sal likes her space and she doesn't mind them playing and being wild as long as it is at least 10 feet away from her. Lizzy tends to bark at dogs from a bit of a distance trying to get them to interact with her, which Sal is not a fan of and right now she just tries her best to stay away from Lizzy. After she had let Lizzy know she needed to back off, Sal had a nice roll in the grass to work out the tension of the introductions.

I rarely add another dog to the mix at this point because I don't want to overwhelm Lizzy and also the more dogs that are out there, the more likely the house dogs will join together and start to corner the new dogs so they can get their fairly aggressive sniffing in. NOT how we want to do things. In fact on the first day a new dog is here, Chima and Salinas never get to be together with the new dog in the same room because they are so close that they automatically team up and become the "mean girls". I love my girls but I also know they can be fairly rude to a new dog if they are together.

Stay tuned for Chima's introduction to Lizzy...