How to Gently Introduce a New Dog to your Household

Have you decided to adopt a dog? Congratulations! You will have a loyal friend that it’s going to give a lot of enjoyable and beautiful moments to your family! However, the beginning can be tough because the pet will need time to adjust to its new home, and they can suffer from stress if you don’t know how to help the dog in this transition process. You should have an extra eye in those dogs that are incredibly active and have a playful attitude because they tend to change that behavior into a more fearful one during the change of homes. So, you should follow the next recommendations to provide a more comfortable experience for your new friend.

How to Gently Introduce a New Dog to your Household:

The first recommendation is a very important one because you will have to watch the feelings and movements of your dog. For example, if you see that the animal is timid, make slow movements, if you don’t do this the pet will feel attacked or scared. Another measure is to sit in the same room in which it currently is playing or moving; it’s not going to take a lot of time until it comes close to you. On the opposite side, if it’s full of energy, try to give some toys, in this way the dog will burn all the extra energy and also the stress will disappear.

If you have another dog in your household, then you have to be even more careful with your actions, because if the other dog is a dominant one, then it can even hurt the new member of the family. To avoid this, try to make them comfortable with living more closely, for example, instead of using two different beds, you can get a more large bed – and make sure you pamper them equally! However, don’t rush things! If you see that, this can’t end well then abort the operation for later.

Another reliable and gentle way of introducing dogs is using an extra-large dog crate to keep the new dog inside of it – any generic, wire-metal style will do. Then, take the other dog to the same room and let them interact. Don’t worry, nothing bad will happen because one dog is inside a very safe place. Try to do this same action per day until they become friendly with each other. Once they can stand in front of each other, try to put their food and water bowls close if a dog eats near another one, their relationship will improve after some time, so you should start doing this!

Finally, let’s talk about children and dogs, if you want to introduce them you have to take some previous actions, first, teach your kid how to be gentle with pets, remember, kids are very curious about everything, and they don’t what they are doing in most cases, so he or she can produce damage to the dog with touching vulnerable parts of its body. Also, make sure that the dog is friendly to everyone in the house, NEVER rush relationships between aggressive or dominant dogs with kids, because one of them it’s going to end injured (in most cases the children are the victims).