- Hi, I'm Carol McCann, and welcome to McCann Dogs.
Today I want to talk to you a little bit
about how to build a really solid bond
with your new puppy.
This is my new puppy.
Her name is Beeline and she's a 10-week-old border collie.
I've had her home here for about two weeks.
Now, my primary focus for the last two weeks
is to start to build a bond between her and I.
I also own seven other dogs,
and it was really important to me that,
when we first bring her home, that she learns
to bond with us before she bonds with other dogs.
It's really easy for puppies to learn to love
their housemates, and they learn fairly quickly,
because they all speak the same language.
One of the techniques that we often use
when we bring a new puppy home
is to completely isolate and separate them
from the other dogs in the house
for the first couple days.
So if I had her out and was training her
or playing with her, all of my other dogs
would be away, either in a crate
or in another room, or maybe downstairs
and away from the action,
so that she doesn't have any distraction.
Those dogs aren't causing her to not be attentive
to me, and instead be distracted by them.
Once we've spent a few days building a bond
and working together, then I might start to introduce
one of my older dogs, just one at a time.
I try to select the older dog very strategically
and choose one that isn't going to be
that interested in her,
because what I don't want to do is be trying
to get her to listen to me and then have her
want to go play with my older dog
and have the older dog egg her on.
Now, I have some dogs that would love to play with her,
and I have other dogs that could really care less.
They're older and they've been around the block
a few times, and they're not too worried about it.
So those are the dogs that I let her see first.
I started off by having her in the crate,
and then I would have other dogs loose,
and I was teaching her to be quiet and calm,
even though she saw other dogs walking around.
And then I built to being able to have her do
some basic skills that I had taught her.
To work some sits, downs, luring, response to name,
those types of things, all with the other dog
in the room, just roaming around.
Now, if I found that she was more focused
on the other dog and not on me,
then it was really easy.
I would just understand that that was too much
of a distraction at that point.
I would remove the older dog and just continue working
with just her and I.
It turned out, because I spent so much time
the first couple of days working on those skills
without any distractions,
that she was pretty keen on the food,
pretty encouraged to pay attention to me,
and I didn't really have that much trouble
getting her focused.
A couple things that I do to guarantee my success is,
number one, when I have her out
and working around a distraction, I have a long line on her.
So if she decides to leave me at any time
and go and jump on my older dog's head,
I can stop her from doing that.
She doesn't get to learn that leaving me
and going to visit another dog while we're training
is something that's possible for her to do.
The second thing I do is make sure
that she's really hungry when I'm going to be doing that,
and I use really high value treats and rewards
so that, again, there's a greater chance
that she's going to be able to function
under those distractions and still stay focused on me.
The most important thing is to not allow your puppy
to rehearse choosing another dog or something else
over you, you don't want to make it so easy
for that decision to be made in the first place.
Try to control the environment so that it's really easy
for your puppy to make the proper choice,
and at this point, it's choosing to pay attention
to you, which can be really hard
when you're a baby puppy.
Now eventually, I want her to be able to be
a complete part of the pack,
and she should be able to get along with the other dogs,
and still listen to me.
But it's going to be important to me
that I do that gradually over time,
and the speed at which I do that
is going to be completely based on how well she's listening.
The better she listens, the stronger bond we have together,
the earlier I'll be able to let her integrate
with the other dogs.
Eventually my goal is to integrate her
into the pack of dogs, and let her understand
how to get along with them, how to be part of the pack,
how to be respectful to the other dogs,
see where she fits in,
but before I do that, I need to make sure
that she and I have built a really strong bond,
so that I don't have to compete against
the draw and the excitement of the other dogs
when I want her to come to me
or listen to me and do those basic types of things.
There's a lot that can be learned
from a puppy by the older dogs in your household,
provided that they can discipline
or give information to your puppy in a fair way.
I have a great pack that has taught every single puppy
that I've owned how to be respectful
and polite around the older dogs,
and they've just learned to be confident
and easygoing and get along with other dogs in situations.
I'm hoping the same happens for her,
but I also learned that I take my time to do that,
it's important that she and I learn
what our relationship is like first,
and then from there, I'll worry about her relationship
with my other dogs.
Having a puppy is basically like having
a second full time job.
It's a lot of work.
If you're someone that owns other dogs,
so you have older dogs that you're training
or you're competing with, or whatever the situation may be,
sometimes their nose can be out of joint a little bit
if you're spending a lot of time with your puppy
and they're not getting much attention.
So although you probably have a million things
to do in a day, it's often a really good idea
to schedule your training sessions with your puppy
in times that are already convenient for you.
So for me, in the morning, I try to do
a little training session with her
when I'm giving her breakfast.
So I'll use some of her breakfast, do some of the training,
and then give her the rest.
While she's eating the rest of the breakfast,
I'll go downstairs and let out my other dogs
and feed them and that type of thing,
and puppy's tired, dogs are fed, dogs are out,
then I can go to work.
Then when I have a break later in the day,
I sort of go through the routine again,
do something with the puppy,
do something with the other dogs.
And I try to do that several times a day,
making sure that I am giving attention to both the puppy
and the other dogs.
Now, obviously, she's a baby
and she needs a lot of attention,
so my priority right now, being the first two weeks
of having her home,
is she's sort of the number one focus.
However, I try to still make sure that I'm making an effort
to train the other dogs and to spend time with them,
and if I'm tired at the end of the night
and I don't feel like running a giant agility course,
I might just take them for a walk
or throw a ball or do some tricks,
something that doesn't take a lot of brain power
on my part, but the other dogs still feel
like I'm paying attention to them
and they're not feeling like my attention is too divided
between them and the puppy.
I encourage you to take the time, if you have a new puppy,
to really separate them from the other dogs
and work on building a strong bond with them.
One of the reasons why people struggle with dogs
when they're six, eight, 10 months old,
with the dog biting and nipping and not listening
is they didn't take a lot of time
to build a relationship between them and the puppy.
I know I'm not gonna have too many troubles
with distractions because I'm working through teaching her
to work for me and pay attention to me,
right from the moment she came home.
She thinks training with me is a ton of fun,
and that's exactly what I want her to think,
so when I'm around distractions
and I have things to compete against,
she's going to choose me.
She's going to think that's the better bet.
It's a lot of work to do the separation,
it can be very challenging and difficult at times,
but I've done it with every dog I've owned
and I have been so glad at the outcome of it,
so it's something that I would encourage you
to try as well.
If this is your first time with us,
I encourage you to hit that subscribe button.
We're going to be putting out many puppy training videos
in the next few weeks, featuring baby Beeline here,
so we hope you come back and see us.
Thanks for watching.
(cheerful instrumental music)