Does Your Dog Have Country Dog Syndrome?

Cody & Gib­son Enjoy Life in the Country

by Lisa Lyle Waggoner

The joys of liv­ing a rural life in these beau­ti­ful moun­tains cer­tainly feeds my soul in a hun­dred dif­fer­ent ways.  I believe I can also safely say that my dogs would call life in these moun­tains “dog­gie heaven on earth,” as evi­denced by the way they bound around with wild aban­don on our 20 acres, with seven acres of fenced pas­ture.  How­ever, there can also be a down­side to the life of a coun­try dog and that’s what I call Coun­try Dog Syn­drome, a lack of appro­pri­ate social­iza­tion to a vari­ety of peo­ple, places and things, includ­ing other dogs.  They hang out with us at home, enjoy­ing life on the farm or moun­tain top, and get few chances to become famil­iar and gain con­fi­dence in new sit­u­a­tions.  This lack of appro­pri­ate social­iza­tion can man­i­fest itself as fear, which may present as with­drawal, avoid­ance or even aggres­sive behaviors.

The very best thing you can pos­si­bly do for your dog, besides lov­ing and feed­ing him or her, is to make sure you start the social­iza­tion process early with your puppy.  The prime period of social­iza­tion is the first three months of a puppy’s life.  This is the period when they learn what’s safe and what’s not in our human world.  The Amer­i­can Vet­eri­nary Soci­ety of Ani­mal Behav­ior rec­om­mends that own­ers take advan­tage of every safe oppor­tu­nity to expose young pups to the vari­ety of things they’ll expe­ri­ence in their lives and rec­om­mend they can begin class as early as 8 weeks of age (mak­ing sure they’ve had one deworm­ing and first round of vac­ci­na­tions).  Enrolling in a puppy class dur­ing these first three months can be a great way of improv­ing train­ing and giv­ing your pup expo­sure to peo­ple and other dogs in an envi­ron­ment where ill­ness can be min­i­mized.  If you’ve just adopted an older dog, social­iza­tion is just as vitally important.

But what is “proper social­iza­tion?”  It’s mak­ing sure your puppy or dog has a “pos­i­tive and safe” expe­ri­ence with that new per­son, place or thing and not putting your dog into sit­u­a­tions where he’ll be stressed.  So, pick the park on a Sun­day morn­ing or a home sup­ply store on a week night where there are fewer crowds and less activ­ity in gen­eral.  Expose him to tall peo­ple, short peo­ple, peo­ple of color, bearded peo­ple, big hats, open umbrel­las, peo­ple with sun­glasses, small chil­dren, peo­ple uni­form (think UPS and FedEx), etc..  Also remem­ber to pair these new expe­ri­ences with a piece of yummy food that your dog loves.

Proper social­iza­tion also means that the social­iza­tion jour­ney con­tin­ues through­out the dog’s life­time.  It’s just not some­thing you do for a few months and then stop.  The longer a dog is away from some­thing they were once famil­iar with, the more unset­tling it can be when the dog is rein­tro­duced to that stim­u­lus.  Sim­i­lar to the way I used to be so very con­fi­dent whip­ping my car in and out of 8 lanes of traf­fic in the city dur­ing rush hour.  Today?  Well, if I wasn’t vis­i­bly shak­ing, then I know I’d have a flurry of inter­nal but­ter­flies doing that very same thing!  So make it a point to get out and about as much as pos­si­ble with your new canine kid in order to help him/her become a con­fi­dent, adult dog.    Copy­right 2010, Lisa Wag­goner, Cold Nose Col­lege, LLC.  All rights reserved.