How To Bring A Second Dog Into Your Home?

dogsMaybe you already have a dog at home or maybe you have two and you’ve just seen the most adorable mix at the local animal shelter that desperately needs a loving home.

You aren’t quite sure how to bring a new pet dog into your home while maintaining balance for the other dog or animals at your home.

Here we have some tips and recommendations as to how to bring a new dog into your home.

Try to have a friend help you with this process. You will have your friend take your current dog or dogs to a neutral location such as a park. You will show up at the park with your new dog and while off leash have both dogs meet.

The reason the dogs are to be off-leash is because many dogs experience leash aggression whereas a normally submissive or non-aggressive dog will display aggressive behaviors when on leash. [dog behavior]

Once they have greeted each other and familiarized themselves with each other you can take them separately to your home. Take your original dog into your home first then it is safe to bring the new dog inside. You will have to expect there are going to be setbacks.

Keep in mind the saying ‘two steps forward and one step back’.  If you are having issues with the dogs getting along you can try something called ‘crate and rotate’ which means whenever one dog has full reign of the house the other dog is crated and vice versa.

You can continue with the crate and rotate until the dogs have become friendlier with each other.

It is very important to have a strategy for feeding time. I have three dogs and they were all rescues, all brought in to my house at separate times. The one I have had the longest is the alpha dog, the next one I adopted is second in line and so forth. This is the order they are fed in. when you are dealing with feeding multiple dogs you need to have them sit before feeding them. [puppy feeding]

You may have to stand in your kitchen holding dog bowls for 30 minutes but do so until they are sitting. Once they are sitting you can lay a food bowl down in front of your alpha dog then step away a few feet and set the second bowl down for the next dog and so forth.

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