Does a dog exhibit ‘jealousy’ when a wife and husband hug?
Raising a puppy is a life-changing and rewarding experience, but it is also a challenge for both new and experienced owners alike. It’s important to create a safe environment without becoming an overprotective pet owner.
The American Kennel Club offers the following tips for helping your pup grow into a happy, healthy, and well-adjusted dog.
DON’T OVERDO THE PLAY
Although puppies love to play, they also need to learn from an early age that there is an appropriate level of rough play. It’s especially important to teach good manners when it comes to playing with other dogs or people. Play that is too rough as a puppy leads to bad habits in adult dogs.
LIMIT THE TREATS
While it’s true that puppy-dog eyes are powerful, make sure that you limit the amount of treats you give your dog. Too many treats are a detriment to your pup’s growing appetite for balanced and nutritious meals and you don’t want to spoil your dog. Puppies always remember when crying, begging, and acting out gets them their way.
PLENTY OF EXERCISE
It’s crucial to provide mental stimulation as well as physical exercise for your puppy. New experiences are integral to puppy development. Provide your dog with puzzles, toys, and appropriate playthings for mental stimulation, as well as outdoor exercise. Bored dogs are dogs that are more likely to engage in inappropriate behaviors.
BE CONSISTENT
When you decide which furniture or rooms in the house are off-limits, always be consistent in enforcing those rules. It’s confusing for your pup if you reprimand him for being on the couch one day but are fine with it the next.
TAKE AWAY HOUSEHOLD DANGERS
Make sure all the areas in your house are safe for a puppy and that there are no spots where he might get stuck or fall. It’s also important to keep potentially harmful substances safely stored away from your dog, like garbage, medications, pesticides, and so on.
TRAINING IS KEY
Puppy misbehavior can be cute, but it will become a lot less cute when your dog gets older. It’s important to teach good manners when your pup is young; training and socializing go a long way in dog adulthood.
For more information on responsible dog ownership, visit the AKC at www.akc.org.
Dear Cathy,
We’ve got an amazingly bright six-year-old female lab named Duchess. When my wife comes home from work, Duchess stands between us, hugs me, and seems to push my wife away.
She doesn’t put her paws like that on anyone else. She hardly ever barks at us but often does during this moment. She exhibits no aggression. Do you think Duchess is trying to pull my wife away from me to protect her, or is Duchess trying to get my wife off me to protect me? Is Duchess jealous of my wife or me? Or is it something else?
Dear Jack and Stacy, Many people will attest that their dogs sometimes get in between them when they hug or are intimate with their significant other. Several reasons for this include protective behaviors, attention-seeking behaviors, or even a dog’s skewed perception that you both need to be separated from a perceived conflict.
In your case, it’s likely a mild protective behavior that lets “mom” know that “dad” is mine or viceversa – or its attentionseeking. It’s hard to say without witnessing the behavior. But I can tell you how to handle it.
Teach Duchess to “go to her place.” This place is a kennel, a dog bed, or even a piece of carpet where you have trained her to go to (with treats) when you need her not to be underfoot. Once she understands this command, you can tell her to “go to her place” and give her a stuffed Kong when your wife walks through the door. She will be distracted so you can give your wife a proper hug.
Dear Cathy,
At what age should a puppy be spayed?
Dear Steve, Veterinarians generally recommend dogs and cats be fixed around six months old, but for the past three decades, veterinarians at animal shelters and spay-neuter clinics have been performing pediatric spaying and neutering on puppies and kittens as young as three months old.
Younger animals recover more quickly from surgery, and there is the added benefit of no accidental births when it’s done before sexual maturity. Check with the veterinary clinic where you want to have the procedure done and see what’s the earliest age they will accept your pet.