Training Your Dog To Meet Strangers

Having a new dog is exciting but training your dog to meet strangers requires effort and time. Being a proud dog pawrent, it’s impossible to resist showing them off, may it be to family, friends, social media, and even to strangers we may meet on our daily walks with our pup.

Yes, this is exciting, but we need to be patient as there is a right way to introduce your dog to new people and teach proper dog greeting behavior.

Here are a few tips and reminders that can help you train your dog when meeting new hoomans.

What to do if a stranger approaches your dog

Taking control of the situation is most important when your dog meet a stranger, make it clear what you want from everyone involved in the situation, both the other person and your dog.

Give your dog the “sit” and “stay” command (we’ll get into detail as to why this is important a little later), and be sure to do so with a calm tone of voice. Next, let the other person know how to act in that situation like; “Please don’t pet her unless she is sitting” to promote good greeting behavior.

The importance of dog socialization

It’s best to have your pups socializing early, as it makes your dog meeting strangers so much easier. As long as they’ve had their vaccines and deworming, then you are good to go!

It helps them not get overwhelmed or stressed over all the new stimulations and have good greeting manners.

How to train your dog to meet strangers

Now let’s go through the best way to do it and some specific steps and training you can do with your dog to help them interact with others:

• Teach proper greeting behaviors.
• Expose your dogs to other dogs and people.
• Setting boundaries for people with other dogs.
• Find your cues and rewards and stay consistent with them.

Teaching proper greeting behavior

• Get the right tools. 
• With your dog on a leash, have your helper approach just out of leash range, holding a treat. Reward the doggo once they sit without getting a cue from you. Repeat this several times.
• Allow a little slack in the dog’s leash. You can move without pulling the leash after they sit.. 
• Repeat the same training with different objects, could be male, female, kids etc. to prepare your dog meeting different types of strangers. 
• Next, repeat the same training steps off-leash. Make sure you have a controlled environment with minimal distractions. Gradually move to environments with more distractions like parks, etc. 

With these steps it can help your dog to stay calm and well-mannered around strangers; this is just the beginning though and it’s best to get them used to it.

We would love to know your experience if you happen to have your furbaby trained and share with us your experience by commenting below!

You can also read questions of other pet owners about pet training in UAE and our blog on how to pick the right dog trainer in Dubai

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