No one sets out to raise an aggressive dog, but common mistakes can lead your puppy to grow up into a less than trustworthy adult. Here is my top ten list of things to do with your puppy to make sure he grows up to be as bombproof as possible:

1. Teach your dog to trade: It isn’t natural for your dog to want to give you valuable things like stolen socks or dead birds found on a walk. If you want him to happily surrender his finds, start early on trading him with treats. Yes, you eventually want to teach him to drop things on command, but right now our chief concern is that he thinks giving you stuff is awesome! One Labrador breeder tells her puppy buyers “you can’t punish a retriever for retrieving”. Punishing your dog when he has something in his mouth will make him defensive. Feel free to get mad when he is about to steal your shoe, but once it’s in his mouth, it’s his, and you need to get it back with minimal drama.
2. Socialize your puppy: He needs to meet men, children, people in uniform, people of different colors, people wearing hats etc. This is especially important if you have a herding or guarding breed or any breed with a tendency to be suspicious of strangers. It’s mandatory for your puppy to have positive experiences with at least 100 different people before the age of 16 weeks. If your puppy is shy, go at his pace so as not to overwhelm him. If he doesn’t come around quickly, get some professional help.
3. Avoid punishment: Try to manage your puppy’s world so that he doesn’t have opportunities to get in trouble by using crates, baby gates etc and by picking up your stuff. If you do have to punish, punishment should only be startling enough to interrupt the behavior, not to make your dog cower, and it should stop the moment the bad behavior stops. Poorly timed punishment makes dogs afraid of people and defensive. Your dog may not have the confidence to act aggressively towards you, but his belief that people can and will hurt him may lead him to act aggressively towards people perceived as threatening and weaker—often children.
4. Teach children to handle puppies gently: Children under the age of twelve should be taught not to pick puppies up as they are too likely to drop them or to carry them in a way that makes the puppy feel unsafe. Teach children to pet with one hand from collar to tail–no grabbing. Kids should learn to ask the puppy if he wants to play by calling him to them or offering a toy and to accept that sometimes the puppy may be tired or not in the mood. Children and puppies are the cutest of playmates, but it takes some careful supervision to keep fingers safe from teeth and tails safe from pulling!
5. Accustom your puppy to gentle restraint: Your puppy needs to be comfortable with being touched all over and with being gently held still. Practice gently holding him in your arms, in your lap, on his side on the floor etc. Wait for him to relax, then calmly let him up. Often, novice owners let their puppies free when they struggle—try to do the opposite, calmly hold your ground until the puppy relaxes, then let him go.
6. Recognize early warning signs of problems: Dogs who growl or snap are warning you that if pushed further they will bite. Some growling during play is normal—if the dog’s body looks relaxed and wiggly during tug for example, that can be play, but if your dog’s body is stiff, hunched over, or he is giving you the evil eye, it’s time to get help. Aggression problems are much harder to treat once the dog has reached the point of biting because he usually discovers that biting works: it makes people go away!
7. Teach your puppy self control: Dogs who have no patience are more likely to bite. So teach him to wait for his dinner, wait at the door, wait for permission to go visit with his doggie friends etc. And don’t allow endless crazy games, whether they are tug or fetch games with you or play with his friends. If he can’t listen to his name and calm down and sit for 10 seconds, he’s too over stimulated.
8. Let sleeping puppies lie: Teach children not to go in the puppy’s crate or disturb him when he is resting. Puppies need a lot of sleep and will be grumpy if they don’t get it. If you need to move a sleeping dog, be polite and say his name and wake him up first. None of us like being woken up suddenly and we’d like it less if it meant suddenly being airborne!
9. Don’t let anyone tease your puppy: Teasing means inciting your dog to act aggressively such as pretending you are going to take the dog’s food, poking with a stick, approaching a dog behind a fence and then running away, bopping on the nose to get a rise out of him etc. All these are things kids are likely to find funny. The dog acts a little scary and then they leave him alone. The dog learns that acting aggressively works, so don’t be surprised when he takes it to the next level. It’s your responsibility to do something about teasing even if the culprit is your neighbor’s kid poking your dog through the fence—when the same child reaches over your fence to retrieve a ball and gets bitten, it doesn’t matter whether he ‘deserved it’.
10. Let your little dog walk on his own four paws: Dogs that are carried everywhere become very insecure and possessive of their owners. If you let your little dog sit on you, sleep in your bed, hitch a ride on your shoulders etc don’t be surprised if he won’t let your husband into the bed or won’t let your kid give you a hug. He’s pretty sure he owns your lap and he doesn’t want to share.

Hope this list got you thinking! If you don’t have a puppy in the house right now, please forward this newsletter along to friend who does.