Introducing Two Dogs | Phoenix Behavior Consulting

The following link is to a very large (47+MB) .mp4 file. Currently, it may take several (as in, many) minutes to download completely to your computer. We hope you feel it is worth the wait. We are working on the best way to reduce it to an acceptable, usable size.

Many, many thanks to Brooks Fitzsimmons and my brother, David Patillo, for producing this video for us.

Click here: Introducing Two Dogs

A Loose Transcription (in progress)

Hi, I’m Jerry Patillo. I’m a Certified Pet Dog Trainer, and I’m the owner of Phoenix Behavior Consulting, right here in Plano, Texas. Today we’re going to work with Duchess again. [. . .] This is going to be my sixth session with Duchess.

Today we’re going to work on how to introduce two dogs together. What we’re going to do is take them in a field out behind my clients’ home. This is a neutral area. We don’t want either dog to think that this area we’re introducing them in belongs to them. We want to eliminate as many different variables that might work against us as possible. [. . .] What we’re going to do, we’re going to take them out to an open field here. We’re going to approach each other on a leash.

[I failed to mention here that the leash needs to be a nylon or leather leash, about 6 feet long. We don’t use extendable, retractable leashes because these leashes give us no control over the dogs’ behavior. ]

As much as we can, we’re going to try our very best to approach each other with a loose leash. The reason we’re doing this is we feel that Duchess wants to be friendly with other dogs, but we’re not sure. She’s giving us a high-pitched bark, whine, whatever. You’ll see this when we see our next segment with the two dogs. Its higher pitch seems to indicate that she wants to meet the other dog, but of course the neighbors around aren’t too sure that’s a good idea.

To be continued. . . .