How To Introduce Puppy To Dog

[Legz]

Hi guys, we are going to be the proud owners of a little westie puppy as of next Friday.

We already have a 15yr old maltese cross dog. On a whole he is a friendly, happy boy, still relatively full of beans for his age etc. However he has never been properly socialised (our fault, wont happen with this one) so he can be a bit funny with new dogs. Not nasty, not dog aggressive just used to his own 2 girls to play with (both passed now) and not used to interacting much with other dogs. How do we introduce them so that neither feel threatened or scared? Do we hold her on our laps and let him sniff her? Do we put her in her puppy pen and let them sniff each other through the mesh? We want them both feeling happy and dont want to cause any issues at the start. We also dont want her stressed out in a new home after a plane flight she may be a bit overwhelmed with everything.

What do others do when introducing a new member of the family to your dog?

[tdierikx]

The playpen greeting is pretty non-threatening... should work pretty well I reckon.

I foster pups for rescue, and I know my girls are fine with pups - but we still do the "crate welcome" when a new one comes in. I have the pup still in it's travel crate and my girls come over and sniff or lick them through the door of the crate - once the girls have gotten over their fascination with the new pup in the crate and walk off, that's when I'll let the pup out and all has worked well so far...

I don't know what they are going to think of the 4 small breed pups I'm going to be fostering soon... we usually have larger breed pups here... I'm having visions of my Rottie/Pittie girl backing off in abject terror of stepping on one... lol! We'll be doing the puppy playpen thing with the new pups - they might scare my big girls. My Lab pup has been getting socialised with the small pups for the past few days, and so far they have ganged up on her twice... but she already seems to know that she has to be very gentle with them.

T.