As we move back towards a bit of normal life again, you’ll start to have people round to visit your house. If, during the last 18 months, you’ve got a new dog in the house, or you’ve been used to just having the dog to yourself and the family this whole time, during lockdown, it is understandable that you might have some anxious moments and some worries about visitors coming to the house again. One of the biggest concerns that you may have is how your dog will react around people. Even those close family members and friends who may have known your dog well in the past might not have been around them now for over a year, so they will be like strangers. This can cause problems at first. With the help of residential dog training or training as part of a doggy day-care service, you can begin to get your dog used to ‘strangers’ again, as we move back into a more sociable life where we see plenty of different people.
There are a couple of things that you can do right away, including a dog training facility or doggy day-care:
Find a suitable doggy day-care
Introduce your dog to their doggy day-care as soon as you can after finding the right facilities for your dog and you. In some cases, this could just be a dog walker in others a place to look after your dog all day whilst you are going back to work. This will help them acclimatise to being around other dogs again and people outside of your core family group. You should do this prior to having people round the house again post-covid, so that they are truly ready to be safe and calm around guests.
Introduce visitors cautiously
You want to welcome people back into your home again post-covid lockdown, but you don’t want to spook your dog too soon. The dog training skills they’ll learn in doggy day-care will help them with this phase, as you gradually welcome people into your home again. You can teach your dog to run to a safe space in the house when they hear the doorbell, allowing time for guests to settle and for your dog to calm down and get used to new voices and scents, before they are introduced safely into the room. Whatever you do, do it slowly and gradually so it isn’t just an attack on the senses in one go.
Worrying about how to prepare for visitors again actively and effectively at home after all of the trials and tribulations the pandemic has thrown at us over the course of the last year is a difficult thing to come to terms with. When we have dogs, they are a central part of our family, but understandably, they will be wary of people coming into the home, even if they have known them well in the past. After a year or more with only you and your family for company, your dog might get too excited at the prospect of guests, defensive over the property, loud and uncontrollable. With the help of dog daycare in your area, you can ensure that they are slowly acclimatised to being around different people again, learning how to behave well and in a safe manner, so that you can have guests round to your house again without any worries.